Posts Categorized: Dinner

Roasted Vegetable Salads for Winter

I’ve gotten really into shoving whatever vegetables I’ve got into a 400°F oven soon after breakfast so I have something hearty and healthy waiting for me by lunch time. (Perks of working from home, yes, I know.) Here are three recent winners, which you should of course feel free to serve for dinner. Roasted Eggplant & Tomatoes with Tahini Dressing… Read more »

Chicken and Vinegar

A few weeks ago, we met some friends for dinner at Maialino, Danny Meyer’s recently relocated Roman trattoria and wine bar that is now housed in the Redbury Hotel and, with its checkered tablecloths and sepia portrait-lined walls, still as charming as ever. We ordered the obligatory cacio e pepe and the vongole, and it was all wonderful, of course, but… Read more »

Tonight’s Accidentally Vegan Dinner

I know you’re not going to believe me, but I didn’t even realize these tacos were vegan until maybe the fourth or fifth time we made them. To give you an idea of how easy and thrifty the meal is, Andy scraped them together on one of those end-of-the-week nights when it felt like we had no food in the… Read more »

One Pot Chicken with Orzo, Spinach, & Artichoke

I’m so used to cooking for two in my recently emptied nest, that I almost felt like I had to re-learn how to cook for four when the girls came home last week. And because I was busy doing advance prep work for Thanksgiving, I found myself craving family dinner recipes for them that were welcome-homey and cozy, but didn’t… Read more »

Your First Thanksgiving Turkey

Fun fact: I have only made one Thanksgiving turkey in my life and it wasn’t even on Thanksgiving Day (my mom owns that duty). It was one random afternoon in the middle of July, when I was in the recipe testing phase of my book. (Deadlines are deadlines!) If you’re wondering why you should trust a relative novice with one… Read more »

Warm-Your-Bones Fall Pasta

Honeynut squash is like a butternut squash’s best version of itself—sweeter and more intensely flavored. This recipe, Rigatoni with Honeynut Squash, Chard & Hazelnuts, which essentially adds vegetables to a peppery cacio e pepe–style sauce, is a simple, healthy, warm-your-bones way to enjoy it. If you can’t find honeynut, butternut or kabocha would be a fine swap-in, and the pre-cubed varieties you can… Read more »

This Salad, on Repeat

Last year, I wrote about a half dozen fall vegetable love stories: Cabbage Loves Apples, Beets Love Dill, Chinese Greens Love Ginger, and I’d like to add a new one to the list: Squash Loves Tahini. Specifically delicata squash; I’ve been making this salad above for lunch almost every day: Greens, roasted delicata, tahini dressing, and store bought dukkah, the Middle… Read more »

Soccata for All

When I had young kids, a lot of activities fell off the priority list — happy hour drinks with coworkers, catching the newest Wes Anderson movie in the theater, general self-care — but I was determined to continue having people over for dinner. For whatever reason, it was the kind of activity that reliably brought me joy and connection, not just… Read more »

Pretzel Chicken with Honey-Mustard Sauce

One of my more favorite mini NYC itineraries when the girls were little was a walk on the High Line, a stop at the magical Books of Wonder on 17th Street, then, of course, a hot chocolate (or the iconic “cold hot chocolate”) and pretzel croissant at City Bakery, just off NYC’s Union Square. For decades before it closed in 2019, City Bakery helmed… Read more »

A Pasta Salad to Get Excited About

Hot take alert: I don’t know if I’ve ever had a pasta salad and thought, Wow, this is a great pasta salad. Have you? They always seem to be just too pasta-heavy and…room temperature-y. Well, after trying this one from Odette Williams’s wonderful Simple Pasta last week, I am on my way to changing my mind. Why? Well, for starters, the noodle she… Read more »

Cold Noodle & Cabbage Salad

When Hannah Che’s The Vegan Chinese Kitchen first arrived on my desk, it was a 90-degree morning in July. I started flipping through the pages, and I’m not kidding, within 10 minutes I was putting together this dinner you’re looking at above: Cold Vermicelli and Cabbage Salad. I had leftover rice noodles and the rest of the ingredients are pretty much staples… Read more »

Pasta with Simple Tomato Sauce

Over 1300 posts acrosss ten years on Dinner: A Love Story, and somehow, not until today have I ever written up the most classic, most satisfying thing you can do with tomatoes this time of year: Make a fresh tomato sauce and toss with pasta. Do you even need a recipe so simple? I don’t know, but not giving it… Read more »

Food: The Great Connector

I didn’t meet Aanya until I walked into the cafeteria for snack time after my third soccer session of the day. She was eight years old (but tall enough to look twelve), wore round glasses, and had her hair tied in a low, messy bun. She was sitting at a table with Mahi, my closest co-counselor, talking excitedly. Aanya looked… Read more »

Tamarind-Glazed Grilled Chicken

I love the sour tang that tamarind brings to a dish, but buying and cooking with it has always been very intimidating to me. When a recipe calls for tamarind, do they mean the pods? The pulp? The concentrate? The puree? The ketchupy stuffI drizzle on dal? Well I finally conquered my fears back in March when I took on the… Read more »

MVP: Double Mustard Potato Salad

As I was rounding up recipes for your Memorial Day cookout last week, I was shocked to learn that while I’ve prepped and referenced it approximately 100 times over the years, I did not have a dedicated post to the BBQ side dish I’ve made more than any other: Double Mustard Potato Salad. We first found a version of the… Read more »

Lentil Salad with Jammy Tomatoes and Feta

The plan for our Memorial Day Cookout is…pretty much the same thing as any other summer cookout in the DALS house: A few grilled proteins surrounded by three or four or five as-fresh-as-possible salads. I like this strategy for a lot of reasons, but chiefly because, when people are coming over, it favors advance planning — I generally make all… Read more »

A Vegan Main for the BBQ

I’m always in search of a vegan main to serve at a barbecue — something that is actually smoky and grilled, not a separate meal that has been prepared at the boring old stove earlier on in the day. So I was drawn to the cover recipe in Rukmini Iyer’s The Green Barbecue coming out in a few weeks. Here, the Guardian food writer… Read more »