quick and easy recipes

Dinners This Week
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Dinners This Week

In and among the other things I am doing, I have been thinking about dinners almost nonstop. Where an endless list of options should be is a blank space. My brain simply refuses to volunteer any ideas, except on the occasion when it brings to mind the dinner I ate last night. (Frozen pizza is what I ate for dinner last night.)

Dinner is The Worst.

Okay, okay, enough complaining. To be clear, I am in the mood for some fall food. But my current schedule has made it impossible to plan ahead enough to prepare the things that sound good. Like my favorite fall salad, for instance. It seems dumb to buy the ingredients for a salad that will inevitably wilt into unspeakable liquid in my fridge, please do not ask me how I have so readily come up with that image.


What I should be doing is making something in the slow cooker every night. It just feels like I’ve exhausted all my best slow cooker options, though. In the past few weeks, I’ve made chipotle chicken tortilla soup, white chicken chili, balsamic pork, and boeuf bourguignon (which Carla requested! and ate!!!!! and then ate leftovers!!!!!!!!!!!!). All were delicious, all produced copious leftovers.

I need QUICK – like, “can be prepped and ready in 30 minutes max” – and I need EASY – like, “sits in a slow cooker all day and can be scooped onto plates” or “can be plopped onto a sheet pan and shoved in the oven” and I need NOT TACOS because otherwise my husband might excommunicate me.

Let’s see what we can come up with.

DINNERS FOR THE WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 29

  • One Pot Lemon, Basil, Corn & Ricotta Pasta: I don’t know why I’m even listing this here. It sounds delicious, is why. But I already have a robust cons list before I’ve even put a single item in my grocery cart: 1. This is NOT a fall meal. Corn and basil are SUMMER foods. However… I do have a very happy and productive basil plant on my porch, and I think my grocery store still has fresh corn in abundance. So maybe it IS a fall meal. 2. There is no meat in this dinner, which means I have to figure out how to add it in. Probably I’ll turn to a convenience protein, like pre-shredded chicken or a ready-made chicken breast from the prepared foods section. I don’t WANT chicken though, but I guess I could make salmon for myself and Carla. 3. I planned to make this earlier this summer, bought all the ingredients, never made it, and ended up wasting the ricotta. (I do think I made use of the corn and basil.) 4. The recipe was on a list of “easy” dinners, and Teighan claims this dinner is ready in just 30 minutes, but… do I believe that??? 5. Corn silk, all over my kitchen.
  • Chili Honey Chicken & Sweet Potatoes:  We haven’t had this in a while. The sweet potatoes make it feel slightly fall-escent. It’s a sheet pan meal, so it meets the “can be plopped onto a sheet pan and shoved into the oven” criterion. But… it does take some prep work. Plus, the cilantro yogurt sauce – which is the star of the show – feels like it requires too much energy. But… maybe I could prep the chicken and potatoes the night before? And do the cilantro yogurt while everything is cooking? This dish IS delicious.
  • Sheet Pan Veggie Shawarma: If I also make this dish, I can have the cilantro yogurt sauce from the previous recipe do double duty. (I prefer it to the tahini sauce listed in the shawarma recipe.) The big downside to this recipe is all the chopping of veggies. Also, I will need some sort of protein for my husband. Maybe a rotisserie chicken could give him one breast for the corn and basil pasta and a second breast for the shawarma? That means I need to make the pasta on Night 3, though, and probably make a stop for the rotisserie chicken on Night 2.
  • Cold Noodle Salad with Spicy Peanut Sauce: We haven’t had this in a long while, and it just sounds yummy to me right now. It does not meet two-thirds of my afore-mentioned criteria, though. But it would produce leftovers, which is a plus. I don’t know. This might be a reach.

This is A Very Optimistic List. There’s no way I’m making all of these. Is there a chance that I will make any of them? Or will my husband and I continue to do the thing where one of us asks what’s for dinner and the other says I don’t know and then I end up listing the extremely unappealing contents of our fridge/freezer/pantry? Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion!

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Chicken Paprikas

This is one of my favorite cold-weather recipes. It’s also what I consider to be peak comfort food. (Kari wrote recently about comfort food, and got me thinking about what I turn to when I need to nourish my body and my soul.) Paprikas is right up there. It’s creamy, spicy, hearty, and warming. Plus, it’s very, very easy.

(I recognize that for a lot of people, the instant that you say “dice an onion” a recipe ceases to be “easy.” But if you are not a big onion dicer, you can usually find pre-diced onion at the grocery store in the convenience foods section, so please don’t let the presence of a diced onion deter you from trying this.)

