For our latest edition of What to Cook this Week we’ve got recipes for a salad of crunchy cucumber spears tossed in our easy vinaigrette, a cold beetroot soup or warming bowl of borscht, a creamy broccoli pasta recipe with a broccoli pesto sauce, fried rice recipes beyond the obvious, and tasty Basque pintxos.
Like last week’s edition of What to Cook this Week, we’ve got more recipes for you this week for dishes that you should enjoy no matter what hemisphere you’re in and what extremes of temperature you’re experiencing. How crazy has the weather been?! Fires, floods and mud-slides abound.
And don’t forget, if you don’t see a dish that entices you below, you can browse our collections of 31 summer recipes to make in August – or these compilations of recipes for summer salads, tomato recipes and summer corn recipes – or check out our top 31 winter recipes to cook in August for warming soups, hearty stews and spicy curries.
If you’re here on Grantourismo for the first time – welcome! What to Cook this Week is a random-ish weekly-ish recipe series consisting of ideas for five delicious weeknight dinners. All recipes come from the Grantourismo archives, which is bursting with thousands of recipes from around the globe.
For What to Cook this Week we endeavour to mix things up with suggestions for dishes to cook when you don’t feel like cooking, recipes that might require a little bit of an effort but will reward big-time, and dishes to make on a Friday night when you’re looking forward to spending some time in the kitchen with loved-ones, a bottle of wine, and good music in the background.
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What to Cook this Week – Cucumber Salad, Beetroot Soup, Borscht, Broccoli Pesto
Our ideas for What to Cook this Week include recipes for everything from a salad of crunchy cucumber spears tossed in our easy vinaigrette to fried rice recipes beyond the obvious.
Monday – Cucumber Salad on Creamy Butter Bean Purée and Seven-Spiced Meatballs
Topping my list of ideas for what to cook this week is what we’re eating tonight: my deliciously simple salad of crunchy cucumber spears tossed in our easy vinaigrette and fresh herbs, and piled onto a creamy butter bean purée.
Full of texture and flavour, and quick to come together, it’s one of our best cucumber salad recipes. It’s a fantastic side to Mediterranean-style braised chicken and kofta kebabs but I recommend making these Middle Eastern seven-spiced meatballs tonight, as they’re super easy.
Like my roasted cauliflower on hummus, this cucumber salad is partly inspired by Middle Eastern recipes we love, such as the wonderful hummus-based dishes like balela salad (village salad on hummus and chickpeas) and hummus bil lahme (spiced minced beef on hummus), although you could really serve this with anything. A rotisserie chicken would be perfect!
If you haven’t already made our easy vinaigrette recipe, and don’t have a jar in the fridge, make our super-simple take on the classic French salad dressing first. It shouldn’t take more than five minutes.
Cucumber Salad Recipe for Crunchy Cucumbers on Creamy Butter Bean Purée
Tuesday – Cold Beetroot Soup Recipe or a Warming Bowl of Borscht
My next suggestion for what to cook this week is this Russian cold beetroot soup recipe for holodnik (Холодник) or ‘cold soup’. A chilled summer soup, it’s absolutely brilliant on a hot summer’s day, especially topped with sour cream and fresh dill.
It’s sometimes called ‘summer borscht’ – although that would actually be svekolnik (Свекольник) – but it does share a key ingredient in beetroot and it’s a breeze to make. It’s one of several notable Russian summer soups – another one of my favourites is called okroshka.
Chilled soups are the best in summer, especially teamed with a summer salad. My Russian-Ukrainian baboushka had fond memories of spending her childhood summers on the sultry Black Sea, staying cool thanks to these cold soups.
Russian Cold Beetroot Soup Recipe for Holodnik, A Chilled Soup for a Hot Summer Day
If you’re in the chilly southern hemisphere, then make a big pot of the warming beetroot soup called borscht, which originated in Ukraine, but has long been popular all over Russian and the independent countries that were once part of the former Soviet Union.
My traditional Russian borscht recipe makes a comforting vegetable soup that I like to think of as the Russian-Ukrainian soup for the soul. Borscht has a special place in the hearts, minds and stomachs of anyone of Russian or Ukrainian heritage who grew up dunking weighty slices of black rye bread into their baboushka’s nourishing broth.
