Cooking
That’s dinner tonight, with applesauce coffee cake for breakfast and Jamie Oliver’s chicken roasted in milk for Sunday supper.
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Good morning. I made kung pao tofu (above) for dinner last weekend, and you ought to follow me on this one. Ham El-Waylly’s recipe is an absolute stunner, even if you don’t make it with Sichuan peppercorns because you don’t have any, and absolutely if you swap in cashews for the peanuts. There’s a creaminess to the cashew that interacts beautifully with both the sauce and the tofu.
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Kung Pao Tofu
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I served the dish with rice, naturally, but also with chicken wings that I “fried” on a sheet pan in a hot oven, the wings coated in oil and cornstarch and salt, then tossed in butter melted with a few tablespoons of gochujang. Try that too. The combination’s delightful.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The key to a successful weekend meal is a proper cocktail hour before it: Lillet and soda, say, with some snacks to go along with the drinks. And for those, I’ve got a winner, no recipe required.
The instructions came to me from the designer and hospitality wizard Steven Stolman. “Take a dried apricot,” he wrote me in a text. “Top with a little schmear of Merkts Almond Swiss Cheese spread. Sprinkle on a few smoked almonds. Put on a pretty little silver tray. People will think you’ve reinvented the wheel.”
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