One of the things I love about this recipe is that it is very flexible. Have leftover chicken from dinner last night? Use that. Only have frozen chicken thighs? Use that. Want to see if bell peppers would be good? Toss some in with the onion. Have two pounds of chicken breast instead of one? Great. Have one potato instead of two? Super. Have an extra half-cup of chicken stock lying around? Add it right in. No sour cream, but you have Greek yogurt? Excellent, that works too. Don’t like spice? Don’t use hot paprika. Don’t have a potato but you have some frozen diced hash browns? Those would probably be great. Use less or more sour cream. Use less or more flour. Use a potato or don’t. This recipe is very adjustable and always delicious. It’s also amazing as leftovers, and I am not a person who particularly relishes leftoevers.

It is, however, not particularly photogenic.

Chicken Paprikas (adapted from Joy of Cooking)

Serves 6-8 people

Ingredients

1 pound boneless skinless chicken breast, cooked or not*, diced, shredded, or not

1 Tbsp vegetable oil or butter or a combination of both

1 white onion, diced

2 large baking potatoes, peeled and diced (optional but highly recommended)

4 cups low-sodium chicken stock

2-4 Tbsp paprika (any combination of sweet or hot paprika you like)

1 tsp salt

Cayenne pepper, to taste (optional)

8-16 oz sour cream, light or full fat

2-4 Tbsp flour**

1 package egg noodles

Instructions

  1. Add oil/butter to the bottom of a large pot. Turn stove to medium and add diced onion once the butter has melted.
  2. Saute the onions gently until they are translucent.
  3. Add paprika and salt to the onions and stir until the onions are well coated.
  4. Add chicken stock and chicken and bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer and cook for 15 minutes or until chicken is cooked through. (You can skip this step if your chicken is already cooked.)
  5. Prepare egg noodles according to package instructions.
  6. If using chicken breasts, remove from broth and shred; return shredded meat to pot.
  7. Peel and dice potatoes, then add to the pot.
  8. Cook for 15 minutes more.
  9. During the last 10 minutes of cooking, add flour to sour cream and whisk until completely incorporated.
  10. Ladle 3-5 spoonfuls of broth into the sour cream/flour mixture and whisk to temper. Do this three times, then add sour cream and broth mixture back to pot, stirring to incorporate. Cook for five more minutes.
  11. Add salt and cayenne to taste.
  12. Spoon paprikas over egg noodles (maybe with a dollop of sour cream/Greek yogurt on top?) and enjoy.

* This works great with shredded rotisserie chicken, which you can buy in bulk from Costco.

** The flour is purely for thickening, so you could probably use cornstarch instead or just skip it entirely. This can be quite soupy without the flour, though. Honestly, it can be quite soupy even with the flour; you will probably have to play with your sour cream to flour ratio a bit to get it perfect. If you like a thick sauce, I would err on the side of more flour than less. You can also squish some of the potatoes so that they add to the thickness of the soup.

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My Take on the TikTok Baked Feta Pasta

You will wonder, in a moment, why I am calling this “My Take on the TikTok Baked Feta Pasta” when my version has neither feta nor tomatoes in it – two crucial ingredients in the original aforementioned TikTok pasta, the third and fourth being “pasta” and “olive oil.” 

You will likely wonder why I even glanced toward the TikTok Baked Feta Pasta, when I neither have TikTok nor can I stand tomatoes nor do I particularly care for feta. 

And yet, here we are, with me sharing a recipe (“recipe”) for my own version of a recipe I have neither tried nor wanted to try nor followed. 

Perhaps – you might think, trying to wrap your mind around my motives and this post – what appealed to me about the TTBFP is its simplicity. You put a few ingredients in a dish. You toss them in some olive oil. You throw the whole thing in an oven and then, 20 minutes later, stir in some pasta and voila! you have a meal. 

Well, you could be right, except that I went and made the TTBFP much more complicated, eliminating its simplicity right from the get go. 

I think it’s time to stop trying to understand me; I sure don’t, and I’ve lived with me for 40 years. Let’s get to the recipe. (“Recipe.”)

Baked Mushroom & Goat Cheese Pasta

Servings: 

Approximately three, if each serving takes up about half a soup bowl.

