What to Cook This Week from Burns Supper Dishes to Recipes with Peanut Butter, Pistachios and Pipis

For this edition of What to Cook this Week we’re sharing ideas for your Burns Supper menu for Burns Night, and recipes with peanut butter, pistachios and pipies, including a distinctively Australian dish of grilled pipis, garlic and karkalla recipe from Chef Lennox Hastie of Firedoor restaurant in Sydney, Australia, and a Chinese-inspired pork Stroganoff for something special for Friday night.

The Chinese New Year and Lunar New Year festivities are underway and will continue until the Lantern Festival, which falls on the next full moon, so we’ve compiled our links to Chinese New Year and Lunar New Year dishes and filed those under Monday for those of you keen to keep cooking Chinese food.

Our suggestions for What to Cook this Week for the rest of the week cover everything from Burns Supper Menu recipes for Burns Night and peanut butter noodles (for International Peanut Butter Day) to a grilled pipis, garlic and karkalla recipe from chef Lennox Hastie (for Australia Day) and my dish of char-grilled corn with pistachios (Pistachio Day apparently).

If you’ve already cooked our recommendations for What to Cook this Week below and you need more inspiration, do click through to our 31 winter recipes to cook this January if you’re in the chilly northern hemisphere (brrrr!!) or our 31 summer recipes to make this January if you’re lucky to be in the southern hemisphere (jealous!).

And if you’re visiting us here at Grantourismo for the first time – so nice to see you! – What to Cook this Week is a random-ish weekly-ish recipe series, where on most Mondays I dig around in the Grantourismo recipe archives, which are heaving with hundreds of recipes from around the world, for five delicious midweek dinner ideas for you.

For What to Cook this Week we try to share a mix of recipes – ideas for dishes to cook when you don’t feel like cooking, recipes that might require a little bit of an effort but will be worth it, 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. 

But before you scroll down to my ideas for what to cook this week, I have a favour to ask of you. Grantourismo is partly funded by its readers. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting our work by supporting our epic Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon, which you can do for as little as the price of a coffee.

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What to Cook This Week from Burns Supper Dishes to Recipes with Peanut Butter, Pistachios and Pipis

Our ideas for What to Cook this Week include everything from recipes for Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year to Burns Supper Menu ideas.

Monday – Chinese New Year and Lunar New Recipes

If you’re eager to get in the spirit of Chinese New Year, which kicked off yesterday, then browse our collection of recipes for Chinese New Year and Lunar Year.

While some dishes are traditionally made for offerings and family feasts, others are special occasions dishes cooked and eaten year-round, but have a place on the table during the Spring festival.

Our Chinese New Year recipes include collections of Chinese fried rice recipes (below) and Chinese egg recipes, for everything from marbled Chinese tea eggs and Chinese egg drop soup to egg foo young, both the Cantonese original and Chinese-American versions.

I also republished a round-up of recipes for dishes for Chinese New Year and Lunar New Year that we shared last year, which includes recipes for Cambodian-Chinese spring rolls, longevity noodles, and a heavenly braised pork belly and boiled eggs dish from Vietnam, where Lunar New Year is being celebrated.

Chinese Fried Rice Recipes for Yangzhou Fried Rice, Bai Cha, Yakimeshi and More

 

Tuesday – Spicy Peanut Butter Noodles Recipe

Tuesday 24 January is apparently International Peanut Butter Day, so what more of an excuse do you need to make our spicy peanut butter noodles recipe? It makes a quick and easy bowl of noodles that are perfect for a fast lunch or mid-week dinner.

If you’re in the mood for satay but don’t have time to pound pastes and grind peanuts, this spicy peanut butter sauce should satisfy your cravings. It’s also versatile – use whatever noodles and toppings you have at hand and serve them warm or cold depending on what hemisphere you’re in.

If you’re a lover of noodle dishes – and we’re talking dry noodle dishes of noodles doused in sauces in this case, in contrast to wet noodle dishes, such as noodle soups and curried noodles – then you should enjoy tucking into a bowl of these spicy peanut butter noodles, drizzled with chilli oil, sprinkled with crunchy pan-roasted peanuts and crispy fried garlic, and garnished with sliced red chillies and fragrant fresh coriander or cilantro.

Spicy Peanut Butter Noodles Recipe for a Quick, Easy and Tasty Bowl of Noodles

 

Wednesday – Burns Supper Recipes for Burns Night

It’s Burns Night on 25 January and if you need to ask “what’s that?” I’m guessing there’s a good chance you won’t be participating in one of the most significant days of the calendar for Scots people. I’m going to tell you more about Burns Night tomorrow.

