Seared scallops are one of those dishes that qualify has simple and elegant at the same time. They’re easy enough for a weeknight, but special enough for a romantic anniversary or Valentine’s Day dinner. They sear for just 2 minutes on each side, making them quick, too. The other benefit: they’re a blank canvas, begging for a sauce to add interest—or whatever global spin you like.
Main course
Faith’s Greek Lemon Chicken Soup with Quinoa
We’ve all had lemon chicken soup with rice or noodles, but quinoa somehow makes any dish heartier and more substantial. Because quinoa is so dense and filling, it’s an excellent way to make Faith’s soup recipe, a riff on avgolemono, a meal.
Chris Prosperi’s Quick and Easy Tomato-Chicken Soup
This quick soup, one of Chris’s go-tos on a snowy day, uses a genius shortcut ingredient: tomato sauce, but a few plum tomatoes keep the flavor fresh. Chris’s favorite mini pasta, ditalini, adds the umph to make it a meal.
Alex Province’s Quick Version of a Traditional Cocido (Spanish Soup)
There’s nothing better than roasting a chicken low and slow for Sunday dinner. But, I don’t stop there. While I’m doing the dishes after dinner, I’ve got the chicken carcass in a stockpot simmering away on the stove so my husband Matt and I can have a delicious homemade stock for a Spanish soup later on.
Miso-Butter Roast Chicken and Potatoes
Slow-cooking a “roast” chicken yields moist, juicy meat but flabby skin—the easy fix is to run the carved chicken under the broiler to crisp the skin before serving. The miso-honey mixture that’s drizzled on before broiling helps the skin get deep caramelization, and it also reinforces the salty-sweet miso flavor you added in the beginning, which will have mellowed.
Braised Beef with Lots and Lots of Onions
This is one of those miraculous dishes that uses only a few basic ingredients (beef, onions, garlic, thyme, etc.), doesn’t require much technique or fussing, and yet produces a delectable and soul-satisfying dish that’s superb on its own but lends itself to leftover improvisation.
