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 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 making everything from a Keralan egg curry and slow fried eggs with creamy dill spread on sourdough toast for breakfast, to easy Mexican grilled chicken tacos with corn salsa and Mexican red chilaquiles for lunch, to a Spanish tapas feast for dinner on Saturday night and a roast chicken dinner on Sunday evening.
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 Kerala Egg Curry and Red Chilaquiles to Slow Fried Eggs and Spanish Tapas
Here are our ideas as to what to cook this weekend.
Saturday Breakfast – Kerala Egg Curry Recipe for a South Indian Boiled Egg Curry
For breakfast on Saturday morning, I’ll be making this Kerala egg curry recipe again, which I shared last weekend for our Weekend Eggs recipe series of breakfast dishes from around the world, which we launched with Grantourismo and our year-long global grand tour focused on slow, local and experiential travel back in 2010. It’s that good.
It makes a South Indian boiled egg curry made with dried spices such as mustard seeds, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, and crushed peppercorns, and quintessentially Keralan ingredients such as coconut cream and green chillies. It’s typically eaten for breakfast with Malabar paratha or idiyappam but you could really tuck into it at any time of day.
If you like an egg curry as much as we do and you’ve made our Burmese egg curry recipe with deep-fried eggs or Indonesian egg curry recipes – we shared a recipe for telur petis, a funky egg curry with shrimp paste and lemongrass from Java, and a Padang style eggs recipe for gulai telur Pedang, a spicy egg curry from Sumatra – then you should enjoy making this Kerala egg curry recipe.
Boiled egg curries have historically been made with hard boiled eggs, however, it’s perfectly acceptable to cook the eggs as you like and we have a preference for soft jammy eggs. If you do, too, take a look at Terence’s guide to cooking perfect boiled eggs.
With the ginger and garlic, I like to pound them a little in the mortar and pestle to soften them, then finely chop them or mince them. Don’t pound them too much as you don’t want a paste.
Kerala Egg Curry Recipe for a South Indian Boiled Egg Curry with Coconut Cream and Turmeric
Saturday Lunch – Mexican Grilled Chicken Tacos Recipe for Tacos de Pollo Asado
We’re making Terence’s easy Mexican grilled chicken tacos recipe for lunch on Saturday, as we just can’t get enough of it. This recipe for tacos de pollo asado makes corn tortillas filled with incredibly delicious chicken pieces that’s moist and flavourful thanks to a marinade of chipotle and spices such as cumin and paprika.
Delightfully smoky courtesy of the griddle pan, you can also cook the chicken on a barbecue or grill. We recommend using long tongs even if you’re not grilling over an open fire or coals, things can still get hot.
Do try to source soft corn tortillas for authentic Mexican tacos, although wheat flour tortillas will work if you can’t get hold of them. While we love this Mexican corn salsa sprinkled on top, guacamole is also delicious, spread on the taco or served on the side, as are refried beans and Terence’s spicy red tomato salsa.
I also like to pop some pickles on top and will serve dishes of our homemade pickled jalapeños, pickled purple shallots, pickled purple cabbage, and Mexican pickled vegetables. Mexican crema is a must, otherwise some sour cream. I also like to crumble a little cotija (Mexican white cheese) on top. When it comes to hot sauces, we like Tapatio and Cholula.
If you have any leftover chicken, you could sandwich it with the corn salsa between soft tortillas to make some quesadillas or roll it all up to make burritos, or sprinkle the chicken and corn salsa onto tortilla chips to make nachos. Whatever you do with it, make sure to wash it all down with margaritas or micheladas.
Mexican Grilled Chicken Tacos Recipe for Tacos de Pollo Asado for an Easy Mid-Week Meal
Saturday Dinner – Spanish Tapas Feast
We’re going to make a feast of Spanish tapas dishes on Saturday night, starting with this classic Spanish chorizo and potato croquettes recipe for croquetas de patata y chorizo which has a light crunchy exterior that encases fluffy chorizo-flavoured mash potatoes.
It’s one of our favourite recipes with chorizo, as is this recipe for Spanish chorizo in red wine for chorizo al vino tinto. The genius of what appears to be a relatively simple dish is that the chorizo pieces release their fat and flavours, mixing with the red wine to make a great sauce that’s begging to be mopped up with some bread.
We’re also going to make this traditional Spanish garlic shrimp recipe for gambas al ajillo, as it’s another of the easiest and quickest Spanish tapas dishes to make – yet at the same time, it’s perhaps one of the most satisfying to eat as it just takes so good.
