Recipes By Ali Slagle
505 recipes found

Slow-Cooker Porchetta Beans
Braising stew meat with dried beans ensures a rich broth no matter what else is in the pot. Here, white beans and pork shoulder are cooked with the heady flavors of porchetta: garlic, fennel, sage, rosemary and black pepper. While fennel seeds or pollen are used in porchetta, this recipe opts for the bulb and its stalks, which soften into silky strands. Round out the meal with sautéed broccoli rabe or kale and crusty bread. For a stovetop version, see here.

Porchetta Beans
This is a special pot of brothy beans with ingredients reminiscent of porchetta: shreds of pork shoulder, wedges of tender fennel, and a broth heady with herbs, black pepper and garlic. Eat it as you would any braised white bean, such as over pasta or alongside sautéed broccoli rabe or kale and crusty bread. For a slow-cooker version, see here.

Everything Bagel Cottage-Cheese Dip
Creamy, tangy and full of pep, this quick snack brings new life to your cottage cheese. Scallions, capers and everything bagel seasoning are stirred into cottage cheese, then torn arugula is scattered on top for a peppery crunch. Scoop into it with any combination of crackers, pretzels, toast and raw vegetables like cucumbers or celery — or eat it on a toasted bagel or English muffin. A batch, minus the arugula, keeps for up to two days in the fridge, so keep it on hand for anytime you need a pick-me-up.

Pork Tenderloin With Chickpeas, Tomatoes and Oregano Vinaigrette
This easy sheet-pan meal starts by roasting pork, cherry tomatoes and chickpeas with nothing more than oil, salt and pepper. No need to brown the meat first; you’ll get plenty of flavor from the punchy combination of oregano, garlic, oil and vinegar that is poured over everything after roasting. As the pork rests, its juices mingle with the vinaigrette and roasted tomatoes to form a sauce for the tender meat and plumped chickpeas. Serve it alongside a green salad, grains or orzo, a spoonful of Greek yogurt, crumbled feta or a pita warmed in the hot oven.

Sheet-Pan Feta With Corn and Shishito Peppers
It takes fewer than 10 minutes for the broiler to deliver a complete meal of molten, salty feta, sweet corn and smoky shishito peppers. While grilling cheese with vegetables is common in Mexican and Mediterranean traditions, this indoor, sheet pan rendition catches all the juices and oozing cheese as the feta slouches and chars and the vegetables plump and caramelize. Red onion quick-pickled in lime juice and a flurry of herbs cut through the richness. Serve it straight from the pan with warm pita, tortillas, quinoa, orzo, avocado, tzatziki or refried beans. For a kick, add thinly sliced jalapeños or serrano to the red onions, or top your plates with pico de gallo or hot sauce.

Sesame Salmon Noodle Bowls With Ponzu
Silky salmon, chewy noodles, crisp vegetables: These cold noodle bowls are refreshing and satisfying, and don’t require much effort. Inspired by zaru soba and udon — cold noodles served with dipping sauce — this recipe uses supermarket stars to deliver flavor fast. Coating the salmon with toasted sesame oil and seeds accentuates the fish’s richness, while ponzu, a sauce of citrus juices, soy sauce and dashi, brightens straight from the bottle. If you like, add a kick with wasabi, grated ginger, shichimi togarashi, yuzu kosho or thinly sliced serrano pepper.

Burrito Bowls
You can’t go wrong with rice, beans and gooey cheese swaddled in a warm flour tortilla. But this streamlined bowl version of the burrito delivers more texture and color in just a few steps. Cook rice and beans together in a skillet, then melt cheese on top. Spoon into bowls, then top with a big chunk of avocado and a quick corn salsa, which can be made with fresh or canned corn. If your fresh corn is sweet, use its kernels raw, or cook it by microwaving the cobs in their husks for three minutes before shucking. Feel free to add tomatoes, pico de gallo or radishes to the bowls as well.

Skillet Broccoli-Cheddar Rice
While this weeknight-friendly recipe has the DNA of a broccoli-rice casserole, each element shines on its own: The rice is buttered and oniony sweet; the broccoli florets are tender, still-green and not mushy; and the cheese is broiled on top for a mix of gooey and crisp bites. Together, they make a dish that’s tempting enough to eat on its own. Or to make it a fuller meal, eat it alongside rotisserie chicken or pork chops or stir in a drained can of beans or tuna when you stir the rice.

