Each cheese plays a special role in this French bread pizza: A combination of Parmesan and pecorino makes it especially nutty and salty; mozzarella melts evenly and a sharper deli-style provolone bridges the gap between them. Once you learn how to make the classic white sauce (technically a Mornay, which is a béchamel with cheese added), you’ll find dozens of ways to use it beyond pizza: Swap in an equal amount of grated Cheddar and toss it with pasta for an easy stovetop mac and cheese, or use Gruyère, slather the sauce over ham on toast, and broil until bubbly and browned. The sauce can be made up to 3 days ahead of time; store tightly covered in the refrigerator until ready to use.
An easy no-cook sauce works as a tangy base for pizzas of all kinds. Draining the tomatoes before seasoning ensures the sauce won’t create any soggy bottoms, no matter what type of crust you build your pizza on. Use an equal amount of crushed or whole peeled tomatoes instead of diced if that’s what you have on hand. Just use your hands to break whole tomatoes up a bit (and drain off any additional liquid). The sauce will keep, tightly covered in the refrigerator, for about 5 days. But feel free to use your favorite jarred marinara in its place. Leftover pizza reheats beautifully in a 350-degree oven until warmed through.
A uniquely Korean-American creation, corn cheese is a dish inspired by two cultures. The simplicity of the ingredients — canned corn, mayonnaise and mild shredded cheese — yields a nearly effortless banchan, or side dish, that smells and tastes like comfort. It’s extremely kid-friendly, but is also enjoyed as anju, or food that pairs well with alcohol. (Soju, a popular Korean alcoholic beverage, is a great match.) This versatile, sweet-savory dish is best enjoyed hot and accompanied by an array of dishes, like kimchi, gochujang-glazed eggplant, bulgogi or galbi.
This recipe, inspired by Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese, delivers the best of all worlds: creamy, saucy comfort, with a consistency that’s slightly more set than a stovetop version, thanks to a final bake in the oven. It stays voluptuous and molten as a result of a higher ratio of sauce to noodles, which are cooked completely so they don’t soak up as much liquid. The Velveeta is necessary here, as it has sodium citrate, which prevents the sauce from separating in the oven. Elbow macaroni works fine, but cavatappi is an especially fun shape to eat with its telephone-cord bounciness.
In the time it takes to make boxed macaroni and cheese, you can have a homemade version that’s creamy with lots of sharp Cheddar, studded with broccoli and doesn’t require making a roux. Instead, the sauce is thickened by the pasta’s starch: As the noodles cook in milk, the milk thickens to the consistency of cream and the pasta absorbs the seasonings. Here, that’s garlic powder, but you could also use mustard powder, ground cayenne or grated nutmeg like in traditional mac and cheese. The broccoli pieces end up soft and sweet, but if you want more bite, add them halfway through cooking.
This large, fluffy pancake is excellent for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dessert any time of year. And it comes together in about five blessed minutes. Just dump all of the ingredients into a blender, give it a good whirl, pour it into a heated skillet sizzling with butter, and pop it into the oven. Twenty-five minutes later? Bliss. (Go to link for video)
Here's a radical notion: chicken potpie does not have to be filled with goopy white sauce, carrots and peas. Traditional recipes are long on starch and richness, short on flavor. This updated version is savory with chicken stock, herbs, and wine (no white sauce needed), easier to make, and still familiar. Use thigh meat, for more taste and better texture than breast. And vegetables should be served separately, not forcemarched into the filling. Roasted carrots, peas with mint and buttered steamed asparagus are all nice to serve alongside chicken potpie.
When a recipe for a seasoned snack mix first appeared on the back of the Chex cereal box in the 1950s, people went crazy for it. Years later, a Google search for the recipe yields more than two million results for various riffs, from savory to spicy to sweet. Many call for tossing the dry ingredients with the wet, then letting the mix dry on paper towels, but baking it at a low temperature yields crisper, more flavorful results. Hot sauce gives this version a bit of a kick, but if you don’t like heat, you can leave it out. View this recipe as a template to tweak as you see fit: Use crunchy, roasted edamame or green peas in place of the nuts, substitute Thai red curry paste or Sriracha for the hot sauce, or double up on whatever ingredients you like best. Keep the dry-to-wet ratios the same and you can’t go wrong.
This one-pot meal, which is inspired by chirashi, or Japanese rice and raw fish bowls, features a savory vinegared rice that’s typically served with sushi. Traditionally, the rice is cooked first, then mixed with vinegar, but here, the rice is cooked in vinegar-seasoned water to eliminate a step. The result is sticky rice that’s tangy and sweet, and a perfect bed for fatty salmon. The salmon is added toward the end to steam directly on top of the rice for an easy one-pan meal. Packaged coleslaw is a time saver, eliminating extra knife work. Make a double batch of the zesty dressing for drizzling over roasted vegetables or green leafy salads the next day.
