New York Times Recipes

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2015 Top Chefs, Great Recipes SAM SIFTON Good morning. We're up in Westchester County, N.Y., this week, hanging out at the Food for Tomorrow conference The Times runs each year, hobnobbing with smarty-pants chefs like Tom Colicchio,Andrea Reusing and Marcus Samuelsson, listening to speakers likeRep. Chellie Pingree of Maine and the fisheries master Paul Greenberg, hoping to score some kitchen scraps from Dan Barber, the chef and an owner of the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, which is the site of the affair. We left some slow-cooker pork for the family to eat. It ought to hold them. We'll grab some apples up here and bake an apple cake when we get home, to follow Melissa's recipe for sweet and spicy chicken(above) and a big bowl of couscous. And we'll be back on the stick thereafter. We'll cook Martha Rose Shulman's recipe for a rainbow-carrot stir-fry. We'll roast somemushrooms with garlic, and serve them with crusty bread. We'll make Melissa's recipe for arctic char with soba noodles, pine nuts and lemon. We'll cut some ripe bananas into this recipe for yeasted waffles, and serve a hot breakfast before everyone heads off to work and school. And at some point this week, we're going to make puréed peas with watercress, a terrific recipe Amanda Hesser picked up from Anna Pump, the chef and cookbook author who ran Loaves & Fishes Foodstore in Sagaponack, N.Y. Ms. Pump has been on our mind of late. She died on Oct. 5 after being struck by a pickup truck as she crossed a street in Bridgehampton, N.Y. She was 81. What are you cooking? You can find other recipes for tonight and other days on Cooking. You can save them there. You can rate them there. You can leave notes on them there. You can share them with friends and relatives – please do. And if you run into problems with any of it, with the recipes or the platforms on which we deliver them to you, please reach out for help. We're at cookingcare@nytimes.com. Finally, let's not forget that this is no-recipe Wednesday. It is our one chance each week to upset the traditional sheet-music form that occupies so much of our attention. On the docket: a free-form rice pilaf, with onions, dried fruit and slivered almonds. We'll serve it withroast chicken – you can make one of ours or pick up a lightbulb-warmed version from the market on the way home. For the rice, melt what the British call a knob of butter in a pot, then sauté a sliced onion in it until translucent. Add rice and stir it around, then water in its usual ratio to the rice, and cook as you always do. At the end, add some chopped dried plums, or currants, or raisins, or all three, along with a handful of slivered almonds, and fluff the rice to combine. Put the top back on the mixture and let everything mellow out for a few minutes. Serve with the chicken. See you on Friday!

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times GUIDE How to Roast a Chicken Here's your roadmap for the perfect roast chicken.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Roasted Mushrooms With Garlic ELAINE LOUIE 45 minutes, 2 appetizer servings or 2 side servings

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times Arctic Char With Soba Noodles, Pine Nuts and Lemon MELISSA CLARK 30 Minutes, 4 servings

Jim Wilson/The New York Times Teddie's Apple Cake AMANDA HESSER 1 hour 30 minutes, 8 servings

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times Rainbow Carrot Stir-Fry MARTHA ROSE SHULMAN 10 minutes, 4 servings

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times Vaguely Vietnamese Slow Cooker Pork Tacos SAM SIFTON 5 to 7 hours, largely unattended, 6 to 8 servings

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times Sweet and Spicy Roast Chicken MELISSA CLARK 1 hour 15 minutes, plus at least 30 minutes' marinating, 4 to 6 servings