Grilled Patty Melts
Oozy and crisp, a patty melt is always a treat to eat, but not so much to cook: The process can be splattery, and it can be tricky to make them for more than two people at a time. The grill not only solves these problems, but imbues the simple components — ground beef, bread, cheese and onions — with a hint of smoke. Grill the onions until golden, then the patties, mostly on one side, for a chargrilled exterior and medium-rare inside. While that’s happening, toast the bread and melt the cheese on the cool side of the grill. Serve with a pickle and mustard alongside to cut through the richness.

Strawberry-Basil Cottage Cheese Bowls
This easy breakfast isn’t too sweet or too savory, and that’s what makes it enticing to eat. Combine strawberries with vinegar, honey, basil, salt, and pepper, then let them sit for 15 minutes or up to 1 day. The berries become sweeter, tarter and slightly spicy from the black pepper, and their released juices develop into a pink syrup that you spoon over cottage cheese. Accentuate the savoriness by adding arugula, watercress or prosciutto; or lean into sweet by adding a spoonful of jam or granola.

Miso-Grilled Shrimp with Corn and Shishito Peppers
You could throw some shrimp and vegetables on the grill and call it dinner, but a sauce makes the whole thing sing. Here, a pantry-friendly miso-honey sauce does double duty: It coats the shrimp before grilling, helping the exterior caramelize before the delicate meat toughens. Then, once everything’s off the grill, dunk the shrimp, corn and shishito peppers into more sauce. (You get to eat this dinner with your hands!) Leave the tails on the shrimp so they don’t fall through the grates, and also because a crispy, crackly shrimp tail is a treat to eat.

Grilled Steak With Tomato Tartare
This warm-weather dinner channels steak tartare's signature combination of rare meat and sharp accoutrements: The steak is charred on the outside and medium-rare within, then topped with a mixture of chopped tomatoes, shallots, capers and chives. But unlike classic tartare, the embellishments are left in larger pieces for bigger, bolder punches. The steak and tomato juices combine to form a bright and briny sauce that you can sop with grilled bread or drizzle over a tuft of arugula, watercress or Little Gem lettuces.

Slow Cooker Chickpea Stew With Lemon and Coconut
Soothing yet bright, this soup tastes like something that took careful attention, but really just requires throwing five ingredients into a slow cooker and letting it cook for hours. Dried chickpeas and cauliflower soften in the gentle heat, and the coconut milk thickens as the mixture cooks, seasoned with earthy turmeric and sweet lemon peel. While a little lemon juice balances the richness, the predominant lemon flavor here isn’t tangy but rather floral from the peels releasing their oils into the stew. Reminiscent of curries throughout South and Southeast Asia, it can be eaten over rice, or with sliced almonds or cilantro on top, but it can just as well stand alone.

Slow-Cooker Gochujang Chicken and Tomatoes
In this straightforward slow cooker recipe inspired by dakdori tang, you’ll be rewarded with a tomato-braised chicken that’s light enough for summer but hearty enough for winter. The balance comes from the interplay of cherry tomatoes and gochujang: The tomatoes burst into a tart, light broth that’s deepened with warming heat and fermented savoriness from the chile paste. Serve the chicken with plenty of the sauce and tomatoes over rice, rice cakes, udon or ramen noodles, roasted sweet potatoes or grits. Garnish with any combination of toasted sesame seeds, lime wedges, cilantro or thinly sliced scallions or serrano chiles.

Chilled Tofu with Peanut Sauce
This no-cook recipe loosely follows the Chinese traditions of liangban tofu and bang bang sauce by topping cold, silken tofu with a fiery, tangy peanut sauce and raw celery. Eaten together, it is creamy and crunchy, hot and cold, intense and mild all at once. (The combination of peanut butter and celery might happily remind you of ants on a log, the childhood snack.) Eat with hot, steamed rice alongside, if you like.

Spicy Miso Lentil Soup
This soup is simultaneously comforting, fresh and nasal-clearing — as good for sick days as for those crisp days of spring. The key is a spicy bright-green slurry made by blending a bunch of raw spinach, miso, lime juice, fresh chiles and ginger. Because it’s poured into the soup pot of tender lentils and rice right at the end, its color and flavor stays vibrant. For pops of savory nuttiness, top your bowls with slivers of shiitake mushrooms that have been browned in sesame oil. They make this soup especially satisfying, but you could also top bowls with stir-fried or roasted vegetables like asparagus and winter squash.

