Good morning. If you’re making a prime rib roast (above) for the holidays this year, today’s the day to head to the butcher with your mortgage broker to pick it up. It’ll be fine in the fridge until Tuesday night or Wednesday morning when you take it out to get the chill off the meat, in advance of flouring it up for the oven.
While you’re out there shopping, if you don’t have one already, pick up an instant-read thermometer so you can keep track of what’s going on inside your roast beef while it’s cooking. There’s no point in spending a huge amount of money on prime rib if you’re just going to guess when it’s done. Your roast is perfectly medium-rare at 125 degrees measured at the center of the meat. Allow it to rest for at least 20 minutes before carving. (Use that time to make your Yorkshire pudding!)
Featured Recipe
Prime Rib Roast
For dinner tonight, cheap eats against the expense of the holiday feast: Hetty Lui McKinnon’s recipe for cabbage Parm, with a dusting of red pepper flakes and grated Parmesan added at the end. It’s fantastic.
And with Sunday sorted, we can turn to the rest of the week. …
Monday
Barbara Kafka’s recipe for creamy lemon pasta is so easy to make that its deliciousness can come as a surprise. The zest of two lemons in the sauce, along with the lemon juice you add at the end, brings an incredible brightness to the cream, a summery zing that’s welcome in winter. Maybe add a handful or two of baby arugula? Yes, please.
Tuesday
Is butter paneer a traditional Christmas Eve feed? It might be once you’ve tried Zainab Shah’s recipe, luxurious and fiery, just the thing to accompany basmati rice and roti. “Big hit with the whole family,” one of our readers said. I’m in agreement.
Wednesday
If you’re not making prime rib for Christmas (or headed to Chinatown for Peking duck!), you might consider Genevieve Ko’s new recipe for a miso-marinated pork roast: economical, easy and fantastically delicious. It’s a handsome centerpiece that takes the stress out of playing host, and may well become a 2025 dinner-party favorite.
Thursday
I add diced ham to David Tanis’s recipe for smoky lentil stew with leeks and potatoes, but you certainly don’t have to. What’s crucial, though, is that you float a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over the top at the end. It’s astonishing how it elevates the flavors of the long-simmered legumes.
Friday
And then you can head into the weekend with Ifrah F. Ahmed’s recipe for spicy, soy-braised short ribs, suffused with the flavors and delightful smells of cilantro and garlic. It’s a low-effort, high-reward braise that’s excellent alongside a bowl of rice, a balm against winter.
If you’re looking for more or different, head on over to New York Times Cooking and see what you find. You need a subscription to do that, of course. Subscriptions support our work and allow it to continue. If you haven’t taken one out yet, would you please consider giving us a holiday gift by subscribing today? Thank you.
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Now, it’s nothing to do with eggnog or rum-buttered almond cookies, but back in September my colleague Alexandra Jacobs reviewed Richard Powers’s novel “Playground” for The Times Book Review. I meant to get it immediately and immediately forgot to do so. Then I saw that Regina Marler raved about it in this week’s New York Review of Books. I won’t forget this time!
I enjoyed Vanity Fair’s slide show of every Hollywood issue cover it’s published since starting the franchise in 1995.
Likewise this Washington Post deep dive by Alyssa Fowers and Andrew Van Dam, which examines the resurgence of Puritan baby names, virtue-signalers like Faith, Hope and Charity.
Finally, here’s a Christmas poem from Ange Mlinko, “This Is the Latest,” from 2009. Happy holidays to one and all. I’m off next week, so you’ll be hearing from my pal Julia Moskin. See you in the new year!
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