I Crave This Chile Crisp Tofu
This happens all the time to me — maybe it happens to you? — I come across a recipe on New York Times Cooking while I am searching for something else, and I just really have to have it for dinner that night.
The recipe in question this time: roasted tofu and green beans made magical with chile crisp, the clumpy, crunchy, allium-flecked chile oil that can take something plain (whether it’s steamed white rice or vanilla ice cream) and make it thrum. This is a really good dinner you can make with astonishing ease. I keep chile crisp in stock at home, and if you don’t already, I think you should — spoon it over olive oil-fried eggs, swirl it into fettuccine Alfredo, use it as a marinade for chicken cutlets or tuck it in dumplings (and dip those dumplings in it, too).
Speaking of dumplings: It’s our first ever Dumpling Week! Just in time for Lunar New Year, we have recipes and videos for five new plump, juicy, chewy, crisp (and even sweet) dumplings, which is how I learned that Hetty Lui McKinnon, one of our beloved writers, has a tattoo of her mother’s hands folding dumplings.
Alert! Do you live in the Bay Area, Los Angeles or Boston? I’m coming your way to talk cooking and “Easy Weeknight Dinners,” our book of fast recipes for busy people. Come see me with Eric Kim and Melissa Clark in Boston on Feb. 3, with Eric and Genevieve Ko in Downtown Los Angeles on Feb. 9 and with Melissa again in San Francisco on Feb. 10.
2. One-Pan Crispy Chicken and Chickpeas
Yogurt sauce is one of the secrets to an easy but exceptionally good roast chicken dinner, like this one from Yossy Arefi. Even the plainest chicken — salted well, please! — is delicious when it’s served with Greek yogurt and a squeeze of lemon.
3. Salmon With Avocado and Cilantro Salad
Yasmin Fahr describes her new lime-imbued recipe as a “sparkle of color” for your table, enticing anytime and anyplace, but especially so if you, like me, live somewhere that’s currently winter gray. The pink salmon pops against the green salad, which you can make with watercress, arugula or baby spinach.
4. Garlicky Alfredo Beans
Garlicky, creamy, cozy, this recipe from Carolina Gelen is the dinner equivalent of curling up by the fire. It’s perfect as is, but commenters have added spinach to green it up a bit, and have tips for making it vegan, too.
5. Quick Jambalaya
New Orleans is taking center stage soon with the Super Bowl, which is how I found myself daydreaming about Vallery Lomas’s speedy and very tasty jambalaya. To save time, Vallery starts with leftover cooked rice, which I always have around and you could, too. Just double the batch next time you cook rice, and stash leftovers in the freezer if you’re not getting to them quickly. (Resealable plastic bags work well for this because you can smush the rice flat, which helps you stack things efficiently and save freezer space.)
