Summer is here and I’ve shifted into pesto mode, making and freezing as much of the sauce as I can to remain stocked through the season. Pesto is easy to buy, of course. But while most homemade sauces are better than their store-bought counterparts, the quality delta between supermarket pesto and the batch you make yourself is particularly wide. Nothing compares with homemade.
Luckily, all you need to do to make it yourself is put five ingredients in a food processor. That’s it! (The traditional method involves a mortar and pestle, but we live in the age of technology.) I buy the ingredients in bulk and feed the finished product to my children, who call it “green pasta” and can’t get enough.
So put our pesto recipe to work, and tell me about your own summer staples. I’m at [email protected], and I love to hear your suggestions and help solve your kitchen quandaries.
1. Basic Pesto
This straightforward pesto recipe by Florence Fabricant will power your summer if you let it. Double, triple, even quadruple it; pesto freezes perfectly. I freeze it in small portions so I can defrost only what I need at a given time.
2. Skirt Steak With Salsa Verde Salad
Picture yourself sitting down to this meal somewhere outdoors on a summer night. Pretty good, no? The recipe is by Lidey Heuck, and while it’d be undoubtedly more delicious to toast the pine nuts for the salad, as she suggests, you can skip it if you’re pressed for time.
3. Vegetable Pulao
One of the most fragrant one-pot meals you’ll ever make, this pulao combines rice, vegetables and a rich array of spices. The recipe is from Priya Krishna, and it’s a wonderfully satisfying and flexible dinner with yogurt dolloped on top.
4. Sheet-Pan Miso Chicken With Radishes and Lime
This relaxed chicken recipe from Yasmin Fahr adds radishes to the sheet pan. They lose their bitterness and sweeten in the heat of the oven.
5. Plantains With Jammy Tomatoes and Eggs
I love this dish from Yewande Komolafe, in which firm yellow plantains and eggs simmer in a bubbling, chile-spiked tomato sauce. (The recipe is inspired by the dish “tomato egg,” a staple in Nigeria.) Make it vegan by substituting tofu for the eggs.
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