What to Cook This Weekend

Good morning. I saw a cool post the other day from the chef Matthew Hyland, predicting a 2019 filled with pepperoni-topped pizzas drizzled with ranch dressing. I think that idea is worth following this weekend, using either our recipe for traditional pizza or for a more buttery pan-style pie. (Here’s your recipe for ranch.) If your oven’s hot but not scorching, you may want to use the broiler at the end of your cooking, so as to better encourage the “cupping” of the pepperoni in the heat. ’Roni cups could be the best part of the coming year.

Alternatively, this could be a good weekend for cooking some pantry staples — in our parlance, food that you should make, not buy. What a joy it is to have homemade marinara sauce in the freezer, pickles and kimchi in the fridge, premade corn-muffin mix in a cabinet, next to granola you’ve made in bulk. Make yogurt this weekend, why don’t you? And soon enough you’ll be like me, brewing kombucha and making sourdough waffles to beat the band.

That a little too hippie-dippy for you? I understand. You could make Toll House cookies this weekend instead. I’d eat those happily after a big dinner of what the writer and epicure Jim Harrison called Caribbean stew (above). You could make eggs Benedict in the morning, and Italian sausage sandwiches at night, with a blackout cake for dessert.

How about mushrooms and udon noodles, in a fragrant vegetarian stock? Or you could make Gabrielle Hamilton’s scratchy husband pasta, which is essentially spaghetti aglio e olio that is also spaghetti cacio e pepe and, if that weren’t enough, spaghetti all’arrabbiata as well. Make some simple crusty bread to go with it, and Lucali salad.

Thousands upon thousands more recipes you might cook this weekend are waiting for you on NYT Cooking. (Here’s how to take out a subscription to the site if you haven’t done that already.) You can also seek culinary inspiration on our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts. And regardless of your subscription status, you can write to us at [email protected] for help with your cooking or our technology. (You can send me darts or hearts at [email protected].)

Now, it doesn’t have a thing to do with pretzels or candied ginger, but it’s been more than six months since Ben Taub wrote his New Yorker profile of Patrick Skinner, a former C.I.A. officer who became a beat cop in Savannah, Ga. I started following Skinner on Twitter not long after. Now I suggest you do the same. He’s @skinnerpm, and his feed is a window into a world we should all be aware is spinning and important. He’s on the street working for his neighbors. What he learns is a lesson for all of us.

I like that Granta has a short essay on the best book of 1919. It’s Rudyard Kipling’s “The Years Between.” See if you can’t track down a copy at the library.

Finally, I know I’m mad for these Australian crime novels lately. But Garry Disher’s “Chain of Evidence” is very good. I’ll see you on Sunday.

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