Chickpea Noodle Soup
With a golden broth, creamy chickpeas and bouncy angel hair noodles, this quick vegan soup will remind you of chicken noodle soup. To create a savory broth, sizzle carrots, celery and onion with nutritional yeast, turmeric and herbs in oil. A generous amount of oil adds silkiness to the broth and helps carry the flavor of the aromatics, while nutritional yeast gives the broth the soul-satisfying properties of chicken bouillon. While you can use broken pieces of any long noodle, angel hair is especially wonderful; delicate, soft and highly slurpable, they mimic the fine egg noodles found in many delis’ chicken noodle soup.

Grilled Asparagus With Burrata and Furikake
There’s something truly special about this combination of charred asparagus and scallions, milky burrata and crunchy furikake, a Japanese condiment of seaweed, sesame seeds and fish flakes. Maybe it’s the umami of the naturally savory asparagus, which intensifies on the grill; or the nubbly seeds blanketing the soft cheese; or the ingredients so redolent of land and sea. It’s probably best to not overthink it, and just dig in. Serve it alongside lentils, grains or grilled chicken, seafood or mushrooms for a full meal.

Gnocchi Gratin
This speedy take on potato gratin uses store-bought potato gnocchi instead of sliced potatoes. Not only does the switch cut down on prep time, but the gnocchi get soft and luxurious as they warm in the heavy cream. A sprinkle of nutty Gruyere and salty Parmesan melts into the creamy sauce, which is also scented with garlic, sage and nutmeg — that is, except the layer of cheese on top, which browns and crisps. Serve this as a side to roasted cabbage, asparagus, chicken or another protein.

Lentil Soup Potpie
Rescue lentil soup from austerity by simmering it underneath a flaky, buttery crust. All of the hallmarks of a good lentil soup are here — sweet carrots, celery and onions, tender lentils and savory broth — with the added bonus of a warm pastry crown that shatters with each spoonful. The recipe is fairly hands-off, too, thanks to two shortcuts: canned lentils and store-bought puff pastry. To make this vegan, use vegan puff pastry (like Pepperidge Farm) and skip the egg wash, which will result in a more matte, but just as delicious dish.

Simple Whole Artichokes
An artichoke, which is actually the flower bud of a thistle, is a beguiling thing to eat, with its prickly outer leaves, purple inner leaves and a hidden, tender heart. This cooking method is as straightforward as they come, with minimal preparation and a luxurious sauce of melted butter for dipping. Spike the butter with the same ingredients used to season the boiling water; that could be lemon, black pepper and bay leaves, as written, or switch it up with dried chile, garlic, sage leaves or coriander seeds. Just keep the lemon, which adds brightness and keeps the artichokes from browning as they cook.

Skillet Gnocchi With Miso Butter and Asparagus
This skillet gnocchi recipe has a spring in its step: It takes just 10 minutes to cook and is loaded with sweet springtime asparagus and baby greens. But that doesn’t mean the flavor is fleeting: The combination of miso, butter and vinegar forms a silky, rich sauce that glosses the seared gnocchi and vegetables and anything else you wish to add. Perhaps that’s the crunch of sliced radishes or toasted pistachios, or the crispness of a fried egg or seared fish.

Tortellini Pasta Salad
Italian sandwiches don’t hold up well, but pasta salads do, so transform your go-to deli order into a make-ahead pasta salad that’s hearty, punchy and not at all soggy. Instead of regular pasta, this recipe uses cheese-filled tortellini for soft, creamy bites. There’s plenty of salami too, of course, along with sweet and sharp roasted red peppers, balsamic vinegar, red onion and arugula. But it’s adaptable depending on your personal preferences: Add more vegetables, such as frozen corn or cauliflower, or briny olives or capers; skip the greenery, or make a grain salad by swapping the pasta for farro.

Spinach and Feta Lentil Bowls
These satisfying bowls are heaped with silky greens, spicy lentils, jammy eggs and salty feta. The fact that all of the components are cooked in the same pot and can be refrigerated for the week is nice, too. The greens are cooked like horta, a Greek dish of boiled wild greens often finished with olive oil and lemon. Using a mix of spinach and bitter greens, like kale or mustard greens, creates a juicy and bittersweet combination. The lentils, dressed with oregano and crushed red pepper, provide a tender base for the toppings, but grains would work, too. And feel free to embellish further with sliced raw fennel or carrots, toasted nuts or a dollop of cottage cheese.