Ingredients:

  • 12 oz mushrooms, rinsed and sliced
  • 1/2 red onion, chopped
  • 4 oz plain goat cheese
  • 1 head of garlic (optional)
  • Olive oil
  • Balsamic glaze
  • Pasta of your choice (I used cellentani because it is pretty and fun to say)
  • Arugula (optional)

Directions:

  • Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees F.
  • Spray a 9 x 13 baking pan with vegetable spray, just because you distrust olive oil’s food-sticking-prevention abilities.
  • Throw your chopped onions and sliced mushrooms into the baking pan. Add salt, pepper, and a couple tablespoons of olive oil and mix it all together with your hands. 
  • Make a small space in the center of the veggies. Nestle your goat cheese right in there. It’s okay if the veggies want to snuggle right up to the goat cheese. 
Wouldn’t you like to snuggle up to a nice goat cheese pillow?
  • If you are using garlic, slice across the top of the whole head of garlic with a sharp knife, exposing some of the cloves. Nestle the entire head of decapitated garlic (how can a head itself be decapitated? I trust you understand.) into a corner of the pan.
  • Drizzle everything with another tablespoon or two of olive oil.
  • Drizzle everything with a teaspoon or so of balsamic glaze. Who’s kidding who here. I did not measure. Just drizzle until you feel like you’re done. I did some sloppy crisscrosses and called it good. 
Glazey crisscrosses!

  • Shove the pan into the oven and set a timer for 25 minutes.
  • Boil some salted water. I don’t know how much; however much you need to cover however much pasta you use. I used half a box of pasta which turned out to be FAR too much pasta, because I forgot how dramatic mushrooms are. They get very hysterical about being baked and shrink to almost nothing. I would say a quarter of a box of pasta would suffice, if you like your pasta nice and sauce-y.
  • Add your pasta to the boiling water and cook it for two minutes under whatever duration the box recommends.
  • When your pasta is done, drain your pasta BUT RESERVE SOME PASTA WATER. I always reserve way more pasta water than I need, just in case. 
  • Check on your pan at the 25-minute mark. If the mushrooms and onions are starting to brown and your goat cheese is resembling a puddle, it’s probably done. I had to cook mine longer than I thought, but I also accidentally turned off the timer at some point and have no idea how long it actually baked. It could have been 20 minutes, it could have been 30. I considered, at one point, turning the heat up to 450 F for a while, to see if I could caramelize the onions a bit more. But I was concerned about how those little drama queens (mushrooms) might react (burning into charcoal).
The goat cheese looked much more melty in person. Also, the mushrooms are being deceptive here. They still seem plentiful. But they are NOT.
Different view of those now much diminished mushrooms.
  • Remove your pan from the oven and marvel in an irritated way at how drastically your mushrooms have shrunk. 
  • Remove the garlic. Use the tip of a sharp knife to dislodge some of the cloves from their papery outfits and add them back to the pan. I used about 1/5 of the garlic, I’d say, because it seemed like an appropriate amount of garlic for the quantity of mushrooms remaining. Plus, I am going to use roasted garlic in some focaccia this week – I have been saying I would make focaccia for a year and I have NOT DONE IT YET, despite wanting to and planning to and even putting it on my meal plan twice, but THIS IS THE WEEK, it is happening – so I saved the rest of the garlic for that purpose. 
  • Stir everything together. Add some reserved pasta water to achieve the sauce consistency you prefer. 
The goat cheese stirs up so nicely. Far better than FETA, I’m sure.
  • Add some pasta to your pan and stir some more. Add more reserved pasta water if you like. 
Are you beginning, now, to see just how FEW mushrooms remain? It’s like half of them took the day off.
This is it. Even with the pasta, it takes up less than half of the pan. Also, it’s not the most photogenic meal.
  • Put your mixed pasta into a dish. If you are so inclined, add a handful of arugula. 
Now it’s pasta salad! No, just kidding. I do think the arugula adds a nice peppery contrast to the richness of the pasta.
  • Drizzle the bowl with more balsamic glaze. Enjoy!

Will I make this again? I can’t honestly say, at this point. It was tasty! And it was filling! The goat cheese makes it super rich and creamy, so one serving was plenty. It was easy! (Though the mushrooms, all on their own, the prima donnas, make it time consuming.) But on the side of NOT making it again, it is so disheartening to spend eight hours washing and peeling and slicing mushrooms only to have them minify in the oven. How is minify an actual word? I seriously thought I was just being lazy, but it has a dictionary entry and everything. I also wish the onions had had a chance to caramelize a bit more. 

If I made it again, maybe I would have to use EVEN MORE mushrooms. And maybe I would cut them into larger chunks. Using more would increase the amount of prep time… but it might also increase my enjoyment? Hard to say until we try. And we may never try. After all, have we learned nothing from the focaccia intentions?

In all, it was fun to try. It was yummy. And now the recipe has been recorded for posterity. 

The end.