This is a dish that comes from Long Island, New York, not the Big Island of Hawaii, a Northeastern take on a Pacific classic. I’ve made it with Atlantic bonito caught offshore and yellowfin tuna bought at the market, the meat trimmed, cubed and mixed with sesame oil and soy sauce, a little chile-garlic sauce and lot of chopped scallions. I top the salad with roasted macadamia nuts and a few vigorous shakes of furikake, a Japanese seasoning that is made of sesame seeds, dried fish and seaweed, salt and sugar. It makes for about the most delicious eating in the world.
This warm dessert can quickly satisfy sweet tooth cravings, especially if you forgo peeling the apples, which adds a nice chewiness to the crunchy toasted topping and juicy, saucy apples. Choose a variety of apples, then adjust the amounts of sugar and lemon juice to strike the right tangy balance for the filling. Or customize your crisp by using your favorite spices and nuts. The dessert tastes particularly comforting hot out of the oven, with the caramelized apple juices bubbling around the nutty cookie-like clusters, but it’s just as good cold for breakfast the next day.
This recipe yields the classic flavor of baked cider doughnuts. For the most traditional result, a doughnut pan is recommended, but you can also bake these off in a muffin pan.
Gyeran bap is a lifesaving Korean pantry meal of fried eggs stirred into steamed white rice. In this version, the eggs fry and puff up slightly in a shallow bath of browned butter. Soy sauce, which reduces in the pan, seasons the rice, as does a final smattering of salty gim, or roasted seaweed. A dribble of sesame oil lends comforting nuttiness, and runny yolks act as a makeshift sauce for the rice, slicking each grain with eggy gold. (You can cook the eggs to your preferred doneness, of course.) This dinner-for-one can be scaled up to serve more: Just double, triple or quadruple all of the ingredient amounts, using a larger skillet or repeating the steps in a small one.
Tinga is a Pueblan dish of braised chicken or pork in a chipotle, tomato and onion sauce, traditionally served on crisp tostadas and finished with toppings like crema, avocado and shredded lettuce. Some versions braise the meat directly in the sauce, while others call for chicken or pork that’s already been cooked to be warmed in the sauce. (Some variations include chorizo, too.) The dish is widely popular because it’s affordable and versatile, and tastes complex even though it is easy to make. For this slow-cooker adaptation, the bulk of the cook time is hands-off braising. Fresh corn is not traditional in tinga, but it’s delicious, adding pops of sweetness and a flavor that echoes the corn tortillas or tostadas. Add one chipotle for a mild spice level or three for a more intense result.
Sometimes you just want a big bowl of pasta with butter and Parmesan. Starchy, silky and salty, it’s always good — and practically foolproof. To make it a little more grown up, just take it one step further: Brown the butter. When you slide the butter into the skillet, let it cook until the milk solids turn a toasty brown. It adds a rich, nutty flavor that makes the dish a bit more sophisticated with very little extra work.
A staple dish throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, tostones are crisp, flattened plantains that are often served as appetizers and side dishes. Unlike sweet maduros, which are made with very ripe, almost black, yellow plantains, savory tostones are made with unripe green plantains. Tostones are fried twice: The first fry sears the cut sides of the plantains, establishing a base layer of color; the second fry ensures that every edge is golden and crunchy. Tostoneras, wooden tools designed to create the perfect tostone shape, come in handy here, but a flat-bottomed cup will do just fine in its place.
This cozy dessert from Sara Mardanbigi and Edgar Rico, the owners of Nixta Taqueria in Austin, Texas, is a take on sholeh zard, a loose, heavily spiced Persian rice pudding Ms. Mardanbigi grew up eating. It also borrows influence from the Mexican arroz con leche of Mr. Rico’s childhood. Their take is warm and smoky with black cardamom and saffron, velvety from egg yolks and butter, and has a savory finish. It calls for arborio rice instead of the usual basmati to add a slight chew, and strawberry powder instead of rosewater to provide similar floral notes with a punch of acid.
Here is an easy way to use up the bananas on the countertop, or brown ones thrown in the back of the freezer. Don’t overmix the ingredients, and make sure the bananas are very ripe. —Julia Moskin
The rules are simple: buy boneless cuts (they cook evenly), thinner steaks (they cook through on top of the stove), dry them well (to maximize crust), then salt and sear them in an insanely hot, preferably cast-iron pan. The recipe here is a radical departure from the conventional wisdom on steak, which commands you to salt the meat beforehand, put it on the heat and then leave it alone. Instead, you should salt the pan (not the meat) and flip the steak early and often. This combination of meat, salt, heat and cast-iron produces super-crusty and juicy steak — no grilling, rubbing, or aging required.
