Food Blog: Crazy Fast Dinners

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Crazy Fast Dinners

SURPRISE ME! • RECIPES • BOOKS • VIDEO • MORE

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Good morning!

"Are these meals fast, or are they crazy fast?" -- Me, to my non-existent coworkers at SK Headquarters this morning, where we do not shy away from asking the tough questions. I spent about 25 minutes chewing on this before I realized that 1. I could use some coffee, 2. Two small people we live with wanted breakfast. 3. If I spent less time debating semantics, I might have more time left to make dinner. Until then, these fast, possibly-crazy-fast, meals are heavy rotation around here, things we can make largely from ingredients we already keep around (more on those here) and thus require little planning ahead. Plus, two really popular, almost comically easy to make, breakfasts. I hope you find some new favorites. I hope you have a fantastic week.

Cheers,
Deb

Fresh and New

lemon and lime mintade

New: A sparkling, clarifying, energizing (and several other -ings that my foggy brain could use a jolt of right now) lemon-lime mintade from a new cookbook, Nik Sharma's The Flavor Equation, that uses science to explore flavors, and we are the lucky beneficiaries.

Crazy Fast Dinners

crisped chickpeas with herbs and garlic yogurt

This is my favorite lunch -- pan-crisped chickpeas on top of blistered lemony zucchini on top of a salty garlic yogurt sauce, finished with herbs and more lemon juice -- and I plan to repeat it all year with whatever vegetables can be cut thin and fried up fast. It serves exactly one person and it's not sorry at all about it.

one-pan farro with tomatoes

A favorite grain dish that's easy (everything cooks at once, all together, with ingredients you probably already have around), quick, wholesome/vegetarian/vegan-if-you-skip-the-parmesan, but doesn't taste like something you'd eat because you "should." Thank goodness; there's enough of that out there.

crispy rice and egg bowl with ginger-scallion vinaigrette

This dolsot bibimbap-inspired crisped-up bowl of rice (it gets crackly at the edges and almost smells like popcorn), with a crispy fried egg, a mash-up of a classic ginger-scallion sauce and a vinaigrette, and crunchy vegetables is my favorite thing to do with leftover rice and whatever vegetables are lingering in the fridge.

quick pasta and chickpeas

A 20-minute, 5-ingredient (I bet all 5 are in your kitchen right now), abundantly flavorful dish that I cannot resist adding one slightly crispy and dramatically sizzling finish to. You can watch a demo of me making this recipe last week over here.

eggs in purgatory, puttanesca-style

Who likes meals you can make in 15 minutes? Me me me! Classic eggs in purgatory with a sauce that's more puttanesca (spicy and bright) than the usual marinara. Make, eat, and keep the recipe in your back pocket for the next time you want a perfect quick-fix meal.

cannellini aglio e olio

A 10-minute meal from doctored-up cans of beans and artichokes, treated like pasta. The result is a warm, almost creamy bean salad that you can finish with parmesan and eat with a fork straight a bowl, or ladle over slices of toasted baguette.

Breakfast

banana oat weekday pancakes

A fork-mixed, one-bowl whole-wheat pancake that's miraculously not compromised in taste or texture. It goes goes from assembly to plates and mouths in 15 minutes. They're called "weekday" pancakes, but should you, like me, have already forgotten the difference between a weekday and weekend, I can assure you they cook up well all days.

cinnamon sugar scones

A layered open book of a cinnamon sugar scone makes your kitchen smell like absolute bliss. These can be made in a single bowl, quite quickly, right now -- lucky us.