Posts Categorized: Dinner

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 »

Orecchiette with Peas, Beans, and…OK a Little Sausage

So you’ve decided to become a weekday vegetarian: Congratulations! But the rest of your family is just…not onboard yet. How do you stay the course without becoming a short-order cook on overdrive? The answer: Meet Them Where They Are. Dialing back on meat is a process, and if the goal here is reducing as opposed to eliminating, then wear that hat when you… Read more »

Care Package Chili

Last week, I dropped off a little cooler care package with my friend who is dealing with a sick spouse, and the mix felt like a good formula: Beef & Black Bean Chili (something kid-friendly and crowdpleasy) + Lentil Salad with Feta, Dill, and Jammy Tomatoes (something healthy) + Frozen Baked Ziti from the local Italian specialty store (something no-cook… Read more »

Dreaming About Dinner with Ali Slagle

Like a lot of people, my younger daughter, Abby, discovered cooking during the pandemic. For her it wasn’t about project cooking — she didn’t bake a single loaf of sourdough — it was much more about self-care, about ensuring that she had at least one moment of joy in a day spent mostly staring at her friends and teachers over… Read more »

An Egg Makes it Dinner

I’d argue that the only phrase that makes more appearances than ‘I could eat this every night’ across all DALS platforms is most likely top with an egg. Especially during these last few years of Weekday Vegetarianism, when often the addition of an egg is just the magic-wand-ish protein we are looking for to transform a dish into capital D-Dinner. So, at long… Read more »

Fish with Slaw

This photo probably looks familiar to longtime readers. What can I say: We are creatures of habit down in South Carolina. If I look back at my dinner diaries, without fail, there’s a Pan-fried flounder with some form of slaw in the line-up. (But that certainly does not mean you have to be south of the Mason-Dixon Line to enjoy… Read more »

Shrimp Tacos with Spicy Avocado Cream

Remember winter? On this sunny, second day of spring down in South Carolina, as I trade in my boots for Birkenstocks, I already feel like it’s shrinking away in the rearview mirror. Also helping things along are these decidedly warm-weather tacos we ate for dinner last night, which made excellent use of the otherworldly shrimp down here. As always, the… Read more »

Start with Ginger-Miso Dressing

My heart swelled a little bit last week when Abby texted me from college saying she had figured out how to concoct a pretty decent vinaigrette using only dining hall ingredients (“oil balsamic a lil soy sauce onion powder pepper salt sriracha and yellow mustard…i’m surprised yellow mustard works”). Not only that, but she was whisking up a batch with… Read more »