A bistro basic that the critic Bryan Miller brought to The Times in 1988 with the help of Pierre Franey, this luscious roast of pork comes from the kitchen of Adrienne Biasin, who for years ran a homespun and legendary restaurant in Paris, Chez la Vieille. The meat is first browned over the stovetop to sear in the moisture, then braised slowly in onions and milk. The pan juices are set aside to form the base of a gravy, and the roast is finished in the oven. It takes some time, but is beyond easy to make, and pairs well with a glass of Beaujolais and dreams of travel. (Sam Sifton)
This weeknight-friendly version of the French classic — chicken with 40 cloves of garlic — has half the amount of garlic, because a slow cooker doesn’t get quite hot enough to mellow out 40 whole cloves. This dish cooks on high for three hours, but you can lengthen the cook time to six hours using the low heat setting. In that case, cut the garlic further to 15 cloves, because it may taste a bit stronger when cooked at that lower temperature. The beans end up pleasantly soupy, in a sauce rich with chicken juices and wine. The herbs stirred in at the end impart a welcome freshness. This is best served in shallow bowls, with good bread on the side.
Bright and earthy flavors complement each another in this easy dish in which cooked beans are tossed with lemon zest, olive oil and cayenne, and roasted sweet plantains are coated in a brown sugar, ginger and lemon glaze. Go with ripe plantains for this recipe, yellow and spotted with large black dots. You’ll need your oven's broiler setting to help caramelize the sugary coating on the plantains, and to char the scallion garnish. This dish is the perfect breakfast topped with a jammy egg, a quick lunch over a bed of fresh greens, or a satisfying side to roast chicken.
These sugar cookie bars, which are adapted from “American Girl Cookies,” are happiness in a 9-by-13 pan. The addition of cream cheese in the batter makes them very tender and slightly tangy, a perfect counterpoint to the sweet buttercream frosting. You can, and should, experiment with frosting colors and use sprinkles with abandon. Whatever you do, do not overbake these beauties. When testing for doneness, you want a few moist crumbs to cling to the toothpick.
If cheesy mashed potatoes became a cozy soup, it would be this. It’s rich but not excessive, hearty but not heavy, and spiked with a little chili powder and some garlic to liven it up. The homemade pickled jalapeños give this a bright tang that perks up every creamy bite. Quick and easy to make, the jalapeños are leagues better than anything in a jar, and leftovers are excellent in sandwiches or scrambled into eggs.
In this quick and spicy weeknight noodle dish, sizzling hot oil is poured over red-pepper flakes, orange peel, crunchy peanuts, soy sauce and sesame oil. While you brown the ground chicken, the mixture sits, and the flavors become more pronounced and fiery. Tossed with soft noodles and browned chicken, the bright chile-peanut oil shines. If you crave something green, throw in a quick-cooking green vegetable when you break up the chicken in Step 3. You can also swap the chicken with ground pork or beef, or crumbled tofu.
Bright with lemon and herbs, and packed with hearty greens, this highly adaptable soup can be either light and brothy or thick and stewlike, depending on your preference. Smashing some of the beans to release their starch will give you a thicker soup that’s almost worthy of a fork. To keep it on the brothy side, add a little more liquid and leave the beans intact. Either way, it’s a warming, piquant, one-pot meal that’s perfect for winter.
Curry powder is stirred into this braise only during the last minute of cooking, delivering a bright hit of spice on top of the paprika and turmeric mellowed into the slow-simmered chicken. This dish from “Burma Superstar” by Desmond Tan and Kate Leahy (Ten Speed Press, 2017), needs time on the stove but not much attention, and gets even better after resting in the fridge, making it an ideal weeknight meal that can last days. There’s plenty of coconut milk broth to spoon over rice or noodles. At his restaurant, Burma Superstar in Oakland, Calif., Mr. Tan also serves this with platha, a buttery, flaky Burmese flatbread, for dipping.
This recipe came to The Times from Marti Buckley Kilpatrick, who adapted it from Dol Miles, the pastry chef at Frank Stitt’s Bottega restaurant in Birmingham, Ala. Ms. Kilpatrick describes the cake as an ugly frog of a confection, but promises that anyone willing to bet a kiss on its excellence would be amply rewarded. The interplay of coffee, black pepper and cloves is subtle but powerful, and results in a deeply flavored, moist confection that comes together quickly. It’s just delicious.
Bacon browns and crisps evenly in the oven without the hassle of flipping slices on the stovetop, while eggs can oven-fry alongside for perfect sunny-side-up runny yolks and tender whites. The oven’s encompassing heat helps egg whites set on top before the yolks start to stiffen. Make sure to have the eggs sit at room temperature before cracking them into the hot pan: It ensures they’ll cook quickly and evenly.