What We Cook for Each Other

Beloved dishes in our kitchens

Who needs Valentine’s Day when you can do nice things for each other year-round? Here’s a collection of our partners’ favorite meals. We would love to hear yours in the comments.

Kathleen loves this thing I started making last summer (despite it sounding very much like a winter dish) with lamb breast or neck or riblets — those kind of cuts — greens, root vegetables (primarily carrots), onions, almonds or walnuts, prunes and/or dried apricots. Its spices are sweet-ish: cinnamon, saffron, allspice, mild chile. The greens have to cook until they melt; spinach is the obvious choice but if you can lay your hands on some gongura (a green from India that translates as red sorrel because it’s sour – though I doubt it’s related to sorrel botanically). You can add sweet potatoes, though they’ll likely fall apart. I do this all in the pressure cooker, in stages: First the lamb (in chicken stock if I have it), with some onion, carrot, celery. Then I cool that and take the lamb off the bones and toss those first vegetables. Then I do the greens, carrots, onions, spices; last the nuts and dried fruit and sweet potatoes if I’m using them. All of this is flexible. I suppose it goes without saying that I like this also! — Mark