Weeknight Kitchen

This spring green vegetable gnocchi has all the flavours I love about spring in one bowl. It’s light and fresh and a quick and easy weeknight meal that will boost your vegetable intake, and feed that longing for a delicious supper after a long day. I use frozen peas and baby spinach, but you can also use purple sprouting broccoli, asparagus or chard.

This is a hearty, filling salad to pack in a cooler or bring on a picnic. It’s also an easy dish to prepare in a rental home if you bring along some cooked, canned lentils. I sometimes put this over a bed of salad greens to make it more of a meal.

My nonnie loved a good dinner party and was a pro at effortlessly entertaining a crowd. I can’t say she enjoyed spending much time in the kitchen cooking, but she could conjure up a delicious dinner with minimal effort. One of her tricks was using a mix of store-bought and homemade ingredients, perhaps leaning heavily on the former, but her food always tasted GOOD. Nonnie got this recipe for apricot chicken from her neighbor in Florida. She served it the night we arrived to visit her for Easter one year—she called it “First Night Apricot Chicken.” Apparently, she made it the first night any of her many guests arrived. (When you spend the winters in Florida, you get a lot of visitors.) Well, we devoured it. This recipe is really all about the sauce, and it’s a combo I never would have dreamed up. The three main ingredients sound odd together but are magic. They create a sticky, sweet, and savory chicken that will satisfy all your cravings. I serve mine with roasted broccoli and rice, but Nonnie often did mashed potatoes and asparagus. Take your pick! Either way, you’ll end up with a stress-free dinner that’s full of love.

Chicken adobo is one of the most popular recipe searches on the Internet, and for good reason. It’s universally loved, easy to prepare, and after being cooked, it lasts for a week in the refrigerator and reheats perfectly. This recipe comes from Daniel’s sister-in-law Stephanie, a first-generation Filipina American who learned to make the dish from her mom, Susan Aquino (Tita Baby). Dark drumstick and thigh meat will yield the juiciest results, so they’re always the first choice, but if you prefer breast meat, you can follow the same recipe. Make sure to marinate adobo for at least twelve hours before cooking to ensure the flavor penetrates. This recipe also works well with pork belly, but you’ll need to increase the cooking time to an hour.

Red rice is a traditional Southern dish (and a tradition in other cultures as well), and I love the nostalgia of it. This version is an update that makes it into an easy one-pot meal where you don’t have to cook the rice ahead of time. And there are so many variations. You can add cheese. You can serve it as a side instead of a main. You can make a vegetarian version. My children love it. My favorite thing is the way the rice gets crispy on top. It gives the dish that extra bite and texture that makes me happy.

These baked eggs are such a fun way to use squash. I’m partial to butternut, but acorn or spaghetti squash would work equally well. Roasting the squash before adding the egg ensures that the squash will be tender and slightly caramelized, while the eggs will be cooked to perfection in the center.

My personal opinion on street corn is this: Nine out of ten times, the corn tastes better off the cob. When you have a nice big bowl of perfectly balanced street corn, there is nothing getting in the way of shoveling it into your face.

That’s why these street corn nachos, inspired by Mexican elote—the famous grilled corn topped with a mayo mixture, spices, and cheese—are great. Every bite has tons of corn and the perfect ratio of crema, cheese, corn, chips, and cilantro. If you make this in the summer, you can cut the corn off fresh in-season cobs. The rest of the year, frozen works just as well.

The recipe for this hearty, garlicky bread soup comes from Rosa Filipe of O Barro restaurant in Redondo, Portugal. According to Filipe, the soup is often nicknamed “beggar’s soup” because it contains no meat or fish.

Carrots, celery, and onion are the base for any good comfort meal. Using rotisserie chicken puts this meal on the table in under thirty minutes!

Enjoy this dish as is or use it as a star element of the Best Friend Salad. Better yet, make a double recipe; eat some now and use the rest in a salad later in the week. Any leftover dressing is amazing tossed with sliced cucumber and sesame seeds.