Just in time for longer evenings, bodega flowers and all the green vegetables: My colleagues Tanya Sichynsky and Krysten Chambrot have a wonderful new interactive guide to spring entertaining, a choose-your-own-adventure for dinner-party planning.
Tanya’s shindig swings fancy: shrimp cocktail, a glorious roast chicken with tangerines and an all-stops-pulled baked Alaska. Krysten keeps things cozy with low-lift lovelies like olive oil baked salmon and strawberry spoon cake. I’m bookmarking Krysten’s plan for when friends visit from out of town — it’ll be a relaxing night between dinner reservations — and I will use Tanya’s dinner to thank friends for dogsitting.
But I’ll save Rick Martínez’s sopa de fideos y frijoles con chorizo for just me. When those April showers start showering and my tax refund takes way too long to arrive, Rick’s comforting fideo and bean soup with chorizo is exactly what I’ll need. Black beans are puréed with chicken stock, canned tomatoes and spices to provide body and richness; broken-up fideo (or another thin pasta) gets a good toast before simmering in that bean-y salsa. Make a big batch on Monday and return to it on Wednesday when the week starts to weigh you down.
Featured Recipe
Sopa de Fideo y Frijoles con Chorizo (Fideo and Bean Soup With Chorizo)
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Also from the New York Times food section (and speaking of taxes): this roundup of 12 budget-friendly recipes our staff makes over and over. Our editor in chief (and writer of the Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter) Emily Weinstein called out this salt-and-pepper roast chicken, writing: “There are a lot of amazing roast chicken recipes out there, but trust me when I say that this easy, four-ingredient Melissa Clark recipe is the only one you need. You can also get a few different uses out of one chicken: Add shreds of leftover meat to salads or quesadillas, and simmer the bones in water to make stock.”
For many, Monday marks the first Seder of Passover. Beautiful things to cook: this bright salmon with potatoes and horseradish-tarragon sauce, a flexible recipe from George Lang adapted by Joan Nathan; Martha Rose Shulman’s bitter herbs salad; Genevieve Ko’s crackly-topped, fudgy-centered flourless chocolate cake.
I know I usually end on dessert, but I can’t stop thinking about khoresh rivas, the savory rhubarb and bean stew that Tanya wrote about last week in The Veggie. I usually stockpile my rhubarb for sweet stuff (crisp, pie, cake), but this recipe from Naz Deravian sounds incredible: tender sautéed rhubarb nestled into hearty butter beans simmered with turmeric, parsley and mint. Make it a complete Naz spring dinner with her dill rice, plain yogurt on the side and ferni to finish.
