Pita Pizza – Another Quick, Weekday Meal

By David Hu
A new video for Video Friday

I’ve noticed a pattern with my cooking over the years. I usually start off the week all gung ho about cooking. On Monday I’m experimenting with a new recipe, or making an old favorite with 20 ingredients, multiple steps and four hours of cook time. Yay! So exciting and full of energy!

But after a few days, my enthusiasm wanes and I can’t even remember what possessed me to make those complicated dishes earlier in the week.

Wednesday is hump day and by then, my cooking ambition has evaporated. That’s when I turn to my storehouse of quick and easy weekday meals. My requirements to get into this rotation are simple: tastes good, needs few ingredients and requires short prep and cook times.

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Chicken Chopped Salad

Lori Powell
For One or Two Bites, a blog for singles and couples

For a super quick weeknight meal, I often go to my fridge and see what’s kicking around and make a salad. This version is a chicken chopped salad.

The first one I ever had was in Los Angeles and it was all the rage then many years ago. It was a textural feast as well as a many layered flavored salad…crunchy with fried noodles, sturdy lettuce, toasted nuts, tender chicken and a creamy or Asian salad dressing enrobing it all.

I often cook some version of a chicken on the weekend so that I can transform it into many different main courses or lunches during the week. And when I’ve run out of that I sometimes splurge on a rotisserie chicken from my local market.

I always have some form of cabbage in my fridge which is, to me, an essential ingredient in any salad for a hit of healthy crunch; some lettuce; fresh herbs and I always have a huge assortment of nuts in the freezer. So in minutes, I have a healthy and super-satisfying main course salad on my table.

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Soup, a Simple Weeknight Meal

By Ben Mims
For Cooking Newbie, a blog for beginner cooks

When it comes to simplicity in a weeknight meal, you can’t get make anything much easier than chicken soup. And making it homemade is really – no, really – much easier than you think.

You don’t need chicken stock; you don’t need expensive noodles. All you need are five core ingredients, and then whatever else you like, whether it’s what you already have lying around in the pantry or what you plan to pick up at the grocery over the weekend.

Simply sweating down vegetables (the term refers to cooking vegetables over low heat until they gently “sweat” out the moisture within) and using dark meat chicken are the keys to a flavorful stock and soup that you can then garnish a million ways.

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Burgers? Make Mine Teriyaki

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

We eat a fair amount of burgers in our house. With a gas grill just outside our kitchen door, grilling burgers is a convenient answer to a quick weeknight dinner.

Sometimes we make them plain, seasoned with salt and pepper, but other times we go for teriyaki. If you’ve ever been to Hawaii, you know how addictive teri burgers can be. Ground meat is seasoned with teriyaki sauce before grilling. The flavor of sweet-salty teriyaki sauce makes burgers succulent and the aromas as the burgers cook are simply scrumptious. With lettuce and tomato and mayonnaise for the dressing, it’s a winning combination.

While I think of a plain burger with ketchup for lunch, the teriyaki flavor seems more like dinner. In fact, you can serve these burgers with rice and a veggie if you’re not into sandwiches for dinner.

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Roasted Grapes – Appetizer or Dessert

By Sandy Hu
A new video for Video Friday

It’s always a good idea to have a repertoire of simple, tried-and-true recipes that you can whip up in a hurry when company’s coming. Here’s a super-easy one to add: Roasted Grapes, a recipe by Lori Powell, our “One or Two Bites” blogger.

Lori, who blogs on Special Fork about cooking for one or two people, devised this recipe as a way to use up an abundance of grapes. But it’s also a versatile choice for company meals when you’re too busy to cook.

While she serves two or three with this recipe, it will stretch for four. Or you can simply multiply the recipe, as needed.

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