For me around this time of year, a doozy means anything that takes more than 20 minutes to put together. Long nights, hibernation, crazy amounts of work for those of us in catering, and a cozy bed that won’t quit calling my name on weekends? Sounds like lots of quick one-pan meals to me. There’s nothing wrong with these — they’re delicious and filling — but I forget that I like to fuss a little bit sometimes when I invite someone over after a period of not paying much attention to the kitchen.

Mac was over on Friday for dinner before we went to see James’s play (an apocalyptic retelling of A Christmas Carol, of course). I’d cooked quinoa and put some big fat corona beans in to soak the night prior, so putting this together took less time than the beans did to soften in their spicy broth. If you use canned beans, this goes much more quickly, but the texture of the dried is a hundred times better. Let it take time while you put the sweet potato cakes together. They’re a riff on a Deborah Madison recipe from Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone that I’ve made several times, in several different ways. They play nicely against the earthy lamb. If you want to make this all vegetarian, of course, you can leave out the lamb, and you can even make the cakes vegan with tofu instead of cheese and an egg’s worth of egg replacer.

Ragout of Corona Beans and Lamb Sausage with Harissa Sweet Potato Quinoa Cakes
serves 4

for the ragout:
1 cup dried corona beans or other large white beans
sunflower oil
2 lamb sausages, about 2/3 pound, in 1/2″ slices (if you’re in Portland, go for the Moroccan ones at Sheridan’s)
1/2 medium yellow onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 bay leaf
1/4 cup white wine
1 quart chicken stock
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint (do not substitute dried)
a few gratings of lemon zest

for the cakes:
sunflower oil
1/2 medium yellow onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 10-oz sweet potato, peeled, cut in 1″ chunks, steamed until soft, and mashed
1 cup cooked quinoa
1 egg
1 cup breadcrumbs
1/3 cup grated jack cheese
2 teaspoons paprika
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon harissa paste
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley and/or cilantro
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh mint (do not substitute dried)
pinch of salt
a few gratings of lemon zest

for the kale:
2 cloves garlic, peeled and smooshed but not cut
1 bunch kale, stripped and roughly chopped
1/4 cup white wine
pinch of salt
a few gratings of lemon zest

Soak beans in 4 cups water overnight.

In a soup pot heat a film of oil over high heat until it shimmers. Add the sausage in a single layer in the pan, turn the heat to medium, and don’t stir until there’s a nice brown crust on the sausage. Once you get that sear, move it around to cook it through, then remove it from the pan and set aside. Add onion, celery, bell pepper, garlic, and tomato paste and cook until softened, 2-3 minutes. Add bay leaf. Turn heat back to high and add wine, scraping up all those lovely brown bits from the bottom of the pan. When you put your nose in the steam and no longer want to leap back from the waft of booze, the alcohol has cooked off and you can add the soaked beans (discard their soaking water), cooked sausage, and chicken stock. Bring to a boil and drop the heat down to a simmer, then make the sweet potato cakes.

In a small pan heat a film of oil over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and cook, stirring, until softened, 2-3 minutes. Spoon into a mixing bowl with remaining ingredients and squoosh it all up with your hands. Form into patties and set aside.

When the beans are cooked through, after an hour or so, add lemon zest and mint. Then cook the sweet potato cakes: heat a film of oil in a nice wide pan over medium high heat until it shimmers, then place as many cakes as can fit in the pan without crowding and cook until brown, 2-3 minutes per side. When all the cakes are cooked, leave the oil in the pan and use it to cook kale: put the garlic cloves in the oil and as soon as you smell them, pull them out again. They should not be browned. Add kale and salt; stir to coat in the oil. Add a couple of tablespoons of water and immediately cover the pan to let it steam for a minute or two. While that cooks, chop the garlic, which should be softened. Remove cover, put garlic back in the pan, and add wine. Cook off the alcohol and add lemon zest.

Now, plate it! Ragout on the bottom, top with kale on one side and cakes on the other. I used two cakes per serving but there should be enough for three if you like.

Joe writes the “Cooking For One” column in the Washington Post and has lots of wonderful ideas to keep you from eating takeout every night when you don’t have a hoard of people to feed. I knew I liked him when I saw the section of his book dedicated to sweet-potatoes-with-stuff-on-them. This beautiful mess is one of those recipes, and it’s perfectly suited for just about now, because it’s full of winter foods but it’s not heavy. (The rapini and sriracha take good care of that.) Throw it together, watch a silly movie, and worry about this weekend’s cookie exchange party another time.

