Your question is very unclear (given that you don’t actually ask a question), but there are 2 problems with your code, both of which are corrected below:
$args = array (
//'post_type' => 'article',
'posts_per_page' => 5,
'category_name' => 'starter', // changed from 'category' to 'category_name'
'meta_query' => array (
array (
'key' => 'recommended_article',
'value' => '1',
'compare' => '=', // changed from '==' to '='
),
),
) ;
$query = new WP_Query ($args) ;
while ($query->have_posts ()) {
the_content () ;
}
For the details of why these changes are necessary, see WP_Query, Category Parameters and WP_Query, Custom Field Parameters.