Weeknight Quickies Archives - Page 6 of 16

Mini Thai Shrimp Cakes with Sweet Chili Dipping Sauce

February 17, 2021December 22, 2016 by Emily

Make our mini Thai Shrimp Cakes and be a hit at your family or office party. A fantastic and healthy way to cook fresh shrimp.

Note: This recipe is part of our series for Serious Eats. You can also find the recipe and many others on their site.

‘Tis the season… for cocktail parties, family get-togethers, work shindigs, and any other number of opportunities for you to hone your party-food skills. You want options that can be easily passed around, grabbed with one hand, and finished in a few bites; you also want a recipe that’s so memorably tasty people will demand you make it again and again.

Shrimp cakes, made by chopping shrimp in the food processor, are great as a dinner option, but they’re one of our favorite dishes to make for parties, too. Not only are they a cinch to make, they’re incredibly tasty and, frankly, much less expensive than crab. (We love crab cakes! We do! But their price feels like you have to make them for An Occasion, with capital letters, and if you’re not wearing a tuxedo, you’re just wasting everybody’s time.) The best part about shrimp cakes is that you can flavor them any way you like.

Creamy Chicken and Potato Chowder

February 18, 2021December 19, 2016 by Emily

This comforting chicken chowder is packed with vegetables including potatoes, chard and corn. It’s guaranteed to warm you up even on the coldest of days.

There are few terms more accurately descriptive than “Polar Vortex”. It does just what it says on the tin (i.e., freeze your goddamn buns off). We are in the middle of one right now and it’s freaking cold outside. And because we have an old house, it’s pretty cold inside too.

And since Matt and I mostly work from home, you can see why we’re desperate for a hot, nourishing, tasty lunch. Luckily this soup is exactly what the doctor (and freezing film editor) ordered. We were inspired by a version of this soup from Bob’s Mountain Deli around the corner from us in Beacon. We look forward to them making this soup for our lunch orders every winter, but some days you just don’t want to leave the house. So this is our version.

Warm Kale and Caramelized Wild Mushroom Salad

February 3, 2021November 11, 2016 by Emily

Mushrooms are incredibly versatile. Here, we sauté them until deeply golden brown, then pair their savory flavor with hearty kale leaves and a nutty sherry vinegar dressing. It’s an easy vegetarian meal in a bowl.

Note: This article is from our series on Serious Eats. You can find this salad, and other great recipes there as well.

When you cook as a couple, you have to constantly deal with what each person does and doesn’t like to eat. One of us (Matt) loves mushrooms, though, admittedly, mostly fried up English-style for breakfast; the other (Emily) used to dislike them, finding them to be either chewy, slimy, rubbery, or otherwise unappetizing.

We eventually realized that the problem wasn’t with the mushrooms, it was how we’d been cooking them. We’d been treating mushrooms like most other vegetables, when we really should’ve been cooking them like meat. By searing mushrooms until deeply browned, you can bring out their earthy, meaty, umami-packed flavor, while their interiors remain tender and juicy. Now, we have no conflict—we both love mushrooms and work them into our meals all the time. Here, we toss them with baby kale and a flavorful sherry vinaigrette to make an easy, filling salad.

Quick-Marinated White Bean Salad With Feta

February 19, 2021September 16, 2016 by Emily

A white bean salad doesn’t have to be boring. Creamy cannellinis absorb the bright flavor of a vinaigrette in just a few minutes. Paired with briny olives, fresh cucumbers, tomatoes and feta cheese, and served in lettuce cups, they make a quick and substantial dinner.

Note: This recipe is part of our series for Serious Eats.

We’re as guilty as anyone else of “lazy salad syndrome”. If we can get away with opening a box of pre-rinsed greens and throwing on a dab of supermarket dressing, we’ll do it. As a side salad, that might just about be acceptable. But if we’re making a salad as its own dish – for a quick summer meal, for example – it’s inexcusably lame. But with just a little effort and really no time at all, I can prepare this white bean salad with ingredients I already have in the pantry. Most of the ingredients for this recipe are kitchen staples, and the only things I need fresh are cucumber, tomatoes, feta, and lettuce.

Lemon-Garlic Chicken and Tomato Skewers with Basil Chimichurri

February 19, 2021September 2, 2016 by Matt

Lemon-Garlic Tomato and Chicken Skewers with Basil Chimichurri

Grilled chicken doesn’t always need a long marinade to be full of flavor. These spend just a few minutes in a lemony-garlicky mix before they’re grilled to charred perfection. The hot chicken absorbs the flavor of the fresh basil chimichurri, and the grilled cherry tomatoes bring sweetness and acid.

(This recipe appeared earlier on Serious Eats.)

We need only the slightest of excuses to cook outside in the peak of heat-wave summer. Turn the stove on? Ah, no, thank you. Making a quick-marinated chicken dish that we can throw on the grill is an ideal solution. And, if we can use the Mediterranean heroes of the summer vegetable garden—tomatoes and basil—so much the better. Not only do tomatoes and basil taste great together, they also have a symbiotic relationship in the garden; companion gardening with the two plants in proximity improves their resistance to pests.

Lemon-Garlic Chicken and Tomato Kebabs with Basil Chimichurri — Prepping basil and parsley for the chimichurri

Chorizo Quesadillas With Radish and Fennel Salsa

February 19, 2021August 23, 2016 by Emily

Crispy tortillas filled with spicy chorizo and gooey cheese, these quesadillas are balanced by the fresh, unusual flavor of a radish and fennel salsa. It’s a sophisticated pairing that elevates a familiar comfort food.

Note: this recipe also appears on Serious Eats!

There are days when you absolutely crave a quesadilla that is, in food-marketing parlance, “fully loaded.” But the more ingredients you put in your quesadilla, the more prep work and cooking you have to do, and some nights you just don’t have time for that. To keep this version under 20 minutes, we limited ourselves to two main ingredients in the tortilla itself, and paired it with a tart, crunchy chopped salsa that balances the richness of the quesadilla and elevates it from standard sports-TV fare. It may not be fully loaded with ingredients, but it’s definitely fully loaded with flavor.