Three Things

Five easy weeknight dinners, my new giant salad bowl, ChatGPT in the kitchen

Greetings eaters and readers! Last week, we went to a birthday party in the East Village for our friend Avideh, and I learned a new phrase that her friend Niko used in a toast to describe her: She is a Flavor Seeking Organism. How great is that? I immediately applied it to my daughter, Abby, who was home for only 48 hours this past weekend (I’ll take what I can get) yet still managed to check most of her food boxes: Dinner at a favorite local Italian spot, a slice at Luigi’s with her sister in Brooklyn, a Chipotle burrito bowl (naturally), and, at home, shawarma the way she likes it, over rice with pickled onions and cucumbers. In book news, next Tuesday, June 10, I’ll be chatting with thriller author Andrea Bartz on Substack Live about all things writing — novels, cookbooks, newsletters, and whatever else comes up. Please come, and come with questions. Lastly, a quick housekeeping note before we kick things off: Reminder that all Dinner: A Love Story content you receive by email or via the Substack app lives permanently on my website, too — so if you lose track of a recipe or a book rec or whatever else in your inbox, you can always visit me there to find it. And now! Your Three Things….

1. Five No-Recipe Dinner Ideas

Last week, during my Substack Live book talk with Adam Roberts, we discussed New York restaurants, cookbooks we love, and, naturally, home-cooked dinners. Adam wanted to know how often I cook from recipes as opposed to winging it, and my answer? Not that often. I definitely use official recipes on the weekend, when I am more likely to be experimenting with a new cookbook or when I’m having people over and want to go with something tried-and-true. But on a weeknight, it’s all about no-recipe recipes. Thought now was as good a time as any to share a few stand-bys:

Turkey Smash Burgers with Special Sauce (above)

We almost always have good-quality ground dark (⬅️crucial) turkey meat in our freezer from the farmer’s market, and probably once a month we’ll make Oklahoma-style smash burgers, where the onions steam flavor right into the patties on the pan. To make: Flatten four-ounce turkey patties in a hot cast iron pan, pressing thinly sliced white onions into each top as they brown. Flip after about 3-4 minutes, making sure onions stay attached to the patty, and fry another 3 to 4 minutes. (Because these are turkey burgers, and not beef, we like them with no pink inside, so they’re hard to overcook.) Add a slice of American cheese during last 45-60 seconds of cooking. Serve on potato or burger buns topped with special sauce. Special sauce: Mix together 3-4 tablespoons mayonnaise with 1-2 tablespoons ketchup, a chopped-up sweet dill pickle (a tiny bit of pickle juice is good), a hint of paprika, salt and pepper.

Tomato Soup with Salad (or, fine, grilled cheese) This is such a comforting on-the-fly dinner and nine times out of ten it appears on my table when it’s cloudy or raining. You essentially just cook a chopped small onion in melted butter and olive oil (a decent amount of both) then add salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, a clove of garlic, a 28-ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes with their juices, and a little water. After cooking down for about 30 minutes, puree it in the pot using an immersion blender. A batch based on one 28-ounce can serves two generously, but the recipe can easily (and artlessly) be scaled up: On a rainy Wednesday last week, the soup for two was simmering away on the stovetop when my friend Samidh texted me he was in the neighborhood. Could he stop by? (You know how much I love this text!) So I sautéed half an onion in a separate skillet, then added those and another 28-ounce can of tomatoes to the soup before pureeing again. Perfect. Even though, it turned out he had already eaten dinner — I made him a gin and tonic instead.

Salmon with Yogurt-Mustard-Dill Sauce I can remember making this in my first apartment in New York in 1994, that’s how attached to it I am. Sprinkle a salmon filet with salt and pepper. Roast in a foil-lined baking dish in 400°F oven for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, combine the following in a small bowl: 1/2 cup plain yogurt, 2 heaping teaspoons mustard (preferably Dijon), 1 tablespoon chopped dill, squeeze of lemon, salt and pepper. Serve salmon with a dollop of sauce on the side. If you don’t want to turn on the oven, you can also butter-fry the salmon. Serve with a simple salad or roasted potatoes.

