Weeknight Meals

When we were on a family vacation in New Orleans we came across a store in the French Quarter that had daily cooking classes. We decided to sign up for a class (it got us out of going to another museum with our dad), and it turned out to be a blast. We learned to make several different Cajun dishes, but this was my favorite. I love the beans, but we also learned the secret to making the best cornbread ever—add lots of milk and sprinkle sugar on the top.

Meatloaf is one of my dad’s self-professed specialties. He will spend an hour putting it together, and I swear he adds a pinch of just about every spice in the cabinet. Here we have narrowed down the list substantially, but it is still every bit as good as his. Sorry Dad.

When I was an exchange student, my German host mom made “hooner schnitzel” every day for my host dad’s lunch, but my favorite part was always the brat kartoff (fried potatoes), and the crispier, the better. This is truly a German dish that is served in almost every restaurant. You can also make Wiener schnitzel (veal) and schnitzel vom schwe (pork) the same way.

Chicken and dumplings is a great cold-weather dish. When we lived in the Midwest, we would always have this after a day of sledding or building snow forts, but when we moved to Arizona this tradition became a problem. Now when I want chicken and dumplings, I turn down the air conditioning, close the blinds, and pretend it’s snowing outside (if I don’t close the blinds, the palm trees kind of ruin the effect).

Because I am a vegetarian and the rest of my family is not, we are often at odds to come up with a dinner that will make everyone happy. Ratatouille (ra-tuh-TOO-ee) has saved the day more than once. I always make a double batch and freeze the extra in resealable bags. It reheats well in the microwave and is really good on pasta, rice, or whatever starch the rest of your family is eating.

I love this dish warm or cold! Just be careful, fresh noodles don’t need to cook very long. If they are overcooked, they will get kind of mushy and loose their texture. This is one of my favorite dishes for those bring-a-dish dinners, because even if there is nothing else I like, I can make a meal out of this.

Pasta is one of my favorite foods of all time, and this version is really easy and super good. Although I do occasionally eat shrimp, I probably make this more often without shrimp than with it. It kind of depends on if I am making it for myself, or the whole family. If my parents are eating, then for sure it has shrimp. If it’s my sister, I leave the shrimp out because she likes to add (big surprise) grilled chicken.

Fajitas are great because you can put anything you want on them. I like mine with meat, onion, and cheese, but my sister always grills some eggplant or zucchini for hers. They are also really good with refried beans, guacamole, or even Spanish rice.

When I make this dish I buy the Asian-style baked tofu so I don’t have to marinate it. It is difficult to find in regular grocery stores, but you can find it at most health food or specialty stores. If you can find it, you can skip the marinating and just stir in the teriyaki sauce at the end. For you meat eaters, a chicken breast can be used instead of the tofu.

A tuna melt is one of the easiest things to make when you are eating alone. It really doesn’t take much more work than a tuna sandwich, but because you eat it with a knife and fork, it always seem more like a meal than just a sandwich.

I love Caesar salad but, of course, my sister has to ruin it by adding chicken to cover up the taste of the lettuce. I mean really, how can you not like lettuce? This dressing is also really good on pasta salad, and at least Jill doesn’t feel the need to add meat to that.

This is one of my favorite after-school snacks. It tastes great and it makes a lot, so I can eat it for a few days in a row. Although it tastes better cold, I am usually too impatient (and hungry) to wait for it to chill, so I eat it warm the first day and then cold the rest of the time.

Taco Salad is awesome because it is literally a whole meal in one salad—and a vegetarian meal at that. If you want to add meat to the salad, you can cook and drain 1 pound of ground beef, stir in 1 tablespoon of chile powder, and spoon it onto the salad before you add the cheese. Tortilla shell bowls can be difficult to find, but you can just line a bowl with tortilla chips and get the same effect.

A rich, dark honey color, this tart-sweet-savory sauce does not resemble the cloying, sticky, bright red sauce that’s often served at Chinese restaurants. You can whip it up quickly to enjoy with snacks such as fried wontons. For spicy tropical flair, use unsweetened pineapple juice instead of water and include 2 teaspoons of minced ginger and a chopped Thai chile with the other seasoning at the beginning.