Miso Pork on a Sweet Potato
adapted from Serve Yourself by Joe Yonan

1 small sweet potato (about 6 ounces)
2 teaspoons neutral oil
1 shallot, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
a few gratings fresh ginger
3 ounces lean ground pork
4-5 stalks (6 ounces) broccolini or rapini, cut into 3/4″ pieces
1 tablespoon white miso
2 tablespoons water, plus more as needed
1 scallion, white and green parts, thinly sliced on the diagonal
Sriracha

Preheat oven to 425F. Use a fork or sharp knife to prick the sweet potato in several places. Place on a piece of aluminum foil and bake until the sweet potato is tender and can be easily squeezed, 40-60 minutes. (Alternatively, to speed up the process, the pricked sweet potato can be microwaved on high for 1 minute, then carefully transferred to the oven on a piece of foil. Bake until tender, 25-35 minutes.)

Meanwhile, pour the oil into a medium skillet over medium high heat. Add shallot, garlic, ginger, and pork and stir fry until no traces of pink remain in the pork and it starts to exude juices, about 5 minutes, breaking up any large lumps as you cook. Add broccolini and stir fry until the vegetables are barely tender and retain some crunch, 3-4 minutes. Add the miso and water; cook, stirring, for 1 minute or so, until a sauce forms. If the mixture seems dry, add up to a few more tablespoons of water, stirring to combine.

When the sweet potato has finished baking, place it on a serving plate. Use a knife to slash open the sweet potato, then spoon the pork mixture on top. Sprinkle with scallion, drizzle with Sriracha, and eat while it’s hot.

I had the best of intentions for so long, but I finally came to terms with my own habits: leftovers and I are not to be, like friendships that grow apart after too many years of trying. Our calendars just never line up anymore, or our mutual interests become singular interests, and before you know it, my attention has shifted to the leeks in the crisper or the new banh mi joint down the street. (Mm, banh mi.) I’m sorry, Leftovers, but maybe it’s time we come to terms with the slow and agonizing death of our relationship, precipitated by my recurring abusive neglect.

“But wait!” say Leftovers. “I have something for you.”

“Oh yes?” I say, halfway through buttoning up my jacket before I leave the house for tasty tasty sandwiches, hopeful for one last chance to soothe our chafed alliance.

“It’s that chicken soup.”

Ah, the chicken soup. The meditative, beautiful, spicy chicken soup that I’ve devoured wordlessly on so many occasions, laden with velvet rice, squeaky-clean cilantro, and enough fish sauce to keep me coming back. It’s the fish sauce, friends. It’s always the fish sauce. This soup has put me on a craving for Asian food that’s lasted weeks now. It’s made in the Asian style, which means no mirepoix saute, no deglaze — really, what it is, is chicken stock with all the stuff still in it. Yes, this means what you think it means: you will make this soup with water and it will be amazing. I was always pretty fanatic about using flavorful liquids to fill a soup pot and when I was told that this was the technique I raised my eyebrows but followed the directions, and it was a great exercise in blind trust.

I like to take a little time dicing the vegetables for this, having a little more intention than the usual whack-whack that soup veg takes for me. Opening up the peppers, sliding my knife through the carrot and daikon, making small even squares of everything — even the mushroom caps. You don’t have to do that, of course, but you may enjoy it. It makes a big fat pot of soup, so it’s a pretty good return on investment. Don’t get squeamish about the fish sauce, either. If you taste this and you feel like it needs a little extra something, the answer is another teaspoon of fish sauce.

Addictive Chicken Soup
makes a potful

1 3-4 pound chicken
1 red bell pepper, cleaned and diced
2 thin carrots, scrubbed or peeled and diced
1 yellow onion, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 small daikon radish, scrubbed or peeled and diced
5-6 shiitake mushrooms, stems set aside, caps diced
1 jalapeno pepper, diced
5-6 cloves garlic, minced
1 2″ piece ginger
1 stalk lemongrass
2 lime leaves
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 bunch cilantro
1/4 cup jasmine rice
sliced green onion, to garnish

Put everything but the cilantro, jasmine rice, and green onion in a pot big enough to hold them. Chop the stems off the cilantro bunch, wrap them in a cheesecloth packet with the mushroom stems, and add to the pot. Cover the whole shebang with water, pop a lid on it, and put it on high heat. When it’s just barely come to a boil, drop the heat down to a very calm simmer and let it go for at least an hour. Preferably two. Check for seasoning and add salt (or fish sauce!) and pepper to taste. Remove chicken from the pot and set aside to cool for a few minutes. Add the rice. In the time it takes for that to cook, the chicken will have cooled down enough for you to pick the meat off the bones and put it back in the pot. Discard skin and carcass. Discard the lemongrass and cheesecloth packet too, while you’re at it.

