You Don't Always Need a Recipe - The New York Times

But we have plenty for when you do, including a springtime soup of sausage and tortellini, and the perfect sushi rice for the freshest fish.

David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks.

Good morning. Spend enough time with New York Times Cooking and eventually you’re going to deviate from a recipe, or cook without one entirely.

Some will do so out of necessity. The recipe calls for chicken, shallots, smoked paprika and cream, but what you have is pork chops, onions, flour, white wine and Lawry’s seasoned salt. And it turns out pretty good!

Others will do so out of familiarity. These are people who have made a recipe enough times that they know the instructions cold and have streamlined them according to their tastes and needs.

And a few will do so out of confidence. They’ve cooked enough by this point, out of enough pantries, using enough different techniques, that they believe in their abilities. Give those people a few prompts and they don’t need all the measurements. They just cook, and prepare something delicious.

For them, for you, how about chicken with caramelized onions and croutons (above), no recipe required? That’s dinner tonight. I believe in you.

As for the rest of the week. …

Monday

Melissa Clark’s recipe for avocado salad with herbs and capers is a fantastic one for a weeknight, paired with a soft goat cheese and the sort of bread that you’d be happy to eat with a salad — which could absolutely be a warmed-up supermarket baguette. No judgments.

Tuesday

Here’s a new recipe from Yasmin Fahr, spicy honey chicken with broccoli, which might make it into my regular rotation. The chicken — she calls for thighs, though you might try whole legs — gets a bath in honey thinned out with the liquid from a jar of pickled jalapeños, leaving them tangy and spicy-sweet, vaguely Tex-Mex in taste. Top that with chopped cilantro and diced white onions. And serve it with cornbread, maybe?

Wednesday

Once in a while it’s a smart idea to hit the kids’ menu, and hard. These fish sticks with peas from Naz Deravian are nursery food of the first order, and immensely satisfying.

Thursday

Ali Slagle makes a sausage tortellini soup that relies on fennel and whatever green vegetables you can find at the market to make the dish lighter than a traditional sausage soup. Accordingly, she also calls for chicken sausage. I can’t give up the pork version, myself, but it’s still pretty light.

Friday

Years ago, Matt and Ted Lee worked with Kazu Takahashi and Masakazu Hori to bring this exemplary recipe for sushi rice into our archive. I like it best under a scattering of yellowfin tuna and wild-caught salmon, as in the Lee brothers’ recipe for chirashi. It makes for a great start to the weekend.

Thousands more recipes to cook this week are waiting for you on New York Times Cooking, at least if you have a subscription. Subscriptions support our work. If you haven’t already, I hope you will consider subscribing today. Thank you.

Have an issue with our technology? Write to us at cookingcare@nytimes.com. Have a thought to get off your chest? Write to me at foodeditor@nytimes.com. I can’t respond to every letter. But I read every one.

Now, it’s a long way from layer cakes and coddled eggs, but I enjoyed Tom Johnson’s review, in The London Review of Books, of “Shipwrecks and the Bounty of the Sea,” by David Cressy.

And here’s some good fun in The New York Times Magazine, where David Marchese interviewed the sports personality Stephen A. Smith. (I hadn’t realized Smith appears occasionally on “General Hospital.”)

Finally, you should take some time to enjoy this footage of Bjork performing in Iceland in 1982, when she was 16. You’re welcome. I’ll be back next week.

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