The Dinner Scramble

Anything pot pie, the best thing I've ever made (aka broccoli quesadillas), miso soy sheet pan veggies, and the most hands off pork and rice.

First and foremost, come cook with me! On Wednesday, December 10th I’m hosting what I hope will be the first of a monthly Cooking Collective. Once I have the group, we’ll figure out together what to make. I’m super excited about it. All are welcome—whether you’re eager to get chopping or would rather watch, pick up a few tips and tricks, and drink coffee with nice people in my kitchen. If you’re interested, fill out this quick FORM.

Looking at the recipes for this week, I realize that everything feels like it’s moving at super speed. I feel like I could use two or three extra hours in every day. I’d like to tell you that I sit down on Sundays and meal plan and go grocery shopping once. Sometimes I get into a groove and I feel good at life (hence why I started this whole substack! So I could take that planning off your plate and you could feel good at life, too!). But this is not the norm. More often it’s somewhere between 2 and 6pm and I’m looking at what we have going on in the afternoon/evening and crossing it in my brain with what we have in the fridge, freezer, and pantry. This is how these meals came together. None of us are immune to the scramble.

Quick: Broccoli Quesadillas

It feels silly to give you a recipe for quesadillas with some chopped up steamed broccoli, but something about this combo on this day, with these corn and wheat tortillas from Trader Joe’s just hit and I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever made. So maybe consider this in the permission category. Steam some broccoli, chop it up, use butter in the pan rather than oil, you might want to cover the pan while you’re cooking the second side to fully melt the cheese. No one will be mad if you sneak some extra cheese on the underside of the tortilla to get extra crispy. I love chili on Halloween and I think tomorrow we might just be ordering pizza, but this would perfectly fit the bill if you’re trying to get some real food into your kids before they eat 800 fun sized Snickers.

Sheet Pan: Miso Soy Veggie Tofu

This sheet pan dinner is one of my favorite kinds of meals—healthy, filling, savory, and so quick to put together and throw in the oven. I love the combination of textures between the soft squash, the bouncy tofu, and the crispy kale. On this particular day I made a pot of chewy farro to go with it and it was perfect, but it’s great with any kind of rice or grain.

1 14oz block extra firm tofu, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 honeynut squash (they’re like little butternut squashes with a more concentrated flavor, but you could use butternut, delicata, sweet potatoes, anything), peeled, seeded and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 bunch of lacinato kale, cut into 1-inch strips
1/4 purple cabbage, thinly sliced (optional, it just makes it so pretty)
3 tablespoons white miso
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons neutral oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
Optional for serving: Rice or any cooked grain, peanuts, cilantro

Preheat oven to 425. Line two sheet trays with foil and then parchment. In a large bowl, combine the tofu and squash. In a measuring cup or bowl, combine the miso, soy sauce, oil, and sesame oil. Stir to combine—it might look like it won’t come together, but it will, just keep stirring. Pour half the miso mixture over the tofu and squash and mix so the pieces are evenly coated. Divide them between the two sheet trays, spreading them out in a single layer. Next add the kale and cabbage to the same bowl and pour over the rest of the miso mixture. Toss to coat, and spread those vegetables on top and around the tofu and squash. Pop both sheet trays in the oven and roast until the squash is tender, the tofu is browned and the kale is crispy like a kale chip. Serve with rice (or other grain) and top with peanuts and cilantro.

Make Ahead: Slow Roasted Pork with Rice

As we were sitting down to this dinner, I couldn’t help but think this was the most hands off dinner I had made in a long while. I had time in the morning, but a busy afternoon leading up to dinner. Early in the day I got rice going in my rice cooker and I decided to make slow roasted pork to go with it. I ran to the store, grabbed a pork butt, came home, cut it up, layed it out on a foil lined-sheet tray, seasoned the pieces well and popped it in the oven for a couple of hours. When I got home just around dinner time I threw together a quick salad (sliced cucumbers would have totally worked, too), put the Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce on the table, and we all dug in a few minutes later.

Wild Card: Anything Chicken Pot Pie

Remember up top when I said I look at the calendar for the afternoon and create a mental Venn diagram between the day, the fridge, the freezer, and the pantry? This was the epitome of this dinner. I usually add celery and potatoes to my pot pie, but I didn’t have any and I didn’t worry about it. I pulled chicken, frozen peas, butter, and puff pastry from the freezer, corralled an onion, flour, and one of those little honeynut squashes from the pantry, and some carrots, fennel, Better than Bouillon, and parsley from the fridge. In the hour I had before picking up the kids I made the filling and stuck the whole pot in the fridge to cool. I took 15 minutes later in the afternoon before leaving at 5pm to shuttle some kids around and transferred the filling to two baking pans (I was aiming for optimal filling to crust ratio). I rolled out the crust, layed it sloppily on top and popped them both in the oven. They were lovely, a little sweet from the squash and grounding on a cool fall day.

Pot pie is not easy breezy—it’s inherently a two step project no matter what. You have to make the filling on the stove and then add the pastry and bake it. That said, it is super flexible. Brits have known about the flexibility of the savory pie for a long time, I just hadn’t really thought about it until I swapped in these other ingredients and held my breath, hoping my pot pie lovers would be on board with the changes. So feel free to swap the chicken for sausage, add mushrooms, whatever you have around. The one tip that I think is worth keeping is that I always start with 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) of butter to cook the vegetables, and then before I add the broth, I add 1/4 cup of flour and let that cook out a little. I don’t usually add cream to things like pot pies, but this trick, creating a kind of cheater roux, makes the sauce luxurious.

That’s it for this week! I hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween!