Does anyone else find themselves happily tumbling into more project cooking lately? Maybe it’s because I’m clinging to the coziness winter provides. Maybe I’ve watched too many charming, ASMR-adjacent YouTube videos of people calmly assembling wonderful dinners in beautiful locations. Or maybe it’s because, if my hands are busy smashing garlic or deveining shrimp, I can’t doomscroll on my phone. Whatever the reason, I’ve really been enjoying my quality kitchen time as of late.
So I’m very excited to make Lara Lee’s chicken curry laksa, a gorgeous, hearty noodle soup that’s kaleidoscopic in flavor: Sour tamarind and spicy dried chile punch through the sweet coconut milk; salty dried shrimp and gently bitter nuts balance umami-rich shrimp paste. Lara is a really thoughtful cook — as anyone who has read her “Coconut and Sambal” and “A Splash of Soy” cookbooks knows — so her recipe is full of tips and tricks for anyone needing ingredient substitution and shortcut advice, like how to boost store-bought laksa paste with lemongrass, garlic and ginger.
Featured Recipe
Chicken Curry Laksa
This laksa also scratches a particular cooking itch of mine: making something at home that I’d normally order at a restaurant. I’ll bet that a lot of readers behind the five-star reviews for Hetty Lui McKinnon’s sweet and sour cauliflower — which rejects deep-frying those florets for a cornstarch-coated roast in a hot oven — are also happy for a fast, meat-free version of a takeout staple. If you add Hetty’s salt and pepper tofu, some sautéed baby bok choy and a pot of steamed rice, that’s a pretty epic Saturday night feast.
Or, if it’s not Saturday night without some pizza, how about a Crazy Crust Pizza? “The no-yeast, no-knead recipe for Crazy Crust Pizza was first popularized decades ago when it was published by Pillsbury,” writes Cybelle Tondu, our recipe’s creator. The simple batter of flour, milk and eggs is poured into a cornmeal-dusted skillet and topped with crushed tomatoes, shredded mozzarella and your choice of toppings (Cybelle calls for the classic sausage, red onion and pepper combo). This pan pizza comes together in about an hour, which is less time than it takes for me and my husband to decide where to order pizza from.
A while ago my colleague (and perfect blue sweater-wearer) Tanya Sichynsky wrote a “we have wine bar at home” Veggie newsletter, and I think that’s the perfect way to describe the sort of fancy-ish but not fussy dinners I aim to assemble. Mark Usewicz’s simple pan-roasted fish fillets with herb butter, a recipe adapted by Julia Moskin, is the exact sort of dish I’d want to serve alongside Ali Slagle’s new halloumi-flecked salad or Martha Rose Shulman’s chickpeas with baby spinach and some sort of chilled, skin-contact wine (with marinated olives for the table, naturally).
And Ramadan Mubarak to all those observing! Zaynab Issa has two lovely new lassi recipes — a strawberry lassi and a salted lassi — as well as a helpful lassi how-to. “The drink’s origins can be traced back to the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent,” Zaynab writes, “and it’s been consumed for more than 1,000 years, with good reason. The simple yogurt-based refreshment, blended with sweet or savory ingredients, is versatile, easy to make and especially ideal for slaking thirst any time of year.”
