Good Bread Good Meat Good God Let's Eat : The New York Times Recipes

Suzy Allman for The New York Times

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 2016

SAM SIFTON

Good morning. Brett Anderson is the restaurant critic for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, but this week he's on the cover of our Food section with a paean to pot roast, a dish of his Midwestern youth that he says is due for a mass reappraisal. Brett's recipe for the pot roast(above) is adapted from one that the Minneapolis chef Gavin Kaysen serves at his Spoon and Stable restaurant, and we hope you'll find it a must-make for coming days.
We feel the same way about Martha Rose Shulman's new recipe for roasted vegetable bibimbap, adapted from Lukas Volger's new book, "Bowl" - and about Pierre Franey's classic recipe for sautéed salmon with leeks and tomatoes as well.
But today is Wednesday, the center of the workweek, the evening on which we often don't cook with a recipe, but with a narrative no-recipe recipe instead.
Today's comes from Julia Moskin. Scatter a bunch of sliced onions and shallots across the oiled bottom of a large roasting pan, then put a bunch of chicken thighs on top of them, skin side up. Season it all with salt and pepper and then slide the pan into a hot oven to roast until the chicken is crisp and cooked through. Mix the onions around below the chicken every so often and add wine or stock if they are browning too fast. Meanwhile, make some croutons from good chewy bread, toasting them until golden in a pan or in the oven. They can be sliced or torn up - no matter. Put the croutons on a warm platter, place the chicken on top, then dump the contents of the roasting pan over everything. Serve with green salad. Boy howdy.
Those looking for an actual recipe to cook tonight can turn toCooking. We like miso chicken in the middle of the week, with rice and baby bok choy. Also: a baked potato with crab, jalapeño and mint, which is easier to make on a Wednesday than its ingredients suggest, and is awesomely delicious to boot. Maybe vegetarian mapo tofu? Spaghetti carbonara? A big Persian salad by way of Los Angeles? So many choices!
Save the recipes you're interested in cooking to your recipe box, so you can track them down later, like in the supermarket when you're looking for pecorino Romano and pancetta. And when you've cooked them? Rate the recipes. Leave notes on them. Share them with family and friends.
And if you run into problems along the way, either with the site or the apps, please reach out for help. We have an ace crew standing by atcookingcare@nytimes.com.
Now, please clear out a few minutes to take a trip up to Montreal to visit David McMillan of the restaurant Joe Beef, in this "Munchies" video from Vice. It is terrific in many ways but not least because it captures one of McMillan's greatest and truest pronouncements of all time. "Smoked meat is the best meat," he says near the end. "Out of all the meats, it is the finest of the meats." See you on Friday.