There isn’t too much we can add to the happy conversations swirling around this fire chicken, a recipe by Maangchi adapted by Sam Sifton. Her YouTube video for cheese buldak has been viewed over nine million times, and Sam’s adaptation on New York Times Cooking boasts over 3,000 reviews and has five stars. It’s a 30-minute weeknight crowd-pleaser, a bubbling skillet of sweet-spicy chicken cuddled up with chewy rice cakes, under a blanket of mozzarella turned golden in the broiler. You can skip the optional rice cakes if they’re hard to find, or make like Jeremy Kirk, a reader, who “substituted gnocchi for the rice cakes. Wonderful.”
Featured Recipe
Maangchi’s Cheese Buldak (Fire Chicken)
To balance out the kick from your fire chicken, here’s Yewande Komolafe’s roasted vegetables with creamy coconut dressing. Ginger, rice vinegar and a little bit of mustard brighten up coconut cream to form a tangy vinaigrette for earthy roasted beets, carrots and fennel. As Yewande notes, be sure to save any fennel fronds attached to your bulb — they add a sweet licorice note to the finished dish.
Speaking of balance: This pasta with pumpkin seed pesto, a recipe from Genevieve Ko, blends summer’s favorite herb (basil) with autumn’s signature seed (pumpkin). We should note that Genevieve is something of a pesto sorceress; if you haven’t already, be sure to check out her broccoli-walnut pesto pasta and the pistachio pesto she uses on this dreamy mortadella sandwich.
What’s a weeknight without a canned chickpea? Zainab Shah’s chana masala uses either canned or cooked chickpeas, simmering them with plenty of cumin, coriander, turmeric and tomatoes for a buttery, soothing stew. Serve with Priya Krishna’s foolproof microwave rice, or with Tejal Rao’s whole wheat roti.
It’s almost Friday! Time for a cookie. Specifically a brown butter chocolate chip cookie from Millie Peartree. The brown butter give the cookies that deeply nutty, caramelly flavor, and you don’t have to wait for fridge-cold butter to come to room temperature as in most cookie recipes — just plonk your butter in a pan to sizzle softly while you measure out your dry ingredients. And for even more chocolate chip cookies — salted tahini, anyone, or saucer-size crinkle cookies? — be sure to check out this collection of our very best chocolate chip cookie recipes.
