Jalapeño Poppers with Smoked Gouda

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The moderate heat of jalapeños is a perfect counterbalance to this rich filling, a combination of cream cheese and smoked Gouda. The results are nothing like the breaded, deep-fried apps you get in sports bars.

Carne Asada Tacos

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Carne asada translates simply to “grilled meat” in Spanish, but when uttered with tacos you’re probably talking about skirt steak. It’s a chewy cut and must be cooked quickly and sliced across the grain to guarantee tenderness, but the evenly distributed fat makes for rich and satisfying eating.

Eggplant Meatballs

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The more I play around with vegetable-based meatballs, the more I like them; certainly they’re not the same as meat meatballs, but the different textures and flavors are terrific. To round out the meal, serve these over pasta, rice, salad, or steamed greens with a squeeze of lemon

Barley Risotto with Beets and Greens

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Everyone needs a little attention now and then, but risotto isn’t as high maintenance as its reputation. When you make this, go for heartiness and satisfaction and choose the whole-grain barley, even though it takes longer to cook.

“Chorizo” Tacos

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Soft corn tortillas make a perfect vehicle for this tofu “chorizo,” which is so good you’ll find a lot of other uses for it too. Make it as soft or as crisp as you like, but use a nonstick pan for the best results; cast-iron is a good second choice. Since it’s easy to double the batch well ahead of time, you might think about making this dish the next time you have a brunch.

Grain Nuts with Fruit

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Twice-cooked grains translate to a one-ingredient breakfast cereal, along the lines of Grape-Nuts, but made by you and with zero extraneous ingredients. Name the grain and it can be served cereal fashion, which means you can use whatever you have leftover in the fridge, in whatever quantity (reduce the salt proportionately). The results: an intensely flavored breakfast cereal that is pleasantly dense and crunchy enough to sit in milk for a while without getting soggy.

Mexican Chocolate Tofu Pudding

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Tofu is not solely the stuff of stir-fries. For example, I can almost guarantee you will be impressed by this dessert, a pudding that takes about as much time to make as hot chocolate.

A few qualifiers, here. Without chocolate, the flavor is unimpressive; this tastes like sweetened tofu. Add chocolate and a few Mexican spices, however, and you have a real winner. And certainly no one I’ve fed it to had any inkling that it was dairy free. The texture of the pudding, which must be made with silken tofu, is almost unbelievably good. The brand of chocolate you buy is of utmost importance. Without mentioning names, let me just suggest that you use the highest quality chocolate — semisweet or bittersweet, please — you can lay your hands on. After all, it’s the flavor of the chocolate, not of the tofu, that will dominate.

Chicken Adobo

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This Philippine classic has been called the best chicken dish in the world by a number of my friends and readers. It is cooked in liquid first, then roasted, grilled, or broiled. Here, however, the initial poaching liquid is reduced to make a sauce to pass at the table for both the chicken and white rice, the natural accompaniment. The coconut milk isn’t mandatory, though it does enrich the sauce considerably.

Andrea’s Pasta with Pork Ribs

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Pasta with Ribs is as much of a special occasion dish (for me) as there is. What I learned from cooking real Roman cuisine several nights a week in the 80’s (with an actual Roman), was a newfound respect for the glories of pork fat, which in this dish dissolves in the tomato sauce and makes it glisten and eating the soft meat off the bones while chowing down on a bowl of sauced pasta…nothing better.

Falafel

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One of the things that makes falafel different from other bean fritters is that it’s made from uncooked beans. It’s best when the beans are soaked for a full day in plenty of water; the result is a wonderfully textured and moist interior with a crisp, browned exterior. The spices and aromatics add to the fabulous bean flavor, and it wouldn’t be unheard of to double or even triple the amount of garlic if you like.

David Tamarkin’s Smoky Beans and Greens on Toast

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Beans and greens are great on almost every carb: in tortillas as tacos, over rice, on flatbread. They’re also good without any carb at all, served in a bowl as a side. But whenever skillet-fried toast is an option, I take it.
This is dinner food for me, but it also makes a good brunch with a fried egg on each plate.

David Tamarkin’s Simple Tomato Sauce

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There are a hundred things you can do with a good tomato sauce: bake eggs in it, top pizza with it, braise chicken in it, turn it into soup, or, you know, put it over pasta.
For a more intense sauce, let it simmer for up to 45 minutes, but keep stirring it, otherwise the bottom will scorch.

Barbari

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In Iran, these long, oval loaves with their trademark ridges, called barbari, are often served with a soft cheese similar to feta (hummus, baba ghanoush and the like are also fair game for dipping). What makes this bread so good is that it’s rubbed by hand (very satisfying, I must say) with a cooked paste of flour, oil, and water before baking, which produces a beautiful golden crust.

Gravlax

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Cured fish is impressive, and it’s surprisingly little work to do yourself. Use wild Pacific salmon if at all possible (King and sockeye—which is in general leaner and much redder—are best), even if you have to buy it frozen. Gravlax keeps for a week after curing; and, though it’s not an ideal solution, you can successfully freeze gravlax for a few weeks.

Cacio e Pepe

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This is both one of the simplest and best pasta recipes I can think of. Rather than cooking a sauce, you just (vigorously) stir everything together in a big bowl. Good all the time (even for breakfast), but especially at midnight.

Roasted Salmon with Butter

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This is one of those salmon dishes that changes dramatically when you use really fresh fish, since there are really only two ingredients. It’s dead simple, and you can serve it either hot, warm, or at room temperature (which makes it great for entertaining). You can also use trout or scallops (adjust the cooking time depending on their size).

Oats ‘n Beans

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Start with tomato-y beans (assuming you don’t already have some buried in your freezer, I’ve included a basic recipe below), add some rolled oats, water, salt and pepper, and in 10 minutes (more or less) you’ve got a wonderful and totally surprising breakfast.

Gnocchi Gratin

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As gnocchi are known to be ornery, the key to getting pillowy lightness with these Italian dumplings is to add only enough flour to bring the dough together. The first thing you’ll notice with this dish is probably the rich sauce, then you’ll bite into the sublime dumplings.