Today’s newsletter is all about recipes that take the flavors of one beloved food and apply them to something else, creating a dish that’s both familiar and novel. What can we say? It’s the end of January, we’re a little stir-crazy and we love a bit of fun in the kitchen.
First up: Ali Slagle’s crispy sour cream and onion chicken, which applies the lip-smacking, tangy flavors of sour cream and onion chips to boneless, skinless chicken breasts. As Ali notes, the sour cream is here for more than just flavor: Its lactic acid keeps the thin chicken breasts juicy. If you want to take the chip-as-chicken transformation even further, follow the lead of Jessica, a reader: “I am going to make this with crushed potato chips in place of the panko. I feel this is the hero(ic substitution) we all need right now.”
Featured Recipe
Crispy Sour Cream and Onion Chicken
If you’ve ever eaten Buffalo chicken wings and thought, “These are so good, I just wish they were meltier and cheesier so I could scoop them up with tortilla chips,” here’s Ali’s Buffalo chicken dip. And if you’ve ever wanted bulgogi without the beef, here’s Sam Sifton’s fantastically easy bulgogi-style tofu.
We have a robust selection of vegetarian recipes that take classic dishes — adobo, Bolognese, pernil — and make them meatless. This vegetarian tamale pie from Melissa Clark is a reader favorite, a comforting retro casserole made from a bean-based chili topped with cornbread batter and baked. Ali’s recipe for sheet-pan gnocchi with mushrooms and spinach is inspired by classic steakhouse sides: creamy horseradish-mustard sauce, wilted spinach and roasted potatoes. (The gnocchi are the roasted potatoes, and the mushrooms mimic beef’s meaty umami flavors.)
Finally, Melissa Clark’s lemon snacking cake with coconut glaze is essentially a more tender, more horizontal lemon poundcake. This flattening is a good thing — it means more surface area for that sweet, mellow coconut frosting.
Love your leftovers
Be sure to add a package of buns — or Hawaiian rolls, or your favorite sliced bread — to your shopping cart. Leftover crispy sour cream and onion chicken cutlets will make for some epic sandwiches, especially with quick pickles tucked in. That bulgogi tofu, slathered with spicy mayonnaise and scallion salsa, easily converts into bulgogi tofu sliders. And leftover Buffalo chicken dip, reheated and piled onto a bun or soft toasted bread, makes for a nice open-faced sandwich. Serve it with celery salad with apples and blue cheese for extra credit.