A note on the rice: it’s going to expand. A lot. And it will keep expanding after you’ve put the remaining soup in Tupperwares and put it in the fridge. And if you put too much in, the next day it will look like rice pudding. (I speak from experience.) If I know I’m making this soup to eat off of for a few days, I will ladle some out into a smaller saucepan and cook a tablespoon or two of raw rice in that individual batch.

Garnish with cilantro leaves and sliced green onion. This soup loves Sriracha.

This is what we want home food to be like. When I feed friends (who are my chosen family as I am 3000 miles away from the bio-relatives), I do my best to make them feel cared for but not doted on — I routinely forget to offer them drinks as they walk in the door but no one thinks twice about grabbing a glass from the cupboard behind me as I’m cleaning kale or chopping parsley, and I usually eschew appetizer plates unless I know it will be a particularly long time between their walking in the door and sitting down to eat. Come over for a dinner party sometimes, but really, come over for dinner, and tell me how your day went, and I will feed you what you’re craving, or I’ll guinea pig you into a new recipe which may or may not be a disaster, or I can make you that thing — you know, that thing that I make. That thing that your mom makes, because everyone’s mom has a thing that she makes. That recipe that got passed down because it is completely idiotproof and totally delicious, and even though you may not be able to fry an egg, you can make this, and every time you eat it, it’s what home cooking feels like.

My father’s aunt Mary was not an accomplished cook. As a child I never knew this, though, because I always associated her with the orange bread that my dad would make and attribute to her. Out of one recipe my 8-year-old mind relied on sumptuous smells constantly emanating from Great-aunt Mary’s kitchen in Philadelphia, the reality of which was well-hidden by a 12-hour drive from our home in western North Carolina. Come to think of it, I don’t think Aunt Mary ever cooked for me, but the tight, spongy texture of this quickbread is that thing, that thing that my dad makes, that thing that I make, that thing that Aunt Mary made. It’s matter-of-fact, delicious food, and it serves my matter-of-fact way of feeding people, the way that has just a hint of “now THAT’S a tasty, easy idea.”

Orange Bread
makes 1 loaf

Although it’s nice to use a microplane to zest oranges for this, resist the temptation. A little bit of pith doesn’t hurt anything this time, and the chunkier texture is pleasant here. Lately when I’ve been making this I’ve been squezing the juice from the oranges into the measuring cup and then filling it up the rest of the way with water, instead of using all water as the recipe calls for. I’ve made it vegan with shortening and egg replacer and it was just as tasty.

peel (excluding most of the pith) of two oranges, chopped finely
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups water
2 tablespoons shortening or butter, melted
1 egg, well beaten
3 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder

Preheat oven to 350F. In a saucepan boil peel, salt, sugar, and 1 cup water for about 15 minutes to make a thin syrup. Let cool. Add remaining water, shortening/butter, and egg. Sift together flour and baking powder, add to wet ingredients, mix thoroughly. Bake in a greased loaf pan for 1 1/4 hours or until a tester comes out clean. Let sit in the pan for 5 minutes then turn out onto a rack to cool.

Mary Anderson

No towering vulgarity of food arrived before me. It was a perfectly portioned suite of eggs and fixins. I plopped a forkful onto a chunk of muffin and took a bite. Four silent minutes later, I licked the plate. The next day, I went back and ordered the same thing. I think I took my time with it and forced some distracted conversation with the friend across the table. I don’t remember which friend I brought, but I remember the sweet, tangy, spicy nuances of those jalapenos.

Because attempting to make migas just like Bakery Bar does would end up with lots of frustration unless they sell those peppers by the jar (hint hint), I make ‘em my own way: eggs, scrambled (dry!) with tasty Mexiness. (Of course it rhymes with sexiness.) Five minutes of prep, five minutes in the pan, and you’re set for a zingy and filling breakfast. Or lunch. Dinner, too, come to think of it.

