What to Cook This Week

Good morning. The ides of March are come, and some call the day bad luck, a warning to be careful, to check your six. Of course, it was a bad day for Julius Caesar — stabbed to death at a meeting of the Roman Senate on this day 44 years before the birth of Christ — but, for the rest of us, I’m hoping it’s the opposite, a chance to mark the coming spring, a chance to believe in the future. We ought to cook in any event, both for the joy of it and to prepare for the coming week.

Today, for instance, you could make Alison Roman’s fine new recipe for spicy pork noodle soup (above). You could have that as supper. And while the soup simmers, you could begin to get ready for your St. Patrick’s Day meal, fishing out the homemade corned beef you’ve been curing a week and preparing to reheat on Tuesday.

You didn’t do that, with the pink curing salt and the time? That’s just fine: Get a slab of corned beef at the market and cook it on through today. You can reheat the meat with carrots and cabbage on Tuesday (or reheat it and shred for Irish tacos). Serve with mashed cauliflower or one of these side dishes. Frozen Irish coffee for dessert!

Monday night, for between the soup and the meat: sweet and spicy tofu with soba noodles. (Check out the reader notes, and maybe you’ll roast the tofu in a hot oven instead of searing it in a pan. “It makes the dish even simpler,” one of our subscribers wrote.)

Further cooking inspiration can be found on our Instagram page, as well as on Facebook, where we support a large and growing private community group. You can watch us cook on YouTube! And you can see what we’re up to in restaurants and wine caves by following us on Twitter. (You can find me, too: @samsifton.)

Please ask for help if anything goes wrong along the way, either with your work in the kitchen or our work on the site and apps. We’re at [email protected]. We will get back to you.

Now, it’s nothing to do with chives, scallions, turnips or posole, but you should read Dionne Searcey on her time as West Africa bureau chief for The Times, in The Times.

Sara B. Franklin wrote about the estimable book editor Judith Jones for Literary Hub and you should read that, too, because everyone everywhere should know about Judith Jones.

Wait, Birkenstock did a collaborative collection with Proenza Schouler?

Finally, back in the kitchen, some exciting news: Susan Spungen, a top-drawer recipe developer, food stylist and author who is a valued contributor to our pages, has a new cookbook. It’s called “Open Kitchen,” and you’ll want to take a look. I’ll be back tomorrow.

source: nytimes.com