Lunch - quick and easy recipes - page 143

This fun, slightly wacky twist on the chile relleno calls on everybody’s favorite savory snack food—ramen noodles—to stuff poblano chiles. Simply boil the noodles, then mix with Jack cheese, bacon, and mushrooms, and stuff away. Since the starchy element (the ramen) is already inside the peppers, you can bypass dipping the stuffed chiles in batter and frying. Just bake and enjoy.

Fish offers a wide canvas for tacos: grilled, battered and fried, ceviche-cured. Here, boneless fillets are seasoned, floured, and pan-fried so they’re crisp at the edges, moist and tender inside. A simple fresh pineapple salsa spiked with lime and jalapeños gives the tacos brightness and a little bite. What to buy: Tilapia is a fish that’s affordable and readily available, but check to make sure the fillets you buy are from a source that practices sustainable aquaculture.

A five-minute turn in a stovetop smoker gives instant ramen noodles a depth of flavor that tastes like it took hours. You start by steaming eggs in the shell, before placing them in the smoker with the noodles. Then make the instant ramen in the usual way, and serve the smoked egg on top. It’s simple, comfortingly complex, and satisfying all at once. Special equipment: You’ll need a stovetop smoker for this recipe—our favorite is the compact and affordable model from Camerons.

We love the sweet, pull-apart breakfast treat known as Monkey Bread, so—inspired by a suggestion from our Home Cooking community board—we devised this savory version with mozzarella and a hint of fresh chiles. The recipe calls for store-bought pizza dough, so apart from letting the dough rise for an hour and assembling everything, it comes together pretty quickly. Serve the monkey bread warm, with marinara sauce for dipping.

The calzone—pizza dough lavished with a handful of cheese and other toppings, folded over, sealed, and baked—is the perfect self-contained meal. Here we fill ours with cheese, ham, and sliced jalapeños, and because we start with store-bought pizza dough, it all comes together in a flash. What to buy: Premade pizza dough is available bagged in 14- or 16-ounce portions at well-stocked groceries. If you’d like to make your own, you’ll need two-thirds of our Basic Pizza Dough recipe.

We got the idea for these impromptu gnocchi from our Home Cooking community discussion board. All you need is half a pound of pizza dough, a pot of boiling salted water, and a sauce (marinara is perfect). Enlist your kids to help with the shaping, then let them watch you poaching the dough and tossing it in the sauce. What to buy: Premade pizza dough is available bagged in 14- or 16-ounce portions at well-stocked groceries.

This easy recipe yields a rich, smoky-tasting chili, perfect for laid-back Sundays. Made with chicken thighs, canned cannellini beans, and a handful of other ingredients, it tastes more complicated than it is. Bonus: You’ll have leftovers for the week.

Four hours in the slow cooker makes these hot wings beautifully tender; a further 30 minutes in a hot oven gets them crisp and brown. Serve these wings before the main event as a substantial game-day snack, or as the centerpiece of a meal, alongside a big crunchy salad to keep things cool.

Stuffed peppers were one of the first things I cooked for my wife when we started dating. They were completely undercooked, burnt yet crunchy. The couscous I packed inside turned into a semolina puck, anchored to the pepper bottom by cheese cement. This recipe is none of those things. The peppers end up perfectly cooked, and the outer skin peels right off. The quinoa keeps it healthy, the feta makes it taste rich, and the beans make it substantial. In short, the perfect healthy Sunday dinner.

Chicken breasts easily turn dry unless you use fattening things like cream or cheese as accessories for flavor and texture. That became the jumping-off point for this recipe: how to get juicy, mouth-watering chicken breasts while keeping things healthy. Poblano peppers turned out to be the answer: They’re mild, but infuse everything they touch with a rich green-chile flavor.

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