Less is more: These are words to live by in the kitchen, especially midweek between 5 and 8 p.m. There are no trophies for the most time spent toiling on dinner after work, no awards for the most elaborate dishes sailing off your stove on a Tuesday evening.
I love a particularly ingenious less-is-more recipe, which is why I’m excited about Eric Kim’s new five-ingredient recipe for peanut butter noodles — a Parmesan-tossed classic in the making. (If the phrase “five ingredients or fewer” thrills you, we have a whole collection of recipes that meet that description over here.)
Eric’s noodles, and four other stunningly simple recipes, are below. What are you cooking this week? What’s your favorite brilliant and easy dinner? I’m at dearemily@nytimes.com. Tell me everything.
1. Peanut Butter Noodles
Come for Eric’s excellent weeknight (or midnight) noodles, stay for his crystalline essay about living with a romantic partner for the first time. This is easy cooking — a satisfying dish assembled from just a few brilliant pieces, and you can use either instant ramen or spaghetti for the noodles.
2. One-Pan Crispy Chicken and Chickpeas
You barely need to take out a knife to make Yossy Arefi’s five-star, no-fuss dinner, which combines chicken thighs, baby spinach and chickpeas in one skillet and perks up the flavors with a squeeze of lemon. Add spices to the chicken if you like, but definitely serve the dish with yogurt, hot sauce or both, as Yossy recommends.
3. Orange-Glazed Baked Salmon
Do yourself a favor and make this delicious (and deliciously clever) salmon supper from Farideh Sadeghin. The fish is drizzled with an orange-honey glaze and then gently cooked; reserved glaze is then tossed with olive oil and greens for a breezy salad. Try the citrusy-sweet mix on other vegetables, too.
