Weeknight Meals

The origin of this dish is unknown, but it's a common menu feature of many Italo-American restaurants of the red-sauce variety. In kitchen lingo, a shoemaker is a shortcutting, skillful hack; a shoemaker cobbles things, a meal, together from the meager things on hand. In Italian, scarpa translates as "shoe" and scarpariella is slang for shoemaker. The actual name for one who plies this trade is calzolaio. In Chicken Scarpariella, a spring chicken is "hacked" up in to small pieces and quickly cooked with a few common ingredients.

This looks and tastes like egg salad, even though it's made with tofu. Active time: 15 min Start to finish: 20 min

Bulgogi Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from restaurateur Jenny Kwak's book, Dok Suni: Recipes from My Mother's Korean Kitchen. Kwak also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. To read more about Kwak and Korean cuisine, click here. As you will see when you are barbecuing this marinated beef, its smell will make your mouth water. Once you try Korean barbecue, it will become something you crave — even if you're not usually a beef eater. Bulgogi is traditionally eaten with white rice and a variety of sides, usually spicy ones. Most important, serve it with fresh red leaf lettuce, thinly sliced raw garlic, and some spicy fresh peppers to make a ssam: holding the lettuce in your palm, make a wrap that envelops the barbecued beef, some rice, the dipping sauce, and, if desired, the vegetables. Feel free to experiment!

Serve with: Spinach salad topped with toasted almonds, and sesame breadsticks.

Madras-style curry powder, which is spicier than the standard, adds a little heat here.

Sour cream and beets are inseparable in Eastern European cooking. Here's a fresh new way to enjoy them together.

This version of a tagine, the classic Moroccan stew, calls for dark meat because it stays moist when braised. If you prefer white meat, reduce the cooking time by 15 minutes.

Despite its English roots, this dish has become a cherished American favorite at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners in New York and beyond. But why save it for special occasions? Creamed onions are so delicious that you'll want to eat them year-round.

I don't know if it's because of all the hot dogs I ate on the sidewalks of New York as a kid, but I never seem to get tired of mustard. I use it as a background flavor in a lot of my sauces, but in this one mustard is front and center. Use a whole-grain mustard, such as Pommery de Meaux from France, so that your sauce has a nice crunch from the whole seeds.

Serve with: Red-skinned potatoes roasted with thyme, and steamed green beans.

In manor-house cooking, meat, poultry, and fish were preserved by being "potted" — minced and combined with seasonings, then packed in a container and covered with a layer of fat or butter. The fat was removed before serving, and the contents of the container spread on toasts or crackers.

Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 45 min

Active time: 15 min Start to finish: 30 min

This is nice on cold nights, especially when you're craving something rich, comforting, and restorative. It's saucy and intensely flavored, with lots of interesting textures.

Active time: 15 min Start to finish: 30 min

Only native Californians like two wine-making friends of mine in Salinas can regularly throw together a vegetable chili such as this utilizing their almost year-round abundance of fresh vegetables and herbs. For those of us with seasonal gardens, various substitutions often have to be made (canned tomatoes, dried herbs, and the like), but such is the availability almost everywhere today of certain fresh produce even in the coldest months that no imaginative cook should have much trouble concocting a very tasty vegetable and bean chili according to this basic recipe. One advantage, by the way, of using a 28-ounce can of tomatoes with their juices instead of the fresh is that most likely you won't have to add any water to keep the chili slightly soupy.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.