Von Diaz is sitting on the secret to not-at-all boring or dry pork tenderloin. In an ode to her mother, a working parent who always preferred her meats light and lean, Diaz seasons and marinates tenderloin like pernil, a Puerto Rican dish that's traditionally made with pork shoulder and roasted low and slow for several hours.
Meet my new favorite go-to weeknight dinner. It's saucy, flavorful, fresh, and it comes together in about half an hour. I developed these chicken and lettuce wraps while on Whole 30, so they fit that bill if you need 'em to. Or, feel free to swap the toppings for anything you like—crispy rice would be wonderful. So would almost any herb, pickle, or thinly sliced vegetable. Winner, winner, braised-chicken-thigh dinner.
I’m so glad swordfish is back and sustainable. I’ve loved grilling it since a long-ago event at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium where the chef simply sprinkled the fish with freshly ground white pepper and squirted fresh lime juice over. Whole Foods had harpoon-caught swordfish on special last weekend, so we had this for dinner last night. Easy-peasy!
This contest brought back memories of my days as a student living in New York. I would allow myself a budget of $1 a day for food. Sometimes that dollar would go to the hot dog vendor in front of school (that a hot dog was $1 tells you how long ago I lived in NY), other days; a pack of egg noodles, butter, salt and pepper would get me through 3 days. But there was one dish that still today costs under $1 a serving--rice porridge. There are lots of variations of this dish. Plain white rice cooked to a thick paste, eaten with pickled vegetables (congee); crushed grains of rice cooked to a stew-like consistency (jook). This is my family's favorite version--made with ground turkey or pork.
A one-dish pantry meal to usher you into fall. The bulk of this dinner comes down to canned chickpeas, canned pumpkin purée, a handful of quick-cooking pasta, and a quart of chicken broth tossed together in a pot; the rest, of course, involves simply simmering and seasoning with a few fresh ingredients. This stew is infinitely adaptable and can grow and vary according to your pantry. Swap chickpeas for another preferred bean, or pumpkin for canned squash. The dish will keep its autumnal comfort regardless of the modifications, and it will stay true to its promise for a quick meal as the weather turns cold.
Some cocktails are like air conditioning, but the paloma isn’t one of them. Rather, it makes you feel like you were born and raised in the tropics: You’ll still be hot, but you’ll revel and thrive in the heat. Many paloma recipes call for either fresh or bottled grapefruit juice, or grapefruit soda. For this version, freshly squeezed grapefruit juice mixed with finely grated zest and a little sugar develops overnight into a citrus-packed syrup that takes this cocktail from delicious to impossibly zingy, tangy, and satisfying. Be sure to factor in time for that long (but worth it) steep.
When Ian Knauer's wife Malaika showed up with 80 pounds of eggplant from their farm, he wondered if, steamed and blended, it could work its way into a chocolate cake. “Applesauce cake was what got me thinking that it could work,” Ian told me. Somehow the moisture from eggplant also makes the cakes incredibly forgiving. Not feeling honey? (Or going vegan?) Use the same amount of regular sugar, maple, or golden syrup (and the classic ground flax egg substitute trick, if eggs are also a no-go). Feeding someone gluten-free? Skip the tablespoon of flour—the batter will look a little wonkier along the way, but it will work. Adapted slightly from The Farm Cooking School (Burgess Lea Press, 2017) by Ian Knauer & Shelley Wiseman.
Regular sugar cookies are already pretty easy to make, but this version is even simpler. No chilling, rolling, or cutting. Instead, spread the sticky, butter-rich dough in a big non-stick baking pan and pop it into the oven. Not only does it result in a soft, almost blondie-like texture, but it’ll save you time. You can bake two dozen bars on just one tray!
There's nothing cozier—or easier to pull off—than sheet-pan mac and cheese. It's perfectly creamy and crunchy, lacking in any superfluous bits. And when pumpkin and brown butter join the party, well, it's unstoppable. This recipe draws inspiration from Amanda Hesser's Baking Sheet Macaroni and Cheese, which I've made approximately one million times each winter since it was published in 2010. Think of this fall-flavor-forward version as a flexible blueprint: play around with cheese-type, and scale up (or down) the pumpkin to your taste. Toss in caramelized shallots, or chunks of roasted pumpkin or squash if you please. Panko can be swapped out for other breadcrumbs, or jazzed up with a pinch of cayenne. No matter what path you take, just be sure to go back for seconds.
Party-style) and we'd dress in studded pant suits to really double down on our name. Our concerts would sell out immediately—so long as we kept it under wraps that I was lip-syncing—each time tickets went on sale, because *everybody loves the crispy bits.* And for good reason. Crispy bits are textural and flavor magic. This sheet-pan rice, inspired by fried rice, places crispy bits front and center thanks to a generous spatial distribution and high oven heat. Use any leftover grain you have, and mix-and-match the add-ins to your liking.
