Lunch - quick and easy recipes - page 142

Cheesy chips are the perfect vehicle for mouthfuls of spicy pork goodness. The Cotija, jalapeños, and cilantro are just bonuses. What to buy: Cotija is a crumbly Mexican cheese that can be found in Latin markets and many grocery stores. Game plan: You’ll need to make the pulled pork and pickled jalapeños before you begin.

Legumes topped with caramelized onions are a popular combination at the Greek table. This dish has two components: a black-eyed pea salad with flavors of dill and fennel, and mixed greens tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper. The beans can be served over the greens either warm or at room temperature. Game plan: The black-eyed pea mixture can be prepared up to 3 hours ahead. Complete the recipe through step 3 and refrigerate the finished bean mixture.

Spending a few minutes preparing a handful of ingredients for a marinade gives this dish tons of flavor, plus the bonus of a built-in sauce after the chicken is cooked. Just combine soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and a little brown sugar in a baking dish, add the chicken, and let it marinate in the fridge overnight. When you’re ready to cook it, put the whole dish in the oven, and in 40 minutes you’ll have crispy, saucy, flavorful chicken.

Don’t let the long list of ingredients scare you, because this chili is very easy to make. Once you sauté the vegetables, it’s just a matter of dumping in all the spices, then adding the turkey, broth, and beans. The chili needs to cook for about half an hour, then the secret ingredient—chocolate—is added to give the dish a little depth. If you want more spice, add extra jalapeños.

Chef April Bloomfield of New York’s The Spotted Pig created this soup version of bubble and squeak, an English dish of shallow-fried vegetables, to use up leftover root vegetables. To make it, sauté a mix of onion, parsnip, potato, Jerusalem artichoke, carrot, fennel, celery root, and turnip, then simmer with broth until tender.

Whole wheat flour gives this pizza dough a hearty flavor and a chewy yet crisp texture. This recipe makes enough dough for two large pizzas, so you can top one for the adults and let the kids have a go at the second one, or freeze it for later. Just add pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, and all your favorite toppings. Chowhound uses this in our easy margarita pizza recipe.

If you’re hankering for a great steak but don’t have access to a grill, try this soy-sauce-marinated rib-eye recipe from Le Pigeon (nicknamed the Dirty Bird) in Portland, Oregon. Throw the steaks in a smoking-hot cast-iron skillet, sear on one side, flip them over, and top with butter. Finish the steaks in the oven, then serve with a seemingly odd but tasty Hawaiian-inspired relish made with pineapple and blue cheese. A pile of crispy semolina-coated onion rings makes the perfect side.

Marinating chicken breast in green curry and coconut milk gives these kebabs a Thai twist. Buy a green curry paste with lots of flavor (we like the Mae Ploy brand). Make sure you don’t pack the skewers too tightly or the chicken will dry out on the grill side before it’s done all the way through. Serve with steamed jasmine rice and something crisp and refreshing, like this snap pea salad.

The combination of orange, black olives, fennel, and whole-grain mustard gives these chicken kebabs an assertive French personality. Thighs are our favorite cut from the bird—they stay juicy even over the high heat of a charcoal grill. Pair these skewers with a fluffy rice pilaf and a dry French rosé, served very cold.

A tangy, slightly sweet marinade of lemon, soy sauce, brown sugar, and ginger adds sparkle to salmon, and asparagus balances the richness. Pack up these kebabs for a summer cookout, or grill them on the back deck for a casual but stepped-up dinner party. Wild salmon in season is leaner than the farmed variety, and friendlier to the oceans.

Korean kalbi was the inspiration, but these skewers have their own personality. Soy sauce, rice vinegar, garlic, sesame oil, and a kick of Sriracha give boneless beef short ribs tons of flavor. Unlike chunky kebabs, the meat gets threaded on the skewers satay-style. Serve with sautéed Asian-style broccoli and a mountain of steamed rice, or beside some sundubu jigae.

You hear pizza, you think cheese that flows like roof tar; pepperoni slices cupping in the oven, filling with grease; and a crust so overladen with toppings it droops like sorrow when you try to lift a slice. It is both elegant and summery, full of flavor from good-quality cheeses and produce—so flavorful, in fact, that you won’t even notice it’s vegetarian.

Mexican mole sauce can be intimidating. There’s chocolate, chiles, and spices. It’s rich, full of flavor, and not too sweet, despite the chocolate. And it’s typically a labor-intensive process. But this recipe, based on Martha Stewart’s, takes little effort, thanks to the slow cooker. With an entire can of chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, along with ancho chiles and almonds, this mole is nicely spicy without being overbearing.

Everybody likes lasagna, so it’s great to serve at a party or bring to a potluck. These individual lasagna roll-ups solve the problem of messing around with a spatula to hoist servings out of a baking dish. Instead of layering the ingredients en masse, you simply layer pasta strips with spinach and cheese, roll them up cinnamon bun–style, and cover with sauce. They’re easy to make, and it’s a great activity to do with the kids.

What do you get when you incorporate fresh strawberries into the tomato sauce for an otherwise classic margarita pizza recipe? A strawberita, of course. The berries are a surprising addition—they give the sauce a bright, fruity quality that tastes right at home on a pizza crust, and it’s a great way to make the best of unripe strawberries out of season.

Using the slow cooker allows you to get baby back pork ribs incredibly tender, but you’ll need to cook them in a sauce with tons of flavor so they’re not boring. For these easy, tasty ribs, you make a bacon-bourbon barbecue sauce for marinating and simmering the ribs. After 4 or 5 hours, when the ribs are tender, you brush them with more sauce and give them a quick turn in the broiler.