The New York Times Recipes

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2016 Recipes for Love SAM SIFTON Good morning. It is Valentine's Day on Sunday, and some number of us will be out at the restaurant with the low lights and tinkly music, paying for oysters and things with truffles on them, drinking Champagne and doing the full-tilt romantic boogie just as the card makers and rose merchants tell us to do. Others will be at home with family or friends, or with what the novelist Patrick O'Brian called a particular friend. For them, for you, we write today: an ode to chicken la Tulipe and tournedos Rossini,lobster stew, steak Diane (above). We sing the song of chocolate cake, the ballad of the macarons, the hymn of the Champagne cocktail. Want a full menu for the night? David Tanis has you covered. Still others will eschew the holiday entirely, and cook projects that are unrelated to popular romance but are nevertheless imbued with love. Bread, say. This could be the weekend to make cinnamon raisin swirl bread for Sunday toast. Or golden whole wheat bread. You could make skillet Irish soda bread, and serve it with Cheddar and apples. Or banana banana bread. It is the dead of winter. What better time to start at last to make your own pizza? Making the dough tonight will give you incredible pizzas tomorrow or, in truth, on Sunday; our dough recipe, learned at the elbow of the pizza shaman Anthony Falco of Roberta's in Brooklyn, holds well in the fridge for a day or so, taking on a terrific tang while it proofs. Perhaps you could cook some beans. A red-bean stew, say, or Boston baked beans. Black beans with chorizo? Red beans and rice? We're stoked to try Florence Fabricant's recipe for a mushroom soup gratinée. We'd love to drill down into Melissa Clark's recipe for pistachio baklava. Chicken under a brick? Bill Blass's meatloaf? How about Emily Weinstein's recipe for a French yogurt cake with marmalade glaze? This could be a really, really delicious couple of days. If none of our suggestions intrigue, we hope you'll turn to our site and apps for inspiration. If something goes wrong, we hope you'll reach out to us for help at cookingcare@nytimes.com. If something goes right, we hope you'll do the same, or sing about your success on social media, where we gather around the hashtag #NYTCooking. (Me, I'm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, with an immigrant's love of the country.) Now, let's head into the weekend with a love story. Here is "Beginners," a draft of Raymond Carver's story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," unedited by Gordon Lish, and published in The New Yorker back in 2007. Have a great weekend.

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times Chicken la Tulipe JONATHAN REYNOLDS 1 hour 45 minutes, 2 servings

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Lobster Stew With a Pastry Lid DAVID TANIS 45 minutes, with prebaked pastry lids, 2 generous servings

Craig Lee for The New York Times Steak Diane for Two MARK BITTMAN 20 minutes, 2 servings

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times The Silver Palate's Chocolate Cake CHRISTINE MUHLKE 1 hour 15 minutes, 12 servings

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Bread MELISSA CLARK 4 hours 15 minutes, 2 loaves

Suzy Allman for The New York Times Banana Banana Bread JULIA MOSKIN 1 hour 20 minutes, 1 loaf

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times Black Bean-Chorizo Stew MELISSA CLARK 1 hour 45 minutes, 6 to 8 servings

Rikki Snyder for The New York Times Mushroom Soup Gratinée FLORENCE FABRICANT 1 hour plus final broiling, 6 servings

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times Pistachio Baklava MELISSA CLARK 2 1/2 hours, plus cooling, 36 pieces