Weeknight Kitchen

A “virtual” cream soup, this is a creamy soup made without the cream. We don’t want to oversell, but this soup comes together in a blink and proves simple really can fly.  

The spicing opportunities in this recipe are limitless. If you skip the puree, the soup takes on a totally different life. The essential finale is fresh lemon and generous spoonfuls of whole milk yogurt.

This express chicken and haloumi bake leaves you with a gorgeous pool of sweet, citrusy, herby tray juices to drag each bite through.

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.

Shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, celebrated Italian chef Massimo Bottura launched a fantastic daily cooking show on Instagram. One of his ideas? Cook something today and use the leftovers in another dish tomorrow. This pasta with tomato and tuna sauce serves two, with enough to also make my Pasta al Forno.

This chocolate and hazelnut toffee is one of my favorite treats to gift during the holidays. Crack the toffee into shards and package it in small paper boxes. As with most candy-making, be sure to use a calibrated candy thermometer to cook the sugar to the right temperature—not too soft and not too hard.

Who doesn’t love garlic bread? And this tear-and-share style is always a winner. I’ve written the recipe for 12, because it’s an easier quantity of dough to work with. What I like to do is make up both pans of bread, then whack one in the freezer, ready to bake another day – you won’t regret it.

As an anthropologist, I travel a lot both for fieldwork and conferences, and everywhere I go, I keep my antennae up for new recipes. I had this dish while I was visiting Lake Prespa, at the shared border of Greece, Albania, and North Macedonia. It was served in the village of Psarades, which sits right on the lake. The lake teems with life—from fish , turtles, and birds to water chestnuts, which can be harvested easily by just wading in the shallows. When I asked for the recipe, I was told that there wasn’t one: you just put everything together in the oven. After I returned in New York , I tried to replicate the dish. This version is just like the one I had in Greece. It’s best to make this dish in an earthenware pan. Otherwise, use a baking pan about 9 by 12 inches that will hold the mushrooms snugly.

Though I use hot sausages here, you can use any kind of fresh Italian-seasoned sausage you prefer. Chicken or turkey sausages would lighten this dish up a bit, but take care not to overcook them: they dry out faster than pork sausages. Leftovers work well in a frittata or as a sandwich filling.

If you need a stunner for Thanksgiving dinner, here’s your recipe, which is modeled on the traditions of coastal Veracruz. It results in a moist, juicy bird, with an irresistible adobo marinade and a to-die-for stuffing. The turkey is marinated for a day (or two) in a pineapple and orange adobo sauce. The adobo is poured over the turkey before it goes into the oven, so it caramelizes as it thickens and seasons the bird even more. The sweet and tart flavors in the adobo harmonize with those in the stuffing, which is made with a soft bread and a colorful mix of ingredients that include cashews, tomatoes, and chorizo.