If you just came home from a long, stressful day at work and you’re starving, and all you want is to sit on the couch and eat something incredibly delicious and comforting and watch bad TV, this is the dish for you. And if, on top of all that, you have kids to feed? This is STILL the dish for you. The sauce is layered with rich, roasty nuttiness from toasted sesame oil, sweet, umami-rich miso, and lots of allium goodness from scallions and garlic, all made silky and spoonable with butter and Parmesan.
My daughter Becky’s review: “Amazing. Buh-ro. No words except for amazing and bro. I didn’t know something this amazing could actually exist.”
Pizza rolls are a very popular street food and this tear-and-share traybake makes a great and always welcome addition to an informal dinner buffet, a picnic or a kids’ birthday party.
Common fillings include the usual tomato sauce, mozzarella and often ham; however, this recipe uses one of my favourite combinations based on ripe red sweet peppers and onions. The vegetables are simmered before being blended to a cream: the cooking brings out their sweetness and makes them easier to digest. The creamed filling also makes a delicious dipping sauce, so don’t throw away any leftovers!
Most North American Jews are familiar with sweet noodle kugels. But there are also many savory noodle kugel varieties, which can include garlic, onions, mushrooms, or even spinach. This kugel is a recipe from my husband’s grandmother, Baba Billie. It has an extra garlic kick, fantastic mouthfeel, and a nice crunchy top. You can use fresh garlic if you want, but I think the jarred garlic in oil really is the preferred ingredient.
There are two things going on with this 30-minute dinner that will probably appeal to kids: (1) the crunchy and (2) the cheesy. I love how those melty mozzarella rounds recall a classic baked chicken Parm—but there’s not an obscene amount of cheese. The recipe as written makes enough for four medium portions. Pair it with a simplegreen salad and some crusty bread.
My daughter loves zucchini (courgettes). When she was very little, she collected some leftover change, saving it until she had a little pile of coins. I was surprised. My daughter is a princess and has everything she needs. But she showed me her savings and told me, “Daddy, I want to buy zucchini.” So that Sunday, my sacred no-work day, we headed to our favorite farmers’ market, Danilovskiy Rynok. I taught her how to pick out the best produce, and then we came home and made these oladyi, something between a pancake and fritter. Since then, they’ve become a staple in our home and we’ve even put them on the menu at both White Rabbit and Gorynich, where they’ve become bestsellers.
This beauty is garlicky, gingery, and as spicy as you dare—it’s best when it bites back just a little. Most of the prep time for this East Asian–influenced pan-fried noodle dish is spent slicing (have your chef’s knife ready). Once that’s done, the dish comes together in minutes.
Shrimp spaghetti is to bayou kids what spaghetti and meatballs is to kids in the rest of the United States. This was my son Lucien’s favorite meal, which he would eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It’s a near perfect meal—simple, sweet, perfectly balanced—and it’ll feed a big family or a crowd of friends. The recipe draws from the Creole cooking technique of smothering tomatoes long and slow. This version is made with store-bought sauce, but you can certainly make your own tomato sauce and cook it down in the same manner. Homemade tomato sauce tends to be thinner, so you might have to thicken it a bit with tomato paste to get the right consistency.
In my experience, if you tangle vegetables in a mess of fried noodles, your kids will be much more likely to eat them. To that end, yaki udo is a family-friendly stir-fry that’s heavy on plants and fungi.
No traditional Danish Christmas dinner is complete without a dish of small caramelized potatoes. But this sweet, savory side dish is good for any time of the year.
I have one back-pocket recipe that can save any breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Popovers.