In this refreshing homemade salsa, mangoes stand in for tomatoes, and the addition of red bell pepper offers crunch and sweetness. Serve with tortilla chips or spoon over your favorite tacos 🌮 If you’re having a hard time waiting for summer tomatoes to arrive, ripe for fresh pico de gallo , try making one with mangoes, which are in season now (late March through September). Prized for their sweetness and creamy texture, champagne mangoes are small and tear-dropped in shape....

This Instant Pot harissa-spiced rice is so flavorful, a mix of spicy, smoky and sweet all at once. If you don’t have an Instant Pot, don’t worry — stovetop instructions are included below as well. Diana Henry’s Moroccan chicken and rice recipe is a good one to know: a modest amount of prep produces a super flavorful, one-pan wonder of a dish that feeds a small crowd. There’s no browning of the chicken first to render the fat and crisp up the skin — everything just gets added to the pot and baked uncovered for 40 minutes....

Philadelphia Fish House Punch, a mix of brandy, cognac, rum, fresh lemon juice and simple syrup is a drink I make three times a year: Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve, and Easter. Perhaps for its rareness but more likely for its reception, which without fail is wild, I look forward to both making it and drinking it more than just about anything during the holiday season. Like most punches, this one is high-octane and body warming, a brew guaranteed to make the evening a smashing success....

Many of you may have seen this recipe in this month’s Bon Appetit . The recipe calls for making a spicy-sweet butter to drizzle over the just-roasted parsnips. Sure, anything would taste pretty good once drizzled with chili-honey-butter, but sometimes vegetables need a little help — I could eat these every night. This flavored butter also calls for a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, which adds a really nice bite....

Making stock is as simple as throwing chicken (whole, pieces, or bones) into a pot, covering it with water, and letting it simmer for a few hours. Vegetables and aromatics such as onions, carrots, celery, bay leaves, peppercorns, etc. will add depth of flavor to a stock, but they are not essential — if you don’t have them or don’t feel like adding them, don’t go running out to buy them....

This recipe comes from this month’s Real Simple magazine, and fittingly, it couldn’t be more simple or delicious: thyme-roasted grapes over grilled bread smeared with homemade ricotta . I first made it over the weekend as a side dish, omitting the bread, just spooning the warm, thyme-infused grapes over a dollop of homemade ricotta. It was delectable. Why no bread? Well, because I served it aside this pear and bacon panini , (another fabulous RS recipe), and bread aside bread felt like overkill....

Last summer, this spicy green bean recipe opened my eyes to the wonderful world of blistered string beans, reminding me, too, that harnessing the power of a few heavy-hitting ingredients — capers, garlic, crushed red pepper flakes — can pay off big: super-flavorful vegetables in no time. It also reminded me of maybe the most neglected tool in my kitchen: my broiler! In the winter, I get in such a routine of roasting sheet pan after sheet pan of vegetables for what seems like forever....

Many years ago, I discovered a magical butternut squash sauce for pasta. It’s a simple recipe that comes together quickly and is loved by all, its exceptional creamy texture evoking bechamel, but with more flavor thanks to a hint of fresh sage. Over the years, I’ve used the sauce in other ways, namely in this baked penne recipe , and most recently in lasagna in place of tomato sauce. It works beautifully and pairs well with many other flavors and ingredients from caramelized leeks and hot Italian sausage to wilted greens and sautéed mushrooms....

Whole fish, even for many fish lovers, can be a hard sell. The head, the tail, the fins — I suppose it’s just a little too much? If this perhaps describes you, I’m hoping I can convince you to give whole-fish cooking a go, because I think you’ll fall in love with the method, this Chinese-style preparation in particular. The recipe, from Alana Kysar’s Aloha Kitchen , can be broken down as follows:...

A few weeks ago, as I stood at the counter flouring, egg dipping, and breading two pounds of eggplant rounds, a little dolly screaming at my feet wanting nothing more than to be held at the height of this witching hour, I found myself asking “WHY?!” I know better than to make this sort of thing at this sort of hour. I shouldn’t be so stubborn. But a craving for eggplant parmesan left me inflexible, and I pushed on until crumbs and parmesan covered every slice, trying to stay composed through every piercing cry....

