So: I don’t have a microwave. This is simply a counter space issue; I’ve given priority to my cutting board, electric kettle and coffee grinder. I also, whether out of habit or laziness, don’t mind eating leftovers cold. The only thing I don’t want to eat cold is rice, and that’s not an issue since it gets turned into fried rice or crispy rice.
But occasionally, a recipe comes along that makes me regret my microwave-less ways, and right now, it’s Ali Slagle’s microwave sticky toffee pudding.
Could I make regular ol’ sticky toffee pudding, that glorious mix of cakelike batter, buttery sauce and fudgy dates? Sure, but that would take an hour, and my sweet-treat cravings are impatient little demons. Ali’s microwave version, which serves one or two people, is ready in 10 minutes. Please make this speedy sticky toffee pudding for me, in both the “I will make it in your stead” and the “I will make this and bring it to you” interpretations.
Featured Recipe
Microwave Sticky Toffee Pudding
Three more for your microwave:
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Samantha Seneviratne’s chocolate pudding cake, which you can find in the dictionary under “gooey.”
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Ali’s Nutella pudding cake, a three-ingredient, five-minute wonder.
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And this easy (sorry, easiest) lemon curd from Melissa Clark, which uses one-minute zapping and whisking intervals to produce a smooth, creamy spread.
Dessert, done. For dinner, how about Sheela Prakash’s honey-garlic salmon with grapefruit? Her speedy recipe adorns roasted salmon fillets with a gremolata-like relish that swaps the usual lemon for rosy, floral grapefruit. For those keeping close tabs on our New York Times Cooking recipes, consider this the third entry rounding out our Grapefruit Trio, forming a super supper triad with Andy Baraghani’s sticky miso salmon bowl and Ali’s miso-butter chicken.
I’ve been on a mushroom kick lately — I blame Tanya Sichynsky’s “mushroom week” Veggie newsletter and a sublime maitake au poivre I had on a date-night dinner — so I’ve bookmarked this new mushroom and egg donburi from Ali. It’s a good use of those dried shiitakes I always keep in the pantry, and the water used to rehydrate the mushrooms can be used as the cup of dashi.
If you’d like to beef up your mushrooms with, um, chicken, I’d recommend this wine-braised chicken with mushrooms and leeks, a lovely Melissa dish. I asked Melissa, and yes, you could sub sour cream for the crème fraîche, with one caveat: “Don’t let it simmer after adding the sour cream or the sauce could break,” she said. “Crème fraîche is more stable.”
Lastly, I know we’re leaving peak cabbage season, but I, for one, believe cabbage is forever. (At least, that’s how long it seems to last in my fridge.) These cabbage steaks from Melissa Knific are the perfect vehicle for those odds and ends of dressings and sauces you might have. Imagine them set in a shallow pool of herby green sauce, drizzled with miso vinaigrette or scattered with charmoula. I love you, cabbage.
