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Wednesday, February 10, 2016

The New York Times Recipes

Rikki Snyder for The New York Times

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2016

SAM SIFTON

Greetings and salutations! How pleasant it was this morning to hear the hard thwack of the newspaper against our front door. We devoured Kim Severson's delightful article about America's growing taste for bison, in steaks and ground chuck as well as energy bars and jerky. And we lingered over Ligaya Mishan's fine roundup of restaurants serving Hawaiian-style poké (poh-kay) in New York.
We planned a visit to Williamsburg after reading Pete Wells's reviewof the Peruvian restaurant Llama Inn there; we made plans for Valentine's Day off David Tanis's excellent column about cooking a romantic meal at home.
And we got totally excited, thanks to a barnburner of a call to arms by the Manhattan chef Amanda Cohen, to head to the store this evening to buy some wan supermarket tomatoes to roast into concentrated excellence. Three recipes accompany Amanda's story: for roasted winter tomatoes (above); roasted tomato-coconut sauce; and roasted tomatoes and whipped feta on toast. We are hoping you will cook them all.
Those who follow our exploits closely here at Cooking know that Wednesdays are no-recipe days, when we offer a chance to improvise a little instead of following strict instructions.
Today's suggestion: old-school cafeteria tacos, with a version of the meat sauce I use for loaded nachos. Buy a pound or so of ground beef – 20 percent fat if you can find it. Fry a diced onion, some garlic and a diced jalapeño in neutral oil in a large pan set over medium-high heat, then add the ground beef and break it up in the pan. Cook until it has started to crisp around the edges, then add a couple of tablespoons of chile powder, a healthy shake of ground cumin, some salt and pepper and a tablespoon of cornstarch. (Yes, cornstarch.) Let that cook for a minute, then tip into the pan a small can of diced tomatoes. Stir to combine, let it cook down for a few minutes, then add some chicken stock or water if you don't have any to the pan and watch as the gravy around the meat thickens. Cook for 10 to 15 more minutes on low and then use it as the filling for tacos, topped with cheese and sour cream and salsa, however you like.
Alternatively, if no-recipe cooking is not your style, check out ourcollection of taco-night recipes and stick to the script that excites you.
You can find other delicious things to cook on our site and apps, we hope. But if you run into any trouble, with a recipe or with the technology, we hope you'll reach out for help. You can get us atcookingcare@nytimes.com, or you can find me algorithmically onTwitter, or on Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest.
Now, three things to read during lunch while you're listening to"Formation" for the 10,000th time. The writer Ann Beattie's Granta list of five things she's thinking about right now, down in Key West. Philip Gourevitch, in Lucky Peach, on breakfasts in Rwanda. And John Seabrook's look in The New Yorker at how streaming-music services like Spotify are not making songwriters any money, and how little they can do about it. See you on Friday!