What to Cook this Weekend is a weekly series that we launched late last year with suggestions for often easy, occasionally challenging, but always memorable weekend meals from our recipe archives. Meal ideas will include dishes we’re making at home that we think you’ll like, as well as recipes that we are testing for cookbooks which you might care to try.
This weekend we’re cooking everything from katsudon and chebureki to croquettes and chilaquiles. We’re making the Japanese pork cutlet and egg rice bowl topped with spring onions and scallions, a batch of the traditional Crimean fried pastries filled with savoury minced beef and onions, and Mexican chilaquiles with fried eggs, shredded chicken and green salsa.
If you’re arriving for the first time, What to Cook this Week provides ideas for weeknight dinners from Monday to Friday, while What to Cook this Weekend offers meal suggestions for Saturday and Sunday breakfast, lunch and dinner. Recipes come from our Grantourismo archives, which are heaving with thousands of recipes for dishes from around the world, beginning with recipes from our first series, The Dish.
We launched The Dish on recipes for the quintessential dishes of places we settled into when we launched Grantourismo with our 12 month global grand tour back on New Year’s Day 2010. Many of our most popular recipes on the site come from that series, from our Moroccan Moroccan lamb tajine with prunes and almonds to this classic Toulouse cassoulet.
Before I share suggestions for what to cook this weekend, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-supported. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting Grantourismo and what we do here by buying us a coffee (we’ll use our coffee money to buy cooking ingredients for recipe testing) or making a donation to our epic, original Cambodian cookbook and culinary history on Patreon.
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We might earn a small commission from your purchases on sites, such as Amazon, and we have plenty of inspiration here in our round-ups of James Beard award-winning cookbooks, cookbooks by Australian chefs, classic cookbooks for serious cooks, cookbooks for culinary travellers, travel books to inspire wanderlust, gifts for Asian food lovers, picnic lovers and travellers who love photography.
Now let’s share our suggestions as to what to cook this weekend.
What to Cook This Weekend from Katsudon and Chebureki to Croquettes and Chilaquiles
Here are our ideas as to what to cook this weekend.
Saturday Breakfast – Katsudon Recipe for a Japanese Pork Cutlet Egg Rice Bowl
For breakfast on Saturday morning, I’ll be testing out Terence’s katsudon recipe for a Japanese pork cutlet and egg rice bowl topped with spring onions and scallions. It’s the latest recipe in our Weekend Eggs series on quintessential eggs dishes from around the world.
The name ‘katsudon’ is derived from ‘katsu’, which means ‘cutlet’ – a breaded piece of pounded meat dipped in flour, egg and bread crumbs (in Japanese cooking, it’s panko-breadcrumbs) before being fried – in this case, ‘tonkatsu’ (pork cutlet), and ‘don’ from ‘donburi’ is a Japanese rice bowl.
First you make a bowl of steamed Japanese rice; then the pork cutlet from boneless pork chops; an egg mixture, mixed with a dashi-based stock, but you could use chicken stock; and lastly, the sliced crunchy pork cutlet is placed on top of the rice and the egg mixture poured over the pork cutlet.
Some restaurants top katsudon with extras such as finely sliced ginger, an egg yolk, some Japanese chilli powder, or a big squeeze of Japanese mayonnaise, but we find that there’s a good balance of flavour in this katsudon as is.
Like, oyakodon, another rice bowl dish, katsudon is so delicious and such a comforting and filling dish that can be eaten eaten for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner, but we love it for a late weekend breakfast.
Katsudon Recipe for a Japanese Pork Cutlet and Egg Rice Bowl for Weekend Eggs
Saturday Lunch – Chebureki Recipe for a Beach Holiday Treat
After such a hearty breakfast, a lightish lunch is in order. I’m planning on making a small batch of these traditional chebureki (чебуреки). My recipe makes these deliciously-crunchy fried pastries filled with savoury minced beef and onions.
They are so big you need to hold them in two hands, but I’m working on a recipe for mini chebureki that are a little spicier, but not too much spicier as I don’t want them to lose their identity. I’ll share that with you here soon.
Cheburkei have long been a beloved Black Sea beach holiday snack with origins in Crimean Tatar cuisine, and a popular street food in Ukraine and Russia, and other Eastern European and Central Asian countries, as well as the Crimean Tartar diaspora.
I’m cooking a lot of food from the lands of my ancestors, Ukraine and Russia, right now, as my heart breaks at the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine, the loss of so many innocent lives and destruction of cities, towns and villages, not to mention the deaths of young Russian conscripts used as cannon fodder in Putin’s war. I’ll share more recipes soon with information as to how to help Ukrainians.
Chebureki Recipe for a Crimean Beach Holiday Treat That Became a Popular Russian Street Food Snack
Saturday Dinner – Spanish Chorizo and Potato Croquettes Recipe
We’re going to enjoy a feast of Spanish tapas tonight. We’ll be making this classic Spanish chorizo and potato croquettes recipe for croquetas de patata y chorizo, which makes a delectable snack with a light crunchy exterior encasing fluffy chorizo-flavoured mash potatoes.
