Posts Categorized: Dinner

Simple Butter-Fried Salmon

I love a roasted salmon, but even after all these years of cheffing up salmon salad seemingly every week, I still get anxious about doneness. Lately, though, I’ve been into pan-frying my fillets, something I started while I was cooking for Andy’s mom in the days my father-in-law was in hospice. I was usually only cooking enough for her, so a simple… Read more »

Bean Burritos With or Without Chorizo

As I’ve probably mentioned a few hundred times in this space, my oldest daughter, Phoebe is a college runner and when I asked her this past weekend what she wanted for dinner, her eyes got all dreamy talking about one of her last races of the season, notable not just for how good she felt, but for what she ate… Read more »

Crispy Spicy Chickpeas with Yogurt

Fun fact: This recipe appears in two of my books. A version of it first appeared in How to Celebrate Everything, but I make it so frequently, it felt wrong not to include it again in my last book, devoted to my easiest, go-to-iest weeknight vegetarian dinners. It’s the kind of homey comfort-food meal I make when I’m cooking for… Read more »

A Galette for All Seasons

Even though I’m no longer cooking for young kids on the clock every day, I can’t seem to shake the habit of scanning new cookbooks for potential weeknight recipes while wearing my Efficiency Goggles. How long will that take? How many pots? How forgiving is it? (Like, will I be arrested if I use 2% vs. whole milk?) How many… Read more »

Tofu with Pineapples, Peppers & Spicy Peanut Sauce

I think hands-down the best tofu is crispy tofu, i.e. when it’s been dredged in cornstarch, then pan-fried in a generous amount of oil and tossed with some form of glaze or sauce. (Exhibit A: Hsiao-Ching Chou’s Crispy Weeknight Tofu with vegetables.) But honestly, dredging and frying can be a pain sometimes, and when my friend Robin (by way of our friend Kate,… Read more »

Empty Nest Eggs

Last Thursday, a week and a half before we dropped off Daughter Number 1 at college, Andy and I found ourselves in a not-unusual position as the parents of teenagers: There would be no kids eating dinner with us — both had plans. I wouldn’t normally care, but with the clock ticking down to their Departure Days, each missed family… Read more »

Small Plates Night

Good morning! Look what’s now keeping me company as I work on your weekly dispatch. My copies arrived last week and I was so excited I even made a reel about it. For those of you who pre-ordered, a) THANK YOU and b) your copy should be arriving in exactly two weeks. One of the more liberating discoveries about cooking vegetarian dinners —… Read more »

Crispy Eggplant with Romesco

My children would disagree with this statement but you’re looking at one of the best things I ate last week on vacation that did not include corn or tomatoes. It’s crispy fried eggplant with Romesco sauce and shredded basil and even though I couldn’t get the girls on board, I locked in Andy whose most enthusiastic endorsement of eggplant in the… Read more »

Dinner Begins with Corn & Tomatoes

I’m heading into week two down here in South Carolina and I regret to inform you that your weekly dispatch of Three Things has been downgraded this week to just Two Things, but what beautiful two things they are…It’s corn and tomato season, baby! This week begins the stretch of weeks we spend all year pining for: when the corn… Read more »

Warm Shrimp Salad with Butter Beans

We’ve been vacationing in Kiawah Island, South Carolina forever, and it doesn’t matter how long the drive has been, or how tired we are of being in the car (or the plane) we always stop at our favorite open-air market on the way to the island. No matter what we are in the mood for, no matter what time of year it is, this… Read more »

Slaw 101

I write about slaw a lot. For good reason — I eat it a lot, especially in the summer. It’s almost always the answer to the question: What can I add to dinner that will give my plate that hit of freshness and texture? (Do you not ask that question of yourself constantly?) I realized though, that I haven’t ever… Read more »

Grilled Soy-Glazed Pork Chops

Newsletter readers! Here is the pork chop recipe I was talking about in today’s dispatch. Sweet and spicy, smoky and tender. I beg Andy to make them for us all summer long. (Originally published in How to Celebrate Everything.) Grilled Soy-Glazed Pork ChopsServes 4 4 bone-in pork chops, about 3 1/2-4 pounds totalkosher salt and freshly ground pepper1/4 cup soy… Read more »

Soft Shell Crabs for Sunday Dinner

We are huge soft shell crab fans in my house, but only really get to enjoy them in our takeout spider roll a few times a year. Right now, though, they are in season up here in New York and when I spied them at our new fish store (we are so lucky, everything there tastes like the boat-to-market time is, like,… Read more »

Hello, Old Friend!

We made this Spicy Shrimp with Yogurt over the weekend because my friend Robin had texted me a photo of it, rediscovering the meal after poking around in the DALS archives. (You would laugh at the percentage of our text thread that is dinner-related. Thank you, Robin!) The meal had not graced our table for a very long time, and it was crazy how… Read more »

Simple Vegetables, in Time for Spring

I’m in love with the new cookbook, Vegetable Simple. Eric Ripert — the chef and owner of one of New York’s most revered Michelin-starred restaurants, Le Bernardin — is known for his refined seafood dishes, but here, he turns his eyes towards his second love, vegetables. The most amazing thing about it is how actually simple the recipes are. Like not chef-pretending-to-be-simple… Read more »

Potato-Cheddar Pizza

I realize this is maybe the seventeenth time I’ve written about this pizza in various ways throughout the years, but it’s such an important recipe in my rotation that I felt it was time it had its own dedicated page. Especially since my version of it (with cheddar and caramelized onions) seems to have strayed so far from the traditional… Read more »

The Weekday Vegetarians

I could not be more excited to introduce you to The Weekday Vegetarians. Can you believe how happy and gorgeous she is? Before I started writing this book, it’s not an exaggeration to say that a piece of animal protein anchored our dinner plates at least five out of seven nights a week. Back then, when I was trying to decide… Read more »

Quintessential Chowder

As many of you know, Saturday night dinner has become a real thing for us during the pandemic — a way to differentiate a weekend night from all the others — and the dishes we’ve made to mark it run the gamut, each one somehow special in its own way. Sometimes Saturday dinner is super old-school, like Marcella Hazan’s Milk-Braised Pork… Read more »