This aguachile shrimp salad will brighten your day
It’s perfect for those late-season picnics.
Cooking
September 7, 2025

Good morning! Today we have for you:

Paola Briseño-González’s aguachile shrimp salad. Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Vivian Lui.

A spicy aguachile to see out summer

Good morning. Paola Briseño-González brought us a cool new recipe for aguachile shrimp salad (above) that’s worth messing around with today: flash-boiled shrimp in a spicy “chile water” of lime juice, Serranos, cilantro, parsley and mint, thickened with sour cream and mayonnaise and tossed with sliced avocado.

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Aguachile Shrimp Salad

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I might try it with scallops, the big ones I’m seeing from the Shinnecock fleet, so plump and flavorful that they’re worth slicing in half and not cooking at all before getting them into the sauce. (But not if I’m taking the dish on the road, for a cookout. For potlucks, I want my protein properly cooked.)

The dish comes together quickly, which’ll leave me with time to make this extraordinary dulce de leche chocoflan for dessert, a Sunday showstopper, just the thing to leave the family smiling at the end of the week.

As for meals on the workdays that follow?

Monday

I'll start with Ali Slagle’s fine instructions for a caramelized zucchini pasta, jammy and vegetal sweet, with plenty of basil and Parmesan and many, many grinds of black pepper. It’s special, like Alison Roman’s caramelized shallot pasta made with squash, a kind of magic trick.

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Bryan Gardner for The New York Times

Caramelized Zucchini Pasta

By Ali Slagle

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4,821

50 minutes

Makes 4 servings

Tuesday

I love Cybelle Tondu’s recipe for shrimp and avocado rolls for how they evoke the pleasures of lobster rolls while being absolutely Californian, a taste of the Pacific. Serve on brioche buns with the crispest, coldest lettuce you can manage.

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Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Samantha Seneviratne.

Shrimp and Avocado Rolls

By Cybelle Tondu

Wednesday

Eric Kim spent some time with the fast cats at 7th Street Burger in New York City to deliver this fast weeknight recipe for spicy jalapeño cheeseburgers. They’re super-smashed, lacy and crisp, with slices of jalapeño that turn bright green in the heat, enrobed by American cheese and served on potato buns with plenty of mayonnaise and a few pickle chips. Beats takeout!

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David Malosh for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Megan Hedgpeth.

Spicy Jalapeño Cheeseburgers

Recipe from Kevin Rezvani and Jose Arnaud

Adapted by Eric Kim

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18

10 minutes

Makes 2 burgers

Thursday

There may be no better pantry cook on this ranch than Melissa Clark, as her recipe for Vietnamese-inspired cabbage salad with tofu proves plain. Fish a half cabbage out of the crisper, slice it into slaw, dress it with a vinaigrette of soy sauce, brown sugar, fish sauce, lime juice, jalapeño and garlic, and then fry cubes of tofu to scatter over the top. You might make that every couple of weeks through Thanksgiving.

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Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Spencer Richards.

Vietnamese-Inspired Cabbage Salad With Tofu

By Melissa Clark

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849

30 minutes

Makes 4 servings

Friday

And then you can head into the weekend with the first taste of fall: my recipe for beef Stroganoff, to serve over buttered noodles. (Professional fressers might enjoy going one step further and making meatloaf Stroganoff.) Make sure to sprinkle a lot of chopped parsley over the top, to show that you’re not neglecting your greens.

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Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Beef Stroganoff

By Sam Sifton

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4,080

1 hour

Makes 4 servings

There are thousands and thousands more recipes to cook this week awaiting you at New York Times Cooking. Go see what you find. Then cook!

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Now, it’s nothing to do with curry powder or sherry vinegar, and it won’t make you a better cook, but you should read, in The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino on the writer Elizabeth Gilbert. Gilbert has a new memoir out, “All the Way to the River,” and it sure isn’t “Eat, Pray, Love” redux.

There’s a new poem from Jorie Graham in the London Review of Books, “Then the Fog.”

I like Smithsonian Magazine’s “Photo of the Day” feature. You can sign up to have it sent to your inbox. (It’s the newsletter called Photo Contest.)

Finally, here’s new music from The Beaches, “Can I Call You in the Morning.” “If anyone asks, everything’s fine.” Cook a lot of food. I’ll be back next week.

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