They’re a popular tapas bar snack in Spain and are so popular some bars even specialise in croquettes offering a diverse array of fillings. This recipe is one of our favourite recipes with chorizo and it’s next in our series of best Spanish tapas recipes, which we’ll be sharing with you over coming weeks.
We kicked off the series last week with this Spanish meatballs recipe for albondigas and next up we’ll share recipes for Spanish style garlic shrimp for gambas al ajillo, calamari al plancha for smoky squid cooked on a griddle, chorizo en vino and more.
We also have a recipe that we’ll make for the traditional Spanish potato omelette known as tortilla española or tortilla de patatas, which we make with a little spicy Spanish chorizo added to the classic Spanish potato omelette recipe of eggs, potatoes and onions. It’s so delicious.
I’ll make this garden salad to go with all that and Terence pulled a loaf of sourdough bread out of the oven this afternoon, which we’ll slice up. That’s perfect a vehicle for slices of tortilla or for soaking up the rich tomato sauce that our albondigas swim in. Yum.
Spanish Chorizo and Potato Croquettes Recipe for Croquetas de Patata y Chorizo
Sunday Breakfast – Mexican Chilaquiles Recipe with Fried Eggs
For breakfast on Sunday I’m going to make this easy Mexican chilaquiles recipe with fried eggs, shredded chicken and green salsa for chilaquiles verdes.
A popular dish eaten for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner or supper in Mexico, chilaquiles was created to use up stale tortilla chips and other leftovers, and is a very versatile dish. It’s also a popular Mexican hangover cure!
This Mexican chilaquiles recipe with fried eggs essentially makes the chilaquiles con pollo en salsa verde (chilaquiles with chicken in green salsa) that I became addicted to at Café la Blanca in Mexico City many years ago.
A pre-Hispanic Aztec dish, chilaquiles – pronounced chee-lah-KEE-lehs, which comes from a Nahuatl word that meant ‘chillies and greens’ – has long been a popular Mexican breakfast dish, but one that is eaten at any time of day.
Filling and comforting, it also makes for a fantastic lunch or dinner, if this is too heavy for you for breakfast, and if it is, check out this collection of our best scrambled eggs recipes.
Mexican Chilaquiles Recipe with Fried Eggs, Shredded Chicken and Green Salsa for Chilaquiles Verdes
Sunday Lunch – Cambodian Pickled Lime Soup
It’s been ages since I’ve made this Cambodian Pickled Lime Soup, so that’s Sunday lunch sorted. This Cambodian pickled lime soup with chicken recipe makes one of my favourite Cambodian soups, a perfumed citrus-driven broth that is a bit sweet and a bit sour but beautifully balanced.
The bowl should brim with pieces of succulent chicken fragrant from the lime you roasted them in and aromatics such as lemongrass and coriander that swim in this nourishing soup. In many ways, this is Cambodia’s chicken soup for the soul and of Cambodia’s countless soups there are few more comforting.
While I have demonstrated that I can polish off a pot of the stuff on my own, this is a soup made for these uncertain times and is a soup that should be shared, so I recommend making more than you can eat and sharing the rest with neighbours and friends.
We use thighs as they’re our favourite chicken parts (and we have more chicken thigh recipes here), but you can use a mix of chicken pieces or even a whole chicken (or two) if you’re feeding a family or group.
Four chicken thighs should feed two people two big hearty bowls of soup or four people four smaller bowls if serving the soup as appetisers or accompaniments to other dishes. You can do the math and work out what you need based on how many people you want to feed.
Comforting Cambodian Pickled Lime Soup with Chicken Recipe for Sngor Ngam Ngov
Sunday Dinner – Cambodian Beef Skewers and Green Papaya Salad
We’re going to keep things simple for dinner on Sunday night here in Siem Reap and make this Cambodian beef skewers recipe, which kicked off our series on the best Cambodian barbecue recipes which we shared early in the pandemic.
Called sach ko ang in Khmer, the skewers are typically eaten with pickled vegetables and are a classic late afternoon or early evening street food snack in Siem Reap. Some locals slide the meat off the skewer into the buttered baguette to make a meal out of them.
Cambodian Beef Skewers Recipe with Lemongrass – How To Make Sach Ko Ang
The skewers are usually served with a simple quick pickle of carrot and daikon but I’m going to make this Cambodian green papaya salad recipe for bok lahong or nhoam lahong, a fragrant, crunchy salad that’s a little funky, spicy, sour, salty, and a tad sweet.
Typically eaten as a late afternoon snack, this bespoke Cambodian salad is made to order, and has cousins in Laos (Tum Som), Thailand (Som Tum), and Vietnam (Gỏi Đủ Đủ). It’s fantastic with these beef skewers.
Cambodian Green Papaya Salad Recipe – How to Make Cambodia’s Bok Lahong
Please do let us know if you make any of our What to Cook this Weekend recipes in the comments below as we’d love to get your feedback and hear how our recipes turned out for you.
