There’s this very distinct mode I hit — and I’m guessing a lot of people reading this will relate — when I’m too tired to make a capital-D Dinner, but I’m also too cheap to order delivery. There are things in my fridge that need using up, but I’m out of eggs (so no frittata or kitchen-sink scramble) and I’ve already made fried rice twice this week.
In these moments, I make a dressing.
I’ve sung the praises of Melissa Clark’s all-purpose green sauce a lot in this newsletter, and now I’ll turn my attention to another life-giving elixir, Kenji López-Alt’s miso-sesame vinaigrette that’s good on anything. It truly does live up to its name; I almost always make a double batch and never have any difficulty using it up. Toss it with bagged lettuce mix and leftover chicken — that’s a nice salad! Spoon it over seared shrimp or fish and serve that over rice — that’s a good rice bowl! Swipe cucumber coins, carrot sticks and hard-boiled egg halves through it — it’s a dip! Or do what I’ll do: Boil up some noodles, drain them well, then mix in some miso-sesame vinaigrette and too many sliced scallions. That’s a slapdash noodle dish, and it’s fantastic.
Featured Recipe
Miso-Sesame Vinaigrette That’s Good on Anything
Today’s specials:
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Melissa’s Peruvian roasted chicken is, with its grass-green spicy cilantro sauce, a solid contender for my Easter dinner. Watch Melissa make it here!
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Genevieve Ko has a gorgeous (and gorgeously simple) new salmon dish for us: honey-lemon salmon with dill, with quick-pickled cucumbers served alongside. “Each time I’ve tested this recipe,” Genevieve writes, “I’ve thrown a sheet pan of asparagus onto the other rack in the oven because the stalks roast in the same short time the fish does.”
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One might argue that making these sour cream and onion drop biscuits to go with this crispy sour cream and onion chicken might be sour cream and onion overkill, but that person is not me.
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I love the look of Hetty Lui McKinnon’s new broken egg salad recipe, which swaps the usual hard-boiled eggs for just-set eggs that are hand-torn for optimal chunkiness. I’d like my egg salad gently held by two plush pieces of shokupan, please and thank you.
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More Hetty helpfulness: She suggests tossing her punchy roasted cabbage with capers and garlic with pasta to make the dish even heartier.
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For dessert — and for breakfast with a cup of coffee — here’s lemon poppy seed pound cake. Melissa’s recipe, which uses olive oil instead of softened butter as its base, comes together with some simple whisking and gets a confectioners’ sugar glaze as its finishing touch.
The post This Miso-Sesame Vinaigrette Is Dinner Insurance appeared first on New York Times.
