Do you ever see a recipe and know immediately that, yes, you’re going to make that? You don’t bother checking what the ingredients are or how long it will take or who created it — you just know that you need to eat that dish. That’s how I felt about this aloo chicken.
Of course, I did check on all of those other things. The ingredients are a mix of kitchen staples (onion, ginger, garlic, spices) and easy grocery store grabs (boneless, skinless chicken thighs, some Roma tomatoes and Yukon Gold potatoes). About half of the cooking time is spent on gentle sautéing, while the other half is hands-off simmering. And the recipe is by Zainab Shah, the genius behind these sheet-pan fish tikka, mattar paneer and one-pot vegetable biryani recipes, all New York Times Cooking hits. In sum: I want this aloo chicken, and I want it now.
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Aloo Chicken
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I have a similar “gimme gimme” reaction to the word “croutons,” so of course I sat up straight when I clocked Ali Slagle’s recipe for sheet-pan sausages and mushrooms with arugula and croutons. The promise of hot Italian sausages and Zuni Café-esque croutons in a red wine vinaigrette was enough to hook me, but this note from Ali sealed the deal: “If stuffed mushrooms grew up into a main course, it would be this one-pan dinner.” Done, and added to my recipe box. Next!
“Hetty Lui McKinnon” is shorthand for “excellent vegetarian recipes” in my mind; her tom yum soup with tofu and vermicelli is a fine example. It’s wildly flavorful: sour from the lime juice, spicy from the ginger and sambal oelek, verdantly citrusy from the lemongrass and rounded out with silken tofu and optional evaporated (or coconut) milk. Several readers tucked shredded roast or rotisserie chicken into their soup, an excellent idea for adding a bit of heft.
For every new recipe that catches my eye, there’s an old standby that, if it were in a cookbook, would be stained and scribbled with notes. Mark Bittman’s salmon roasted in butter comes to mind, a five-star go-to with over 8,500 reviews. I also return to Rick Martínez’s chilaquiles often for leisurely breakfasts and thrifty dinners. (Using Rick’s tips in the recipe, I bake instead of fry my stale tortillas, but you do you!) To borrow a Sam Siftonism, that salsa guajillo would taste good on a shoe.
And speaking of breakfast for dinner: Here is Martha Rose Shulman’s blueberry coconut oatmeal pudding. Granted, it’s probably better as a dessert than a dinner, but I’d absolutely dive into a bowl of this after work, maybe with a hefty scrape of nut butter, definitely on the couch in my sweats.