Tuna Niçoise Salad In a large salad bowl, toss together your favorite greens (we like gem lettuce) with any or all of the following: Cooked green beans, cooked halved small red potatoes, quartered hard-boiled eggs, Italian olive-oil packed tuna, cherry tomatoes, Niçoise olives, minced red onion and a vinaigrette mixed with a bit more Dijon than usual.

Spaghetti with Spinach and Caramelized Onions I learned this crowdpleaser from my old food editor friend Frances Boswell over two decades ago. Add olive oil into a skillet set over medium-low heat, and cook 3 large onions (sliced) for as long as you have, preferably at least 20 minutes. While onions cook, prepare 1 pound spaghetti according to package directions. During the last minute of pasta cooking, add three very large handfuls of fresh spinach to the water. Drain pasta and spinach together. Toss pasta with olive oil and distribute into bowls. Heap the onions on top of the pasta. Top with freshly grated Parmesan.

Vegetable Frittata with Gruyère Don’t let those luscious August tomatoes distract you from the point here: A perfect frittata. My go-to is on page 91 in The Weekday Vegetarians: Get Simple.

2. A Dramatic Salad Bowl

Merch alert! For those of you who messaged me: Here is a link to the giant Dansk salad bowl (bottom right) shown in last week’s 100% Make-Ahead Party Menu. It was a birthday gift from my sister, and on nights when I’m serving a crowd, it has been very welcome indeed. The bowl is made of Acacia wood and was designed for Dansk by Jens Quistgaard in the 1960s, if that means anything to you — I fell for the retro shape and its generous size, sixteen inches across the top. It makes even the simplest salad look bountiful and appealing. Who’s coming over?

3. ChatGPT in the Kitchen

I am so afraid to write anything about AI or ChatGPT — not because I’m afraid of the technology, but because all I can do is picture my future self (not to mention current readers) laughing at me for how wide-eyed and clueless I may sound. (Sort of like the way we all watch that 1994 video of the Today Show hosts asking, “What is Internet?”) But courage comes in many forms, so here I go sharing a recent discovery: Did you know that you can enter recipe URLs into ChatGPT and it will generate a shopping list for you? It organizes ingredients by supermarket section (pantry/frozen/produce), consolidates ingredients when they show up in multiple recipes, and makes a note of something if the recipe says it’s optional. Obviously AI can do a million other things in the cooking realm — help you design a menu for any occasion, rework a recipe to suit certain dietary needs, you’ll comment with more uses below I’m sure — but it’s the grocery list generating, something I find so completely tedious, that has me euphoric…and ok, wide-eyed. For the uninitiated, this is how it works…

Let’s say this weekend, you want to make Grilled Yogurt-Marinated Chicken, Double Mustard Potato Salad, a Simple Green Salad, and maybe a Berry Cobbler or a Mud Cake with Salted Chocolate Frosting for dessert. (How good does all that sound, btw?) All you have to do is cut and paste the URLs of those recipes into the ChatGPT box (or the Claude box, pick your poison), tell it to “make a shopping list based on these recipes” and in a millisecond, you’ll have it. This doesn’t work with recipes that are behind a paywall or with recipes that require a subscription, like the ones you get from my newsletter. (Yet another reason why I’ll never abandon my original blog.) Pretty cool, right? What do you think? Are you laughing at me? What do you use ChatGPT for when it comes to the kitchen? I’d love to know…unless it renders me and DALS obsolete.

Have a great week,
Jenny

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🥬 🍅 For more easy, approachable vegetarian recipes, check out my New York Times bestselling book The Weekday Vegetarians and the follow-up: The Weekday Vegetarians: Get Simple. 🍳🌿