This curried lentil recipe, a vegan one-pot wonder, is spiced with turmeric, mustard seeds, cumin, and fresh ginger. Coconut milk offers a richness and subtle sweetness, balancing out the heat and spice. A heap of kale (or spinach) makes it a meal. It’s getting to be that time of year: when nothing is sounding particularly delicious, when I’m over roasting root vegetables, when I find myself staring at the pantry, wondering what to make....

Made with only four ingredients, these thin and crispy sourdough discard crackers are so easy to make and are so, so tasty: buttery and flaky with a perfect tang. The seasonings can be adapted to your tastes and preferences, and the dough freezes well, too 🎉 If you are looking for a simple way to put your sourdough discard to good use, look no further. These crackers, made with three basic ingredients — flour, salt, and butter — plus a hefty amount of sourdough discard, will make you never want to discard your discard again....

Toasted pine nuts, Zante currants, a handful of mustard greens — smells awfully familiar, doesn’t it? That’s likely because it’s the exact makeup of the Zuni Cafe bread salad minus the bread. If it doesn’t ring a bell, I recommend familiarizing yourself with this most adored salad first, then making your way back here where a springy variation awaits, a farro-for-bread substitution making it a touch lighter but no less delicious....

Made with just three ingredients — Greek yogurt, sugar and vanilla — the base for this homemade frozen yogurt comes together in one minute, and after an hour of chilling, it’s ready to be churned. So simple, so delicious! I’ve been eating frozen yogurt for 15 years. My sister, who used to run to TCBY during high school cross country “practice,” introduced me to it; roommates in college fueled the addiction; California taught me to consider it a major food group....

Cook’s Illustrated’s The Science of Good Cooking , my latest library rental, is organized by concepts — 50 of them! — but none so much as #28 halted my page turning: Don’t Soak Beans—Brine ‘Em. I read on to discover that Cook’s Illustrated recommends not only soaking beans in salted water but also cooking beans in salted water — as in salted water right from the start. Note: This is NOT a book to give to your favorite nonna ....

Upon flipping through Molly Yeh’s new book, Home is Where the Eggs Are , I found myself immediately drawn to the cookie dough oat bars, which Molly describes as “the new staple bar of your dessert-as-breakfast dreams.” My children love granola bars — Z-Bars, Clif Bars, Chewy Quaker Oat Bars — and if I’m being honest, I do, too. When we have a box of peanut butter Clif Bars on hand, I have a hard time resisting them....

Serena Wolf, author of The Dude Diet , has a new book out: The Dude Diet Dinnertime . It’s filled with “125 Clean(ish) Recipes for Weeknight Winners and Fancypants Dinners.” I’ve made one recipe — Lemon Orzo Skillet with Chicken and Artichokes — which I’d classify definitely as a weeknight winner but as Serena notes, “it’s equally awesome for entertaining given the sophisticated flavor profile (artichokes and “notes of citrus” = instant fancy)....

Eggplant involtini — tender slices of eggplant rolled into ricotta-stuffed parcels baked with homemade tomato sauce — never tastes better than this time of year, when the eggplant and tomatoes begin arriving in full force. Until last week, however, the dish, which requires salting and frying the eggplant, felt SO fussy, the thought of standing at the stovetop always deterring me from making it. But last Friday after roasting eggplant slices for a sandwich , I felt inspired to use the same technique for the involtini, which, as several commenters had noted already, works like a charm....

Shortly after receiving the disheartening letter from our pal Sweet Potato, I received an enlightening email from my aunt’s long-time vegetarian friend, Meg, who passed along one of her favorite recipes: sweet potato quesadillas. The timing, just a day before I picked up my first winter CSA share , which included many pounds of sweet potatoes, couldn’t have been better. Friends, these quesadillas have become one of my favorite things to eat....

When I read Ruth Reichl’s description of this warm tofu with spicy dipping sauce — “a beautiful dish, which takes ten minutes, costs very little, and is so utterly delicious” — in this month’s Gourmet , I couldn’t not make it. And I’m so happy I did. This is by far the easiest — my friends who hate to cook are you listening? — method of preparing tofu I have encountered:...