Quick meals - quick and easy recipes - page 142

We got the idea for these impromptu gnocchi from our Home Cooking community discussion board. All you need is half a pound of pizza dough, a pot of boiling salted water, and a sauce (marinara is perfect). Enlist your kids to help with the shaping, then let them watch you poaching the dough and tossing it in the sauce. What to buy: Premade pizza dough is available bagged in 14- or 16-ounce portions at well-stocked groceries.

Skip the bun and wrap it up pigs-in-the-blanket style with this ridiculously easy yet whimsical jumbo-sized rendition. Just roll out store-bought pizza dough and cut it into strips that you use to spiral-wrap the hot dogs. Bake and serve with beer and caraway seed mustard, spicy yellow mustard, or whole grain dijon mustard. If you’d like to make your own pizza dough, you’ll need two-thirds of our recipe for Basic Pizza Dough.

Rolls hot from the oven can take a dinner party from nice to amazing, but with all the other things clamoring for a cook’s attention, home-baked bread tends to fall through the cracks. These knot-shaped, garlic- and parsley-flavored rolls are different: You start with store-bought pizza dough, which slashes prep time; then just roll, brush with butter and flavorings, and bake. The dough knots also work as a stand-alone nibble, served with marinara sauce for dipping.

We love the Stromboli, the Italian-American pizza roll. We simplified things a bit here, with store-bought pizza dough and a once-over rolling technique. Our filling calls for marinara, shredded mozzarella, ham, and fresh chiles, but don’t be shy about freestyling with other cured meats and cheeses, herbs, veggies—the beauty of a Stromboli (er, Strom-Dough-Li) is its versatility. What to buy: Bags of premade pizza dough are available in 14- or 16-ounce portions at well-stocked groceries.

Technically this is a radler (the German version of lager and lemonade) but the spirit—a beer of low-hop bitterness, combined with something fruity and refreshing—definitely skews shandy. Instead of soda, we call for a second beer, a Belgian lambic flavored with raspberry. What to buy: You’ll need a wheat beer with low hops, such as Erdinger Hefe-Weizen, and a raspberry lambic (we’re fans of Timmermans Framboise Lambicus).

Substituting tangerine juice for lime in a margarita is a revelation. The taste is gentler, a little sweeter, and far more aromatic—the tangerine flavor acts as a shadow for the orange liqueur, amplifying its presence. If you can get a Meyer lemon to garnish with (it adds a final burst of citrus perfume), go for it. If not, a regular Eureka lemon will do just fine.

Ah the shandy, Britain’s low-alcohol pub drink, the ultimate session sipper. This one calls for ginger beer, mixed half-and-half with a mild-tasting lager (no bitter hop bombs, please). Enjoy one for lunch when you have to go back to the office and keep a clear head, or whenever you want a little something that cools and stimulates without making you foggy.

Digestifs are boozy after-dinner drinks said to tame the effects of a rich, heavy meal. They’re ridiculously easy to make: Just add citrus peels or herbs to grain alcohol and steep, then strain and mix with simple syrup. Digestifs keep forever (we store ours in the freezer so they’re already chilled), ready whenever you want a nightcap or a cocktail mixer. This recipe relies on the peel from blood oranges to create a wonderfully aromatic digestif that just happens to be perfect for margaritas.

We couldn’t resist trying this simple yet sophisticated baked asparagus “fries” recipe developed by one of our community members, AngelaID. This supereasy, and healthy, take on deep-fried potatoes is a great side or appetizer at any meal. If you can’t find fresh asparagus because it’s not in season, most stores sell frozen asparagus that’s often cut in stems and pieces, which could be good for bite-sized “fries.”

Who doesn’t love a good G&T? Well, the Spanish certainly do. Condé Nast Traveler reported that Spain is home to the biggest gin drinker population (per capita) in the the world. Although this refreshing take on the classic gin and tonic would be great on a hot summer day, we’d be happy to sip on one (or a few) as a pre- or post-dinner libation all year round. Perhaps make a batch to wash down a feast of our homemade paella recipe.

A soft taco topped with a fried egg is perfect as the first thing you eat in the morning or the last thing you eat at night, even when those lines blur a bit. These have refried beans, melted cheddar, and creamy Greek yogurt to boot.

This recipe from the blog Confections of a Foodie Bride cranks up the intensity of hummus, incorporating kalamata olives in an otherwise standard chickpea-and-tahini affair. The results are bold and surprising: the perfect thing to shake up a snack spread. Game plan: Make the hummus up to 5 days ahead and refrigerate it in an airtight container. Let sit at room temperature for an hour before serving.

Named for the French Quarter in New Orleans (a.k.a. the Vieux Carré), this sophisticated, spirits-driven cocktail is a lot like the Big Easy itself: a fun and potent blend of diverse elements. What to buy: Bénédictine, a gold-colored liqueur first produced by Benedictine monks in the 16th century, adds a sweet, aromatic flavor to cocktails. Peychaud’s Bitters were created in New Orleans around 1830 by the Haitian apothecary Antoine Amédée Peychaud.

The classic Old Fashioned is whiskey with a bit of sugar, aromatic bitters, and dilution in some form, from a splash of either water or club soda. The earliest mention of an Old Fashioned–style drink is from 1806: Drinks writer Robert Simonson, author of The Old-Fashioned: The Story of the World’s First Classic Cocktail, calls this “the primordial cocktail,” older than either the martini or the Manhattan Drink.

Proportions for the classic Manhattan are two (sometimes three) parts whiskey to one part sweet vermouth, with a little aromatic boost from bitters. The drink is believed to date from 1874, created by a bartender at New York’s Manhattan Club. “Since New York was a rye town in those days,” writes cocktail expert Dale DeGroff in The Craft of the Cocktail, “the original Manhattan was made with rye whiskey.” Bourbon Manhattans are a thing in the South.