| Please tell me yours! | | | I've always tried to keep a dependable stream of speedy dinner ideas coming your way in Genius Recipes—a lemony pasta that makes its own sauce here, a big-batchable fish sauce caramel for chicken or tofu there. But I'm feeling the need for them myself more than ever.
Because while family dinner has always been the goal, the reality of operating on a two-year-old's schedule has been humbling. My bar for simplicity has never been higher (sometimes we just eat the corn raw off the cob).
These recipes need to not only land on the table by 6:30pm, but ideally come together with my daughter standing in her little helper throne next to me, smashing olives and eating all the cheese. Because achieving family dinner feels most worth it when I don't have to shoo the family away to get there.
Thanks to some happy discoveries as I've been recipe testing for the next (also extra simple) Genius cookbook, we've had a handful of recent wins I wanted to share with you, in the hopes they'll help with all of your most pressing quick dinner needs, too.
Here are five of our recent dinners that—surprising us all—showed up exactly on time:
- Fish roasted over little tomatoes and olives. Minimal to no chopping, plus pitting olives and plucking herbs are great toddler distractors.
- So many omelets. Thankfully, they riff well, like Arati Menon's with cilantro and turmeric and Clotilde Dusoulier's with potato chips (plus secret ingredient: garlic powder).
- Andrea Nguyen's soy-seared tofu borrowed from a vegan phở recipe, with a quick green thrown in the pan after (usually asparagus or snap peas).
- Grits! With fried eggs, with sizzled cherry tomatoes, with popcorn after the Corn episode of Waffles & Mochi. The back-of-the-bag recipe takes less time than boiling a pot of water for pasta.
- Family-style grilled cheese—I usually use mayo for maximal crisping, but my husband has been perfecting making them all at once on a hot sheet pan with a lot of olive oil.
I hope these prove helpful and—even if your cooking partner reaches Mach Tantrum (or you do)—a soothing playlist and a good briny martini should improve the situation.
If you have more tips (on recipes, music, or life itself) I'd always love to hear from you at genius@food52.com.
| | | | Kristen, | | Founding Editor of Food52 | | | | | | | |
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