Old-Fashioned Apple Crisp
Tart and sweet apples baked soft under a crunchy oat, brown sugar and cold-butter topping, with juices thick enough to hold on a spoon.
- Total time
- 1 hr 50 min
- Yield
- Serves 8
Recipes
67 recipes, newest first. Most are easy dinner recipes sized for a weeknight — thirty to sixty minutes, one or two pans, and ingredients from an ordinary grocery store.
The rest is what goes around dinner: soup recipes for a cold evening, salads and side dishes, desserts, and a few sauces worth keeping in the fridge. Every one has been cooked and written here, with the timings and quantities that actually worked.
Recipes by course
Recipes by cooking method
French Onion Soup
Onions cooked slowly to deep brown, simmered in beef stock with a splash of wine, and finished under the broiler with toasted baguette and bubbling Gruyère.
- Total time
- 2 hr 5 min
- Yield
- Serves 6
Slow Cooker Baby Potatoes with Garlic and Herbs
Four hours unattended, then five minutes under the broiler for the crust a slow cooker cannot give you.
- Total time
- 4 hr 15 min
- Yield
- Serves 8
Roasted Cabbage Steaks with Yogurt Sauce
Thick wedges roasted until the edges char and the core turns sweet, under a cold garlic yogurt.
- Total time
- 45 min
- Yield
- Serves 4
Grilled Potatoes with Garlic and Herbs
Parboiled first so the grill only has to char them. Twelve minutes over the coals, not forty.
- Total time
- 40 min
- Yield
- Serves 6
Crock Pot Gnocchi Soup
Sausage, spinach and a cream broth built over four hours. The gnocchi go in for the last thirty minutes.
- Total time
- 4 hr 45 min
- Yield
- Serves 6
Wild Rice Soup
Creamy, mushroomy and thick with grain. The wild rice cooks separately because it takes three times as long as anything else.
- Total time
- 1 hr
- Yield
- Serves 6
Scrambled Eggs with Sausage and Biscuits
A full plate timed so everything arrives hot. The biscuits go in the oven first and the eggs are cooked last.
- Total time
- 50 min
- Yield
- Serves 4
Roasted Beet Salad with Feta and Walnuts
Beets roasted in foil until they slip out of their skins, with salty feta and walnuts toasted to the edge of burning.
- Total time
- 1 hr 15 min
- Yield
- Serves 6
Fruit Pizza Cookies
Sugar cookie bases, cream cheese frosting, fresh fruit on top. Assembled within an hour of eating.
- Total time
- 1 hr 42 min
- Yield
- Makes 16
Old-Fashioned Rice Pudding
Stovetop, stirred, and finished with egg yolks off the heat. Loose when it comes off, set by the time it reaches the table.
- Total time
- 50 min
- Yield
- Serves 6
Beef Caprese Skewers
Seared sirloin, tomato, mozzarella and basil on a stick, finished with a balsamic glaze you reduce yourself.
- Total time
- 30 min
- Yield
- Makes 24 skewers
Creamy Sausage Pasta
Italian sausage browned hard for its fond, deglazed with wine, and finished into a clinging sauce with cream, Parmesan and pasta water.
- Total time
- 35 min
- Yield
- Serves 4
Green Fruit Salad
Six green fruits, a honey lime dressing, and nothing brown. The dressing is what stops the apples turning.
- Total time
- 20 min
- Yield
- Serves 8
Farmhouse Chicken Noodle Soup
A whole chicken poached into its own stock, then shredded back in. The noodles cook separately and that is not fussiness.
- Total time
- 1 hr 50 min
- Yield
- Serves 8
Roasted Sweet Potato Bites
Caramelized at the edges, soft inside. High heat, a hot tray, and enough space between the cubes.
- Total time
- 40 min
- Yield
- Serves 6
Breakfast Grilled Cheese with Scrambled Eggs
Soft-curd eggs folded into melted cheddar between buttered, mayonnaise-crusted bread.
- Total time
- 22 min
- Yield
- Makes 2 sandwiches
Corned Beef and Sauerkraut Egg Rolls
A Reuben sandwich in a fried wrapper. The sauerkraut has to be wrung dry or the whole thing bursts.
- Total time
- 45 min
- Yield
- Makes 12
Beef Spring Rolls with Peanut Lime Sauce
Rice paper, herbs and seared beef, rolled cold. Nothing is cooked except the meat and the noodles.
- Total time
- 50 min
- Yield
- Makes 12 rolls
Air Fryer Salmon Bites with Garlic Cream Sauce
Eight minutes in the basket, caramelized outside and barely set within, with a lemon-garlic cream to dip.
- Total time
- 23 min
- Yield
- Serves 4
Greek Chicken Gyros
Yoghurt-marinated thighs off a screaming hot pan, folded into warm pita with tzatziki, tomato and raw onion.
- Total time
- 3 hr 34 min
- Yield
- Makes 6 gyros
Instant Pot Beef Stew with Vegetables
Thirty-five minutes under pressure for meat that would take three hours in the oven. The vegetables go in for a second, shorter round.
- Total time
- 1 hr 20 min
- Yield
- Serves 6
Crispy Air Fryer Breakfast Potatoes
Parboiled, roughed up, then air-fried hard. Craggy outside, fluffy inside, twenty minutes.
- Total time
- 32 min
- Yield
- Serves 4
The Best Burger Sauce
Five minutes, no cooking, and better after an hour in the fridge. The pickle brine is the part everyone leaves out.
- Total time
- 1 hr 5 min
- Yield
- Makes about 1¼ cups (300 ml)