Welcome to Five Weeknight Dishes. This newsletter is dedicated to recipes that are easy, quick and satisfying, words that all have a different meaning today than they did when we first started. I spent a few hours this week cleaning out my freezer and — compared with the other things on my to-do list, like making a master schedule of chores — it was just that: easy (because I wasn’t brooding about the state of the world), quick (because no one interrupted me, for fear that I would make them help), and satisfying (because I gained a precious few cubic feet of storage space).
You never know what’s going to make you feel safe in a crisis: For me, apparently, it’s ground meat. Another comfort is having a deep bench of milk and cream. I never thought that I would be this grateful for the ultrapasteurized stuff, which doesn’t taste as good or behave as well in recipes, but right now I am glad it lasts so long.
Here are five recipes for the week.
This virtually instant pasta sauce has so much lemon zest that the taste of the cream isn’t wildly important. Egg pasta, fresh or frozen, sets it off best.
This rich (yet dairy-free, if you swap in nutritional yeast or white miso for the Parmesan) soup is made almost entirely from pantry items but tastes bright and fresh. We don’t usually think of garlic as a main ingredient, but this soup is a classic in Spain and around the Mediterranean. The fresh spinach can be replaced with chopped collard greens, chard or another leafy green.
View this recipe.
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3. Turmeric Black Pepper Chicken With Asparagus
This new recipe from Ali Slagle has been a hit with quarantined cooks, who are coming up with multiple substitutions for the turmeric and asparagus. (My favorite is peeled broccoli stems.) A reader named Sandra wrote in a Note: “It was requested I make this EVERY Wednesday until the pandemic ends. (Made as written, with added chile flakes and splash of Sriracha.)”
4. Roasted Broccoli With Shrimp
Shrimp that have been frozen and thawed (sometimes more than once, if you bought them defrosted, then stored them in your home freezer) can take a lot more seasoning than truly fresh ones. Sweetness and crisp texture is what you want, so be sure not to overcook them; the broccoli should be well on its way to limp by the time the shrimp hit the pan.
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5. Tomato Rice With Crispy Cheddar
Sometime soon(ish) we will all be cooking with fresh, super-ripe tomatoes, but now is not that time. Fortunately, some whole canned tomatoes are — truly — just as good. (Here’s a recent taste test.) If the top brands seem expensive, think about how much you’d pay for a dozen ripe plum tomatoes, and decide accordingly.
I love to get your (cooking-related) notes: dearjulia@nytimes.com. I am on Instagram and Twitter, but go directly to NYT Cooking for recipes, or through Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest. It holds nearly 20,000 of them. Now is a good time to join! All of the past Five Weeknight Dishes newsletters are archived here, and you can send any subscription-related questions to the helpful people at cookingcare@nytimes.com.