You’ll note that it’s a deep amber to dark orange colour rather than the deep ruby or purple-tinted borscht you’re probably more familiar with seeing in cookbooks, magazines and food blogs. There’s a reason for that, which I explain in the post.
If soup isn’t enough of a meal for you, then make another dish to serve with it. Perhaps a beetroot potato salad or a classic garden salad or if it’s still cold where you are, some stuffed cabbage rolls.
This Russian Borscht Recipe Makes the Hearty Home-Cooked Soup of my Childhood
Wednesday – Easy Broccoli Pasta Recipe
I liking the idea of a simple pasta dish for Wednesday night as it’s going to be a busy week, so next on my list of suggestions for what to cook this week is my easy broccoli pasta recipe with a creamy broccoli pesto sauce for a delicious alternative to basil pesto pasta.
Broccoli is a super-food, rich in fibre, vitamins and minerals, making it a healthy pasta sauce. While the dollop of sour cream or cream is optional, don’t skip the lemon juice, which enlivens the dish, or the chilli flakes, which add warmth.
The recipe takes just half an hour to make and it’s a fantastic year-round pasta. If you’re like me, that is, and can eat pasta no matter what the weather. In summer, you could skip the cream, serve a light salad on the side, and do as the Italians do and serve a starter-size pasta.
In winter, when you’ll welcome the carbs and take comfort in the richness of the dish and gentle warmth courtesy of the the chilli flakes, you could double the cream, plate up generous main-size portions, and serve thick slices of crusty sourdough bread on the side to mop up the creamy sauce.
Easy Broccoli Pasta Recipe with a Deliciously Creamy Broccoli Pesto Sauce
Thursday – Fried Rice Recipes Beyond the Obvious
Next on my list of suggestions for what to cook this week for Thursday night is fried rice. By the end of the week we usually have steamed rice that needs to be used and other leftovers that can easily be thrown in the wok to concoct a creative fried rice dish. While Friday night is fun for fried rice, Thursday night is just as right.
As regular readers who would be aware of my rice project Make Rice Not War (A Celebration of Rice Diversity to Inspire Curiosity and Connection) would know, I’m obsessed with rice dishes from around the world in all their many forms. But I also love to create new fried rice dishes.
I adore classic Chinese fried rice recipes and the many traditional Southeast Asian fried recipes that have evolved from those. But there are few things I hate more than food wastage and throwing out perfectly good leftover food.
Fried rice is not only a fantastic solution for leftover rice, but also for leftover curries, leftover stir-fries, and those vegetables going soft and wilting in your fridge veggie drawer. Plus let’s not forget that fried rice was invented to use up leftover rice, after all.
Our fried rice recipes beyond the obvious include recipes for a Thai Massaman curry fried rice with crispy onions, crunchy fried potatoes, and pan-roasted peanuts; a savoury cabbage roll fried rice inspired by my Russian-Ukrainian grandmother’s cabbage rolls; and tonkatsu fried rice with onsen eggs and succulent Japanese pork cutlet breaded in panko crumbs.
Fried Rice Recipes Beyond the Obvious if Friday Night is Fried Rice Night
Friday – Basque Pintxo Recipes for Basque Style Tapas
Last on my list of ideas for what to cook this week is this Basque pintxos recipe for Basque snacks called ‘pintxos’ in Basque or ‘pinchos’ in Spanish. Easy to make, these Basque snacks are perfect for easy entertaining and casual gatherings or just a relaxed evening at home.
Our Basque pintxos recipe will make you classic Basque snacks of tasty toppings on toasted baguette slices, typically served buffet-style on bar counter-tops. Pronounced ‘peen-chos’ and offered in bars in Spain’s Basque Country, most famously in the city of San Sebastian, pintxos are often likened to Spanish tapas but are more like Italian crostini.
Effortless to prepare, as affordable or as expensive as you like, and easy to eat, pintxos are perfect for laidback entertaining, relaxed gatherings or low-key evenings at home. Along with Spanish tapas, they make casual fuss-free meals.
Basque Pintxo Recipes for Basque Style Tapas for Easy Entertaining
Please do let us know if you make any of our recipes from our What to Cook this Week recipe series this week as we’d love to hear how they turned out for you.