But if you’re looking for traditional Scottish recipes for your Burns Supper menu, then look no further than this traditional Scottish cullen skink soup recipe that Terence made when we were in Edinburgh staying in an elegant Georgian apartment  – assuming you’ve got your haggis, neeps and tatties sorted, of course.

If you haven’t, take a peek at Terence’s recipe for venison loin, haggis and roasted vegetables, for a lighter, elegant take on the hearty traditional haggis, neeps and tatties historically served at a Burns Dinner. We also have a shepherd’s pie recipe that we first made in Edinburgh.

And tomorrow I’ll be sharing the quintessential Burns Supper dessert… who knows what that is?

Cullen Skink Soup Recipe for a Traditional Scottish Smoked Fish Soup

 

Thursday – Recipes with Pipies and Pistachios

It’s Australia Day on Thursday 26 January, which for our indigenous Australian brothers and sisters is Invasion Day and a Day of Mourning. There’s a huge and growing movement in our home country to change the date to a date that everyone can get behind and celebrate.

If you’re in Australia and you have a holiday that you’re planning to spend with family and friends, then might we suggest you sign up for an Aboriginal cultural tour or indigenous guided experience of some kind and treat it as a day of learning?

Best Australian Indigenous Travel Experiences – From Bush Walks to Art Hikes

If you’re planning on spending a lazy day at home, browse our essential Aboriginal Australia Reading List which, while created with travellers looking for a more immersive travel experience in mind, provides a fantastic education for those of you staying put.

Essential Aboriginal Australia Reading List for More Immersive Travel in Australia

So what should you cook? If you have access to fresh Australian produce and ingredients, try this grilled pipis, garlic and karkalla recipe, which comes courtesy of Chef Lennox Hastie of Firedoor restaurant in Sydney. It’s from his wonderful ‘cooking with fire’ cookbook, Finding Fire (available here on Amazon).

Grilled Pipis, Garlic and Karkalla Recipe by Chef Lennox Hastie of Firedoor in Sydney

 

Alternatively… it’s apparently Pistachio Day, so you could make our recipe for char-grilled baby corn with creamy butter beans, caramelised shallots and crispy pistachios. It’s inspired by those deliciously addictive dishes from the Middle East that marry different textures and flavours, such as our warm chickpea salad. It makes a fantastic snack or starter or vegetable side dish to a meaty main such as an Arabic mixed grill.

And if you enjoy that dish, you’ll probably love our recipe for cauliflower florets oven-roasted in spiced olive oil, piled onto creamy hummus, and topped with crunchy fried chickpeas, zingy pickled shallots, and fresh mint leaves.

You could also try our hummus balila recipe for a warm chickpea salad with a crunchy fresh Arabic salad spread on top, or our Antalya piyaz, a white bean salad of creamy soupy white beans topped with a Turkish salad and soft jammy eggs, then you should try those, too.

Grilled Baby Corn Recipe with Creamy Butter Beans, Caramelised Shallots and Crispy Pistachios

 

Friday – Pork Stroganoff Recipe

My pork Stroganoff recipe makes an umami-rich, melt-in-the-mouth pork Stroganoff. The silky, tender-soft texture of the pork comes courtesy of the Chinese velveting technique, a method that calls for marinating and pre-cooking the pork before stir-frying it, which takes inspiration from Shanghai’s East-West Haipai cuisine.

If you enjoyed my richly spiced chicken Stroganoff recipe and you’re a lover of Chinese cuisines and dishes made with the Chinese velveting technique – such as the popular stir-fried pork with mushrooms that partly inspired this dish – you’ll love this pork Stroganoff, especially with crispy shoestring fries, a classic Stroganoff side.

Instead of doing what we do with the beef in my traditional Russian beef Stroganoff recipe, and cooking the meat in the pan with the onion and mushroom sauce, which if you’re not careful can easily result in tough pork, I use the Chinese velveting method to create a silky-soft, super-tender pork.

If you make and enjoy my pork Stroganoff recipe, do try my mushroom Stroganoff recipe for a vegetarian take on beef Stroganoff, or my rustic meatball Stroganoff recipe. Head here to my best Stroganoff recipes for the complete collection. 

Pork Stroganoff Recipe for Tender Pork Made with the Chinese Velveting Technique

Please do let us know if you make any of our What to Cook this Week recipes in the Comments below, as we love to hear how our recipes turn out for you.