How To

A long time ago, I wrote about learning that pretty much any quickbread/muffin/coffee cake could be reduced to a simple proportion: 1, 2, 3. One part oil, two parts sugar, three parts flour. With that metric, I had banana bread, zucchini bread, carrot cake, and lemon muffins at my fingertips even when there were no cookbooks within reach.

Memorization may be beyond the pale, but I think it’s worth knowing a few recipes well, no matter how close at hand you keep your cookbook collection or bookmarked recipes from blogs. Cooking a favorite recipe is a different experience than cooking a brand new recipe: the smells strike you as familiar, you know when to turn the heat up or down, and you won’t be nervous about the food at a date or a dinner party–even if you’re nervous about the company, or the state of your apartment, or the quantity of wine in the fridge. . .

Here are a few favorite recipes I think of as classic. I’m curious–what recipes do you think every cook should master?

**9 Easy, Versatile Recipes You Might As Well Master**

1. Chicken Marbella. This marinated chicken was once a classic, and I’m on a mission to bring it back. Here’s the story: you do all the prep work the evening before you want to eat. Then add a few more ingredients, pop the chicken in the oven, and wait for dinner to be served. A hodgepodge of sweet, savory, and rich ingredients mingle to create a distinct and impressive flavor. Pictured above.

2. Baked Shells with Tomatoes and Mozzarella. This recipe is a nice way of saying that you’ve got to master homemade tomato sauce. There is no better meal – for one, for two, for a crowd – than marinara sauce cooked up. Yet as soon as you toss excellent sauce with fresh mozzarella, a lot of parmesan, and shells, you’ve created a comforting baked pasta main that you can bring to a potluck or easily make the center of your meal.

For a while, I’ve been looking for an alternative to the make-your-own taco buffet. And the peanut noodle bar is a prime contender.

I know you’re thinking, is she crazy? Why would anyone stray from a meal that includes oodles of guacamole, chips, and chorizo or slow-cooked pork or scrambled eggs, not to mention the chance to eat with your hands and spritz sour cream down the front of your shirt?

I love the taco buffet. And I love listing the merits of the taco buffet, so I’ll run through them right now, right here.

One, almost all the elements can be made ahead.

Two, it’s beyond easy to accommodate every dietary restriction, without making a big deal of it. Vegans can skip the sour cream, cheese, and chicken. Vegetarians can fill their tacos with black beans. Friends who don’t eat gluten can use corn tortillas instead of flour. Light eaters can make skimpy tacos; hungry guests can feast on six overloaded plates.

Three, you can make your spread as extravagant or minimalist as you have time and money for.

Chicken, black beans, cheddar, and sour cream constitutes a taco buffet.

So does chicken, steak, shredded lettuce, chipotle crema, guacamole, tomatillo salsa, pico de gallo, pinto beans, roasted peppers and onions, queso fresca, and homemade tortillas.

And four, almost any of the condiments can be prepared by a complete idiot, so if you’re cooking with a group, you can always delegate the job of pouring sour cream into a bowl to one friend and grating cheese to another, while you assume the much more important role of taco buffet CEO and grill master.

Miraculous, apparently irreplaceable. But we’re moving beyond the taco buffet, because every CEO has to have a couple of tricks up her sleeve.

Here’s one thing quarter-lifers are not: responsible moms who keep fridges and pantries stocked full of all the goodies their families like to eat. Would it be nice to come home to always full boxes of cereal, milk in the fridge, and dinner on the stove? Sure, maybe. But lives are busy, pantries are small, and fresh vegetables are expensive if you leave them to rot.

But a near-empty fridge leads to great resourcefulness, as I believe we’ve insinuated in every post since starting this blog. I can’t really help you if all you’ve got is a jar of mustard and a sixpack of beers (oh, wait: I can! Go get some chicken thighs, marinate them, and bake them. Or read this guide to see how your pantry could potentially become stocked). But if you’ve merely forgotten to run to the market every day for the last week but you still own a package of pasta, a dried-out slice of bread, some anchovies and olive oil…then you can cook something out of virtually nothing instead of groaning, picking up the phone, and ordering in.

1. Pesto Potato Salad | 2. Arugula Salad with Roasted Chicken, Black Quinoa, and Lemon-Tahini Dressing | 3. Lemony Kale and Roasted Mushroom Salad with Pecans | 4. Roasted Beet Salad with Ricotta Salata

Summer entertaining starts this weekend, and one of the easiest ways to feed lots of people is to make a whole host of salads in advance and line a whole buffet table with the colorful bowls. Put out bread and olive oil, then let guests fill their plates with these quick healthy recipes.

To put together a salad buffet, you’ll want to find some balance.

As you juggle the various Tex-Mex possibilities you might serve to guests at the annual Cinco De Mayo shindig this weekend, you’ll probably think about chili, you’ll think about make-your-own tacos, you’ll probably think about black bean dip and guacamole. All easy to make – even make ahead – and awesome fare for a crowd.

You might rule out serving nachos though. Maybe you think of the cheese-covered chips as junk food beyond repair, salty chips and artificial dip only eaten in the dark of a movie theater. Or maybe you think of them as a TV-watching snack for one, artfully made in the microwave.

But actually, nachos are fabulous party food. People love them. And they’re easy.

The Passover seder features some of the best of Jewish cooking–of all cooking. Who couldn’t eat brisket and potatoes for eight nights straight? That’s a question easy to ask just before Passover, but it’s hard to answer a few nights in. For those who are spending next week without leavening and are feeling a little desperate, I’ve combed our site to find BGSK’s best Passover-friendly meals that don’t resemble seder food.

**Great Passover-Friendly Meals**

Savory

1. Alex’s Roasted Chicken. Brisket is the seder mainstay, but a good roast chicken with potatoes is a welcome replacement as the week wears on.

2. Jordana’s Baked Spaghetti Squash with Ricotta and Tomato. Developed as a gluten-free alternative to pasta, this innovative vegetarian main makes the most of a pasta-like vegetable that is obviously flour-free.

3. Potato, Leek & Fennel Gratin. I realize that a dish of potatoes and cheese might not seem like dinner fare to some of you. But add a salad to ease up the richness, and you’ve got a vegetarian and satisfying meal.

We started our Great Minds Eat Alike series in order to mix up the usual BGSK offerings with interviews and submissions by cooks and eaters whose mentality towards cooking and eating meshes with ours. Today, on the second day of spring, we are incredibly excited to bring you a great guide about a dirty duty: getting your kitchen, from spice cabinet to pantry, clean. When you call it “spring cleaning,” it just sounds so fresh and bright, and, well, appealing. Especially because it comes  from a fellow quarter-life blogger, Carrie Murphy.

Carrie is a poet who blogs about healthy, easy …