Courses & dish types
Dinner recipes
The main event.
Dinner covers the meal most people cook most often, which is a different problem from cooking well on a weekend. The recipes tagged here are the ones that fit an evening: they say what can be done ahead, where the twenty minutes of actual attention falls, and what can be left alone. Several of them are better cooked in advance, which is treated as a feature rather than a fallback.
25 recipes
Shoyu Ramen with Chashu Pork
A soy-based broth that tastes long-cooked because it is. The pork rolls the night before, which is most of the work and none of the effort.
Spaghetti Aglio e Olio
Garlic sliced thin and taken slowly to pale gold in olive oil, emulsified with pasta water into a sauce that is nothing but those two things.
Slow-Cooked Beef Ragu
Coarse beef mince browned in batches then held at a bare simmer for three hours, finished in the pan with the pasta.
Slow-Braised Beef Shin
Beef shin browned hard then cooked for hours at a bare simmer, until the collagen melts and the meat falls apart under a fork.
Roast Chicken with Lemon and Thyme
A whole chicken salted and left uncovered in the fridge before roasting hot then moderate, so the skin crisps and the breast stays juicy.
Pho Bo
Charring the onion and ginger before they go near water is what makes the broth smell like pho rather than beef soup. Everything else is patience.
Pasta alla Norma
Fried aubergine folded through a simple tomato sauce with torn basil and salted ricotta, which is the ingredient the dish stands or falls on.
Lamb Rogan Josh
Lamb shoulder browned hard then cooked for two hours in yogurt and Kashmiri chilli, until the sauce is red, glossy and clinging rather than soupy.
Jerk Chicken
Chicken marinated overnight in scotch bonnet, allspice and thyme, then cooked slowly over smoke until the skin is lacquered almost black.
Green Curry with Chicken and Thai Basil
Cracking the coconut cream before the paste goes in is the step most recipes skip, and the one that decides whether this tastes fried or boiled.
Cacio e Pepe
Spaghetti in a sauce of nothing but pecorino, black pepper and starchy pasta water, emulsified off the heat so it stays smooth.
Goan Fish Curry
White fish poached in a coconut and tamarind sauce ground from whole spices, sour and hot in equal measure and cooked in under half an hour.
Escovitch Fish
Whole fish fried until the skin shatters, then dressed hot with vinegar, onion, carrot and scotch bonnet so it pickles as it cools.
Curry Goat
Goat shoulder burned into curry powder and then cooked for two hours, until the meat gives and the sauce is thick enough to coat rice.
Chicken Tikka Masala
Yogurt-marinated chicken charred hard under a grill, then finished in a spiced tomato and cream sauce that only works if the char goes in with it.
Chicken à la King
Poached chicken and mushrooms in a sherry cream sauce with pimento, served over rice, toast or pastry depending on the decade.
Brown Stew Fish
Fried whole fish simmered briefly in a dark sweet-savoury gravy built on browning, onion and thyme, and served with the sauce spooned over.
Weeknight Red Lentil Dal
Red lentils simmered down to a loose puree with turmeric, then finished with cumin, mustard seed and garlic bloomed in hot ghee.
Tagliatelle al Ragù
Bolognese ragù cooked for three hours with milk and a little wine, served on fresh tagliatelle rather than spaghetti, which is what Bologna actually does.
Steak Diane
Thin beef fillet seared in seconds, then finished in a mustard, brandy and cream pan sauce flamed at the table.
Lobster Thermidor
Lobster meat returned to its shell in a mustard and brandy cream sauce, glazed under the grill until the top is spotted brown.
Kimchi Jjigae
The stew that exists because kimchi got too sour to eat straight. Old kimchi is not a compromise here — it is the whole point.
Crisp-Skinned Salmon
Salmon fillets cooked almost entirely on the skin side in one pan, which crisps the skin and leaves the flesh barely set.
Cochinita Pibil
Pork buried in achiote and sour orange, slow-roasted in banana leaf until it falls apart. A Yucatecan dish that asks for one shopping trip and then leaves you alone.
Classic Margherita Pizza
Three toppings, nothing hidden — this is the pizza that shows whether your dough is any good.