I’ve recently returned from spring break, where I scrounged a few quiet minutes to lie down poolside and devour “The Upstairs Delicatessen,” by Dwight Garner, a book critic here at The New York Times and a known eater of exceptional taste. The subtitle of this memoir: “On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading.”
In the book, Dwight refers to “pasta nada,” which is what his father-in-law, an accomplished chef, called pasta dishes that were made on the fly from whatever was in the house. Pasta nada! A perfect phrase, and one of my preferred ways to feed myself. I emailed Dwight to ask him to elaborate on what pasta nada looks like in his kitchen. “The only requirement is that it be simple,” he replied:
One of our standbys is sage with toasted walnuts that are chopped somewhat finely. We always have a sage plant or two to raid, so this is easy. And it’s bliss. If you keep the basic ingredients for puttanesca (tuna, capers, anchovies, black olives, garlic, etc.) around, you can generally omit any two or three of them, add parsley and have good nada. Small leftover chunks of mozzarella mix well with cherry tomatoes or basil or both. Some nights, for us, dinner is just pasta with parsley and red pepper flakes and a mix of butter and olive oil. And decent bread and a glass of red wine.
We’ve got many nada-ish pastas on NYT Cooking (pasta with tuna, capers and scallions; with olives and walnuts; with bacon, greens and a fried egg), though it seems that a true nada would regard these recipes as broad-strokes maps and then off-road at the first turn. I’ve included one such pasta below, along with four other recipes I feel are in the nada spirit: flexible and made with few ingredients, the kinds you might keep stocked in the fridge, pantry or freezer. Tell me what you think at [email protected]. It’s always good to hear from you.
I’m also making:
Citrus shortbread (but rolled out and cut with cookie cutters); herby feta and yogurt dip with sumac; boiled potatoes with butter and mint; and this superb braised lamb with squash and brandied fruit (without the squash, because I’m done with butternut squash until October, but with the brandied dried fruit, because I had some lingering in the fridge begging to be used up).
1. Creamy Garlic Pasta With Greens
It never would’ve occurred to me to toss warm spaghetti with a shortcut garlic aioli — that is, mayonnaise with olive oil, lemon and garlic stirred in. But it did occur to Christian Reynoso, a great recipe developer whose new pasta dish is both utterly simple and inspired.
2. Soy-Glazed Chicken Breasts With Pickled Cucumbers
“Glazed” sounds fancy (and delicious), but this recipe is just an easy method for coating chicken in a sticky-shiny mixture of honey and soy sauce. Dawn Perry, who wrote it, included an ultrasimple cucumber salad as an accompaniment, but if you need a pantry dinner and have no cucumbers on hand, you can skip the salad.
3. Kimchi Fried Rice
One of my favorite ways to make lunch or dinner on a moment’s notice: this mellow kimchi fried rice, which Francis Lam learned from a home cook named Grace Lee (“a music marketer by day and kimchi-maker by night and weekend,” he wrote). I always have eggs, a jar of kimchi and leftover rice in my fridge, and if you don’t, I recommend it.
4. More-Vegetable-Than-Egg Frittata
“The nada frittata” is what Mia Leimkuhler, the wonderful editor of this newsletter, called this dish, and she’s completely right. It’s a Mark Bittman recipe that doubles as a fridge-cleaner. Put whatever you want in it. If you’re looking for a less typical, more daring frittata, I like Ali Slagle’s grain frittata with chile, lime and fresh herbs, which uses farro and fish sauce for a sort of Spanish tortilla meets banh xeo hybrid.
5. Dumpling Noodle Soup
I’m always in search of good dumplings to keep in the freezer (email me if you have any tips). Frozen dumplings make an excellent fast dinner on their own, of course, but they’re heroic in recipes like this one from Hetty Lui McKinnon, which was loosely inspired by wonton noodle soup. Hetty wrote it as a vegetarian recipe, but you can swap in nonvegetarian elements as you like.
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