Migas
serves 1

1 tablespoon netural oil
1 poblano chile, ribs and seeds removed, sliced
2 shallots, sliced
3 eggs, beaten

to garnish:
crushed tortilla chips
chopped cilantro
2 tablespoons sour cream
2 tablespoons salsa
1 avocado, diced

Heat oil in an 8″ skillet over medium heat. Add chile and shallots and cook until soft and a bit brown, 3 minutes. Add eggs and cook to desired runniness. Empty skillet onto a plate and top with tortillas, cilantro, sour cream, salsa, and avocado.

What else could you put in migas? Plenty! Chorizo/soyrizo, cotija, different peppers, tomatillos… just don’t forget the tortilla love. This is made easily vegan with tofu instead of eggs, and some vegan sour cream.

Also, don’t scratch your eye after slicing poblanos, like I just did. You’d think I would remember these things by now.

What is this?  I asked.

What?  She said.  It’s lentils, onions, garlic, pepper, and chorizo.

But it’s… it’s amazing, I said.

I didn’t know until long after I’d come back to the U.S., from that fateful first trip to Iberia, that that is smoked paprika, pimenton.  I read an article once that described pimenton as “Spanish for ‘better than paprika’.”  It’s glorious.  You know how people always say that food tastes better when it’s cooked over a campfire?  That’s because it tastes like it has smoked paprika in it.  It makes your dish feel well cared for.

And while this stops short of being stupefyingly brilliant enough to be able to do your laundry and give you a pedicure, what it does do is make many vegetarian dishes taste like they’ve got bacon in them.  Try putting it in your vegan split pea soup next time, or adding it to your breakfast potatoes.

This stew is one that I’ve made a few variations of since I started eating meat on a regular basis, about a year ago.  The first time I made it was for 300 people, and it was so popular I had to stretch it out with white beans halfway through the day.  I’ve been teaching a few small classes at home in the past year and when I made this one available, it was the hardest one to convince folks to sign up for (other options were salmon in chermoula and a vegan curry dinner, all very exotic-sounding compared to humble chicken stew), but it’s by far a sleeper hit.  Pimenton elevates these simple ingredients into a sum greater than the parts.  Serve with crusty bread slathered with excellent butter — or even better, http://parsnipsaplenty.com/2010/02/13/biscuits/.

Chicken Stew with Root Vegetables and Smoked Paprika

serves 4-6

1 1/4 pounds chicken quarters or drumsticks, including bone and skin

sea salt

black pepper

at least 3 teaspoons smoked paprika, divided

2 tablespoons olive (not extra-virgin) or sunflower oil

1/2 pound yukon potatoes, diced in 1″ chunks

1/2 pound carrots, diced in 1″ chunks

1 pound sweet potatoes or winter squash (avoid delicata, which will make the whole stew very sweet)

1/2 pound rutabaga, peeled and diced in 1″ chunks

1/4 pound fennel bulb, diced in 1″ chunks

1 pound red onion, sliced

1/2 pound mushrooms, sliced

1/4 pound cleaned braising greens (yay kale!)

1 teaspoon dried thyme

4 tablespoons butter

6 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 1/2 quarts chicken broth

1/4 cup loosely packed fresh sage leaves, minced

1/4 cup loosely packed fresh rosemary leaves

Preheat oven to 400F.  Rub chicken with 1 teaspoon each salt, pepper, and smoked paprika and place on a foil-lined baking sheet.  Toss potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes/winter squash, rutabaga, and fennel with 1 tablespoon oil and 1 teaspoon each salt, pepper, smoked paprika, and thyme, and spread out in one layer on another foil-lined baking sheet.  (The one layer is important — it promotes even browning.  If you pile all your vegetables three layers deep, the top layer will get a nice toasty brown and the bottom layer will just steam.)  Put both pans in the oven and roast, stirring the vegetables every 10 minutes or so, until the chicken is cooked through and the vegetables are soft and crispy-brown on the edges, 30-45 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the gravy:  Heat chicken stock in a 2-quart saucepan.  Melt butter in a 2-quart saucepan over medium-low heat.  Add the flour, whisking constantly to incorporate.  Whisk frequently until the roux is golden and the raw-flour smell has changed into something lightly toasty.  Set aside for just a minute to let it cool down from the napalm-like temperature it has achieved.  Put it back on medium-low and whisk constantly while pouring in the hot chicken stock.  Bring this mixture to a boil, making sure the roux is well-incorporated with the stock and that nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pan, and set aside.

