Eric Kim has just written a luminous essay about Japanese breakfast, with its constellation of small savory dishes (rice, miso soup, fish, pickles), and the daily practice of preparing it. You could make it bespoke every day, but the more pragmatic approach is to cook some of the elements ahead and fill out the meal with leftovers and other scraps from the fridge — “cooking for future you, not present you,” as Eric says, an idea I love and one you can embrace for any meal.
His new breakfast recipe for miso roasted salmon can be borrowed for dinner — it’s as satisfying at 7 p.m. as it is at 7 a.m., beautifully and saltily simple. (Also borrow his recipe for spinach gomaae, with its light sesame dressing.) The salmon is below, along with four other dinners for the week ahead.
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Recipe ideas? Suggestions? What are you cooking? Tell me everything: dearemily@nytimes.com.
1. Miso Roasted Salmon
Gently salty and bright from miso and lemon, this easy recipe from Eric Kim is destined to be eaten with a bowl of white rice and, in my home, something green.
2. Crispy Cheddar Chicken Tacos
Possibly the highest use of rotisserie or leftover chicken: these tacos from Rick Martínez, which are especially mouthwatering because they include the Cheddar costra (or crust) that you’ll find in taquerias in Northern Mexico and the American Southwest. This is an A-plus dinner that you can pull off on a moment’s notice.
3. Creamy, Spicy Tomato Beans and Greens
Take two cans of white beans, some tomato paste, sun-dried tomatoes and cream, and you’ve got this brilliant quick recipe from Alexa Weibel. If you’re old enough to remember when sun-dried tomatoes were an It ingredient — the late 1980s through the mid ’90s — then you might also recall that they deliver deep umami on each bite.
5. Pan-Seared Asparagus With Cashews
As much as I love asparagus, it can be a letdown — limp and vegetal in a bad way — in the wrong recipe. Not so in this new dish from Melissa Clark, which aims for amped-up crunch with chopped nuts, coconut flakes and sunflower seeds added to crisp-tender pieces of asparagus. Adding a runny egg and rice makes this dinner, but it could also be a side dish to plain chicken or fish.
