Hello and welcome to Five Weeknight Dishes. Maybe it’s just a mood, but I am embracing extra big and bold flavors this week — statement dishes, if you will. The recipes below use ingredients like capers, kimchi and barbecue sauce to bring some spark to your table, even on a Tuesday.
What are you cooking these days? How’s the weather where you are? (Californians, I know you’re luxuriating in your citrus in the sunshine, not slumping in the cold like Bernie Sanders in his mittens.) Tell me of you. I’m dearemily@nytimes.com, and I read every note.
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Here are five dishes for the week:
1. Sheet-Pan Chicken With Squash and Dates
Dates and squash, olives and capers: Kay Chun expertly plays sweet off salty in this new recipe, which is reminiscent of chicken Marbella. The combination of flavors here sounds so delicious to me; I can’t wait to make this one. If you’re vegetarian or want a meatless dinner, omit the chicken and scale up the chickpeas and squash.
2. One-Pan Orzo With Spinach and Feta
Here’s a gloriously green meal for the grayest month of the year (or so it is here in the Northeast). Similar to the Greek rice dish spanakorizo, this dish by Melissa Clark could be a meal unto itself — which is how I’d serve it — but you could always pair it with quickly roasted fish.
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Rick Martinez uses fish in this weeknight stew, which is rooted in the classic Korean dish kimchi jjigae. This recipe delivers enormous flavor for not much effort, and a big bowl of it is paradise on a cold evening.
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The sweetness and tang of barbecue sauce, combined with the method of drying, searing and then broiling the tofu, make this recipe especially delicious. It comes from Folami Prescott-Adams, a community psychologist (and home cook), by way of the writer Nicole Taylor. Greens and baked macaroni and cheese would be ideal alongside, but store-bought rolls or rice would do well on a weeknight.
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