Can We Have Basic Food for Dinner?
Maybe crispy-edged quesadillas, caramelized roast vegetables and fluffy rice, no marinating or multitasking.
Hi everyone, Ali here filling in for Mia. The recipes I develop at New York Times Cooking tempt you with sparkles — jalapeño honey, caper-raisin vinaigrette, sizzled mint — but you know what else I like to cook? Obvious, plain, basic food.
To make it, you season an ingredient (with salt), and then you cook it until it’s done (by introducing heat and sometimes oil, butter or another fat that conducts heat). No marinating or multitasking is needed — not even garlic. Gasp.
While there are many reasons to cook, we probably wouldn’t choose to do it so often if it didn’t also keep us alive. So it’s totally OK to take the least involved route from raw ingredient to eating — because when done well, the ingredient shimmers with its own inherent sparkle.
Featured Recipe
Crispy Chicken Thighs
For example, don’t touch these bone-in chicken thighs as they cook over moderate heat mostly on their skin sides and they’ll develop a chip-like crust.
Press a quesadilla in a nonstick pan so some of the cheese oozes out for a lacy skirt of toasted cheese.
Cut very ripe plantains into chunky spears and fry until fudgy.
Roast any vegetable on the bottom rack of your oven without flipping or stirring for browned outsides and cooked-through middles.
Steam green beans and bok choy on top of a pot of steaming rice for a trio of tenderness.
Blacken tomatoes and a habanero to mash into a smoky, yet bright salsa.
Broil cod on top of shingles of thinly sliced potatoes for flaky fish and creamy potatoes.
All these dishes need only three to five ingredients, but when cooked so superbly, what else could you want? You could do more with a sauce or garnish, but you don’t always need to. Instead, go on and live your life. I’ll be over here writing myself out of a job.
And, if living your life includes armchair cooking — meaning looking at the pretty pictures on NYT Cooking — to celebrate the site’s 10th anniversary, Cooking subscribers can share as many recipes as they like with friends and family. Just tap the “Give” icon on any recipe to create a paywall-free link.
See you back here on Saturday — that is, if I still have my job.