Commonly sold on Styrofoam trays at Chinese and Southeast Asian markets, these opaque white rice rolls flecked with orange dried shrimp and green scallion are a terrific southern Chinese snack. Purchased ones are seldom as tasty as homemade because producers tend to be skimpy with the dried shrimp, which give the rolls their oomph. These steamed rolls can be eaten as is, dipped in sweet soy sauce. Or they can be panfried to a delicate crisp. When served with other dishes, a few rolls are all you will need. For a light main course with a salad, double or triple the recipe.

Rice roll fillings are often precooked and reheated through steaming, but this popular one involves a filling of raw beef and orange zest that requires steaming to complete the cooking. For efficiency, professional Chinese cooks typically add the raw beef to the rice sheet about 30 seconds into cooking, but that is a difficult technique. Filling cooked sheets and then steaming them to cook the beef is easier and the results are the same. You do not have to use the baking soda in the filling, but some Chinese cooks use it as a meat tenderizer and to lend a silky texture. The beef should be hand- or machine-chopped so it isn’t too finely textured and clumpy (see page 158 for guidance).

Chinese cooks use rice sheets as wrappers for not only shrimp and beef, but also tasty stir-fries like this one. The chicken and vegetable mixture here could be used as a filling for deep-fried spring rolls, but it is also wonderful in this delicate treatment: encased in rice sheets and steamed. The chicken and vegetables are cut into matchsticks to complement the shape of the oll. To cut the chicken, freeze it first for 5 to 10 minutes, slice it, and then stack the slices and slice again into thick matchsticks. Pork tenderloin or beef flank can be substituted for the chicken. For a vegetarian version, replace the chicken with 2/3 cup packed shredded bamboo shoots (boil for 1 minute first to eliminate the tinny flavor) and decrease the cornstarch to 2 teaspoons.

You can often spot these crystalline, dome-shaped dumplings from a far because of their contents: emerald green Chinese chives. The garlicky, flat-leaf green is a workhorse ingredient in Chinese dumpling making that commonly plays a supporting role. Here the chives are the star, flavored by a bit of shrimp in regular and dried form to punch things up a bit. Chinese chive dumplings (called gow choy gow in Cantonese) can be served steamed or panfried to a delicate crispness, my preferred option. They do not freeze well, but I’ve never had a problem gobbling them up quickly.

If you like pot stickers and steamed buns, you’ll love these spongy-crisp panfried treats from Shanghai, where typically they are cooked in humongous shallow pans (much like large paella pans) with wooden lids. These buns are made of yeast dough that is filled with an aromatic pork mixture and then fried and steamed in a skillet. Cooking under cover with a bit of water delivers plenty of moisture to puff up the buns. Ground beef chuck or chicken thigh can stand in for the pork in this recipe. A bāozi is a mini bāo (bun) and for that reason, I like to keep these true to their name and shape small ones. However, you can elect to form sixteen medium-size (2 3/4-inch) buns. Roll the dough circles out to 3 1/4 inches in diameter and use about 4 teaspoons of filling for each bun; increase the water and cooking time a tad.

Many Asian cooks have incorporated Chinese spring rolls into their repertoires, but those of Filipino descent have embraced the rolls with the most zeal and flair. Derived from lūnpiá, a term from the Fujian (Hokkien) Chinese dialect, lumpia are one of the quintessential foods of the Philippines. In fact, I’ve seldom been to a Filipino celebration where there isn’t a platter of crisp lumpia, whether it be large ones like these or the diminutive finger-size lumpia Shanghai, which is obviously named after its Chinese parent. Banana-filled lumpia is a deliciously popular sweet snack called turon (page 194). Unfried lumpia sariwa are made by rolling up a lettuce leaf and filling of vegetables and meat in a spring roll skin. Fillings for fried lumpia vary from cook to cook, but they often have trademark Filipino touches, such as lots of fried garlic and onion. Simply seasoned, the meat (pork, chicken, or beef), shrimp, and vegetable mixture is precooked but not bound by cornstarch. Thinly sliced green beans are particularly pretty in the rolls and a touch of patis (fish sauce) adds another Filipino note. Vinegar is a favorite seasoning in the Philippines, so it’s apropos to dip the finished rolls in a tangy soy and garlic sauce. But if you’d like extra tropical flair, dunk the rolls in the Sweet and Sour Sauce on page 217 made with pineapple juice, ginger, and chile.