I respect leeks. They stand firm and tall above their allium kin, their jade-green tops proudly poking out from your grocery bag. They make you work for them, with all that careful washing to rinse the sand and grit from between their layers. (They’re also, as far as I know, the only vegetable to be constantly carried by a Pokémon.) And leeks are thoughtful — they don’t make you cry as you chop them for your meal. (I’m looking at you, onions.)
Hetty Lui McKinnon is thoughtful, too. Her new recipe for miso leeks with white beans — a filling take on leeks vinaigrette — rewards your patient work washing leeks and cooking them low and slow by combining them with an easy, mustardy miso dressing and canned white beans. Topped with gooey-centered eggs and paired with toasted bread, it’s a dish worth admiring — and devouring.
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Miso Leeks With White Beans
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Sheet-pan season lasts until it’s too hot to turn on the oven, and this new recipe for spiced chicken with sweet potatoes from Yasmin Fahr looks fantastic and friendly. I say “friendly” because it includes two key assurances: One, it’s OK to crowd the pan with your bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs and vegetables (which I always end up doing). And two, you don’t have to adjust or turn those veggies during their time in the oven. The shallow broth that everything sits in ensures that, beneath their bronzed tops, your potatoes will be deliciously creamy.
Keep the sheet pan busy with Melissa Clark’s five-star whole fish with lime salsa verde. Every time I roast a whole fish, I wonder why I don’t do it more often. The skin and bones insulate the tender flesh, all but ensuring moist, gently flaky fish. And the combination of cilantro, jalapeño and scallion in the lime salsa verde is the very definition of bright.
One more for the sheet pan: Ali Slagle’s Cheddar-roasted broccoli. The words “Cheddar” and “roasted broccoli” are enough of a sell, but here the cheese melts into lacy, fricolike chips that cling to the frizzled broccoli. Pass the hot sauce.
If you come to my place between now and summer, chances are I will be taking out the electric skillet I gifted myself years ago for a serve-yourself dinner of shabu shabu, Chinese-style hot pot or sukiyaki. That last one, a new recipe from Vivian Chan-Tam, is especially nice for its duo of dipping sauces: warishita, a mix of soy sauce, sugar and sake; and a raw egg (which you can absolutely poach if you prefer; just be sure to keep that yolk unctuous and runny).
Lastly, the reader comments on New York Times Cooking recipes are always worth scanning, but especially so for Lisa Donovan’s four-layer surprise, where readers share the versions they grew up with. (Lisa’s layers, by the way, are a salty pecan crust, fluffy cream cheese filling, chocolate pudding and soft whipped cream.) “Big smiles reading the article and recipe! My mother called the dessert ‘Chocolate Torte,’” JtMichaels writes. “I hope everyone who fondly remembers the dessert will try this version.”