In a 5-quart soup pot, heat 1 tablespoon oil and cook the onion and mushrooms with a dash of salt and 1 teaspoon smoked paprika, until they are softened and happily browned, about 5 minutes.  If anything is sticking to the bottom of the pan, that’s fine — add a glug of water, white wine, or extra chicken stock you have around, and scrape the pan to pull those lovely bits up.  Add the gravy, sage, rosemary, and roasted vegetables.  Remove and discard the skin from the chicken and pull the meat off the bones.  Add the meat to the stew.  Bring the whole shebang up gently to an easy boil — blasting the heat on this will just make the bottom burn.  If it needs a little extra oomph, add some more smoked paprika.  Let it simmer for 15 minutes and serve.

Portland keeps talking about how everything is coming so late this year. “Well, I wanted to make cherry pie earlier this summer, but everything is coming in so late.” “I keep waiting for blueberries to show up, but everything is coming in so late.” Now here it is, the end of August, and we’re finally laden with farmers’ markets that have more than greens to offer. It’s time to slice up whatever you’ve got, toss it with some good olive oil and call it dinner, because the bounty has arrived. And my own late arrival to the CSA has me jumping right in.

I threw together a nice heirloom tomato salsa yesterday and munched on that while I simmered five pounds of apricots on the stove with ginger, cinnamon, sugar, lemon zest, and rosewater. After pouring that jam into the canning jars, I made this potato salad to take to Amanda’s birthday party. As I’m all about plowing through CSA ingredients, I’m also into rifling in the back of my pantry, and yesterday I pulled out a can of smoked trout. How could I go wrong? I thought.

When I left the party last night there were merely a few specks of cilantro remaining in the bowl. It’s messy, it’s bright, it’s comforting, it’s summer.

Potato and Cucumber Salad with Smoked Trout
makes enough for a potluck

Cook 2-3 pounds new potatoes in boiling salted water until tender. Drain and run under cold water, and when they’re cool enough to handle, slice. Put in a large bowl with half a diced jalapeno, the kernels of an ear of corn (canned/frozen won’t work well here – omit if necessary), a big handful of roughly chopped cilantro, a few sliced basil leaves, 3 sliced scallions, a peeled-seeded-sliced cucumber, a tin of smoked trout, and a couple of diced tomatillos (optional). Toss with about a teaspoon of salt, a few grinds of black pepper, and a few glugs of good olive oil.

Not so this recipe. Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s “Salad of Beef with Lime, Chile and Mint Inspired by Laos” (whew) raised my eyebrows enough that I made it last summer for Avery, and tonight for Ben. This is a riff on Lynne’s riff on larb, the Laotian crisp, spicy, protein-heavy salad that breaks summer heat into tart bursts of flavor. I’ve been using tofu, with a curiosity about shrimp for the next go.

Whereas Lynne broke out the grill for this, I seared the tofu; she used rice noodles, and I picked up a fun squishy pack of kelp noodles at the store that work beautifully. Instead of tossing it all together, I laid those big gorgeous pieces of soy curd right on top. After I snapped the photo, I realized I had an avocado, too. That took this from delectable to downright scarfable.

Larb, Kind Of
adapted from Lynne Rossetto Kasper
serves 2-3 as a main course

1 large garlic clove, minced
2 teaspons grated fresh ginger
2 packed teaspoons brown sugar, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon each salt and ground black pepper
zest and juice of 1 large lime
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons water

1 12-oz package kelp noodles, or 12 oz dry rice noodles, soaked in warm water to soften
4 whole scallions, thinly sliced
1/3 cup fresh cilantro leaves, roughly torn
1/3 cup fresh mint leaves
1 jalapeno, thinly sliced
2 small cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and thinly sliced
1 cup thinly sliced green cabbage

1 16-oz package extra firm tofu, pressed for at least 30 minutes
1 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup neutral oil, like sunflower, canola, or peanut (coconut oil would be good, too)

Mix dressing ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.

Mix salad ingredients in a large bowl and set aside.

Stand the block of tofu on end and slice down the middle. Stack the two slabs and cut into thirds, making six pieces. Put cornstarch on a plate and coat the tofu in it.

In a large skillet, heat oil barely to the smoking point. (Really. It’s got to be hot.) Pull tofu out of your cornstarch dredge, tap off the excess cornstarch, and lay each piece carefully in the hot oil. Shake the pan occasionally to make sure nothing’s sticking, but otherwise leave it in there for 2-3 minutes to let it get a nice brown crust. Turn with a fork and brown the other side. Remove from oil.

Toss the salad with 2/3 of the dressing and spread on a platter. Arrange the tofu on top and finish it off with the rest of the dressing. I recommend an avocado, too.