Hi and welcome to Five Weeknight Dishes, food for busy people who still want something good to eat. Easter and Passover converge this weekend, and if you celebrate I hope the week ahead brings you Cadbury creme eggs (do we like those?) and leftover ham, Hillel sandwiches and matzo lasagna (it’s a thing, and it looks amazing). Fair warning that while a few of the recipes below are Passover-appropriate, or could be adapted for Passover, not all are.
We’ve been busy over here at the office getting a few big projects ready to publish — stay tuned — so I’ll get right to the recipes this week. Also, we have some news: NYT Cooking is now on YouTube. Subscribe here to see new videos, including Alison Roman cooking from her column (starting with the cauliflower pasta below), and more. As always, you can reach me at dearemily@nytimes.com.
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Here are five dishes for the week:
CreditMichael Graydon & Nikole Herriott for The New York Times. Prop Stylist: Kalen Kaminski.
1. Creamy Cauliflower Pasta With Pecorino Bread Crumbs
Alison says this is one of her “personal dinners,” something she cooks just for herself and doesn’t share with the world — but this one was too good not to share. It’s got a cup of cream, so it’s not health food, but it’s also got a head of cauliflower, which I choose to think of as a sort of wellness offset. Serve with a sturdy green salad, and watch the video on YouTube.
At my place, we devoured these tacos as though we hadn’t eaten in days. The recipe is so simple that it might be hard to see how it comes together, but it does so deliciously. If a recipe calls for citrus zest and you think “I just can’t,” then it’s fine to skip the zesting here; there is plenty of lime in the salad already. I served the tacos with sliced avocado and pickled red onions I had in the fridge, and you could add beans on the side to stretch the meal.
4. Roasted Beets With Yogurt, Pistachios and Coriander
Lately I’ve been roasting pans of vegetables and serving them over grains for meatless dinners. If that sounds punitive, it isn’t — especially if the vegetables are as full-flavored as these balsamic beets, and strewn with appealing toppings like pistachios and herbs. If you wanted to add meat, simple chicken or pork chops would go nicely. You could also add cut-up carrot to the pan with the beets.