My wonderful colleague Allison Jiang — you may remember her from this excellent dive into Lunar New Year hot pot parties — has assembled a collection of 14 easy, healthy dinner recipes to cook on repeat. “Healthy can look like different things to different people,” Allison writes, “but the goal with these dishes is to help you get cooking, and to make something that feels nourishing.”
For me, a healthy dinner can be one that puts vegetables front and center, letting whatever is in season soak up the spotlight. I’m on a cauliflower kick at the moment, and the other night my husband made Zainab Shah’s new roasted cauliflower with nước chấm sauce with a huge crucifer I’d shoved in the fridge. The best way I can describe this dish is zingy: The mix of fish sauce, rice vinegar, sugar, garlic and chiles is sour and salty, pungent and punchy, absolutely electric. We piled the dish on steamed rice (of course), and the two of us gobbled up the whole head of cauliflower. A healthy appetite for our healthy dinner.
Featured Recipe
Roasted Cauliflower With Nước Chấm Sauce
I also adore this noodle dish from Hetty Lui McKinnon that Allison included in her collection; I might go so far as to say it’s why I try to keep a block of firm tofu in my fridge. The recipe is vegan as written, but I’ve added shredded cooked chicken and can confirm that it, too, is delicious cloaked in that combo of tofu cream and chile crisp.
It’s also the season to go big on beets, so I have my eye on this new beet salad with celery and pomegranate from David Tanis. Would I make some extra dressing and add cooked grains (farro, I’m thinking) to give this salad some extra heft? Yes, I would.
Sometimes the healthiest thing I can do for myself is a bit of meal prep on the weekend to keep from sliding into some truly questionable meals during the week. And so here is Lidey Heuck’s versatile baked chicken thighs and her satisfying (and reheatable) baked oatmeal.
Lastly, I can’t resist an olive oil cake, and Brian Levy’s one-bowl lemon and olive oil cake looks very irresistible. I’ll let Kerry, a reader, take it from here: “This is a lovely cake to eat — so very good. I made it just as written. It smelled delightful while cooking. It has a lovely crumb. Not too heavy and very lemony. It is a hit in my house. It is very easy to make too.”
