Hello and welcome to Five Weeknight Dishes. As we plod through these first few weeks of 2021, I felt the best thing I could do for you was to tell you to make meatballs — lots of meatballs.
That is what I did on Sunday, tripling Kay Chun’s recipe for pork and ricotta meatballs and making a pot of sauce to go alongside. This allowed us to have spaghetti and meatballs for dinner twice, and for lunch once, too. I’ve tried many other meatball recipes, and in the category of fast and easy, this one is simply the best. The combination of pork and ricotta makes them tender and juicy; the Parmesan provides a punch of flavor. (Vegetarians, note that Kay has also developed an excellent recipe for vegetarian meatballs.)
You could use jarred sauce if you don’t want to deal with homemade, but once you get the pot on the stove you’ll see (or remember) how easy it is to do, how bright and fresh the results are compared to even the best jarred sauce. Start that before you make the meatballs and both will be done around the same time.
The meatball recipe is below, along with recipes for a week that calls for comfort, for simplicity, for sauce. I’m dearemily@nytimes.com, if you have meatball thoughts to share or ideas for recipes you’d like to see next time.
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Here are five dishes for the week:
I have four small tips for this recipe from Kay Chun: Use a heavy hand with the Parmesan (and if you do, a lighter hand with the salt). Try not to overbake them. If you check them and think they could go another minute or two in the oven, they’re probably already done. Let them bathe in simmering tomato sauce before serving. Lastly, make extras.
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2. One-Pot Japanese Curry Chicken and Rice
Another recipe from Kay Chun, this one inspired by the classic Japanese stew, which is served with rice alongside. Here, Kay tinkers with the method, blooming a few spices in butter to form the base of the sauce and cooking the rice with the chicken and vegetables, for a superb one-pot meal.
3. Pan-Fried Trout With Rosemary, Lemon and Capers
This simple recipe by Molly O’Neill is a very good way to treat yourself nicely. Rosemary needles are pressed into the fish before the fillets are sautéed in butter, and then you make a pan sauce with white wine and lemon. Use wine you’d actually want to drink, not least because I think you should have a glass of wine with dinner. Maybe two.
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Francis Lam wrote about this singular method for making kimchi fried rice, which he learned from a home cook, Grace Lee. “It just tastes happy,” she told him. A reminder that, as with all fried rice dishes, this recipe starts with cooked and cooled grains, ideally leftover ones, so account for that in your cooking (or takeout ordering).
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