Lastly, we’ll also do this scrummy Spanish meatballs recipe for albondigas, which makes juicy pork and beef meatballs in a rich tomato sauce spiced with smoked paprika and a touch of chilli.
Albondigas, like the other dishes above are tapas, small snack plates available at tapas bars in Spain, where a tapas bar crawl – a bar-hop to sample these delicious snacks – is must-do for food-loving travellers, but a Spanish tapas feast is so much fun to replicate at home.
Spanish Chorizo and Potato Croquettes Recipe for Croquetas de Patata y Chorizo
Sunday Breakfast – Slow Fried Egg Recipe with Creamy Dill Spread on Sourdough
For breakfast on Sunday I’m going to make this slow fried egg recipe with creamy dill spread on sourdough toast with dill pickles, radishes and sweet paprika. It’s inspired by my late grandfather’s daily breakfast – an egg, fresh crispy cucumbers and radishes picked from his veggie garden, homemade gherkins, and rye bread, all washed down with black tea with lemon – and a shot of vodka.
My slow fried eggs sit atop a layer of dill cream cheese, generously spread onto thick slices of toasted sourdough, and served with crunchy gherkins and crisp radishes, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, and sprinkled with paprika, cracked pepper and sea salt.
I highly recommend using a mandolin to slice the radish if you have one and arrange the other slices of radishes and dill pickles on the plates. Why? Because this dish is really about the whole combination of textures and flavours, and when you’re slicing into the toast topped with the cream cheese spread and fried egg you also want to be getting a bit of this and that onto your fork.
To make the eggs, we use these adorable little non-stick single-egg pans, then we use a silicone spatula to slide the fried egg on top of the sourdough toast. I love to wash this all down with glasses of black tea with lemon.
Slow Fried Egg Recipe with Creamy Dill Spread on Sourdough with Pickles, Radishes and Paprika
Sunday Lunch – Red Chilaquiles Recipe with Fried Eggs
I like the idea of making this Mexican red chilaquiles recipe with fried eggs for chilaquiles rojos con huevos fritos for lunch on Sunday. It makes a popular Mexican comfort food eaten for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner or supper, and it’s so incredibly delicious.
Created to make use of stale corn tortillas, chilaquiles is easy to prepare, versatile, and this version is vegetarian. If you’re not familiar with chilaquiles, it’s a dish of homemade tortilla chips, called totopos in Mexico, made from frying stale corn tortillas that are cooked in salsa and served with Mexican cotija and crema.
If you enjoyed our chilaquiles verdes or green chilaquiles with shredded chicken, you’ll love this, too, although I have to confess that when I first fell in love with chilaquiles at retro charmer Café la Blanca in Mexico City back in the mid- to late-1990s it was green chilaquiles I became completely addicted. Oh my, it was so good.
But this Mexican red chilaquiles recipe with fried eggs for chilaquiles rojos con huevos fritos still makes a super-tasty dish and takes me back to Mexico City every time we make it. You be the judge. You can certainly add chicken to these red chilaquiles. And instead of a runny fried egg or two – you could top it with poached eggs.
Red Chilaquiles Recipe with Fried Eggs for Mexican Chilaquiles Rojos con Huevos Fritos
Sunday Dinner – Roast Chicken Dinner
We’ve been craving a roast chicken, so that’s what we’ll be making for Sunday night dinner, however, I know not everyone wants to sweat over a Sunday roast. If that’s you, do browse this collection of Sunday dinner chicken recipes for those of you for whom Sunday dinner means a chicken dinner even if it’s not a traditional roast chicken.
We have loads of delicious chicken recipes in the collection, below, for everything from a chicken Schnitzel to chicken Stroganoff recipe to recipes for chicken soups, chicken curries and more, along with our best chicken breast recipes, chicken thigh recipes and ground chicken recipes.
I’ve also added links for your convenience to some of our most popular collections of chicken recipes, namely our chicken breast recipes, chicken thigh recipes and ground chicken recipes, as well as a compilation of our best chicken recipes, which includes recipes for fried chicken, chicken curries, chicken soups and stews, chicken noodle soups, chicken pies, and chicken fried rice.
If you’re not inspired by these compilations of chicken recipes, do browse our other round-ups of Sunday dinner ideas: Sunday night dinner ideas for comfort food dishes, Sunday dinner ideas starting with soup, bread and wine food for the soul for challenging times, Sunday dinner ideas that are alternatives to roasts, and easy Sunday dinner ideas if the state of the world has zapped your energy and enthusiasm, even for cooking. That last one was published during an especially tough week!
Sunday Dinner Chicken Recipes If Sunday Dinner Means Chicken Dinner For You
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.
