5 Weeknight Dinner Formulas I Return to Again and Again

For when I'm not feeling creative but still want to eat well

Today, I have something practical for you: the five weeknight dinner formulas I return to most often. This is not a meandering love letter to fennel — though more posts in that vein are coming your way soon. Instead, I hope this serves as a useful guide, offering attainable dinner ideas straight from my kitchen. (“Formula” may sound a bit sterile, but it’s the best word I can find for this scenario — five flexible ingredient combinations that make for endlessly riffable meals.)

Here goes!

Five Weeknight Dinner Formulas

1. Sushi Rice + Fish + Scallions + Nori

Teo and I inherited a rice cooker from his brother, Nico, and it quickly became one of our most beloved kitchen appliances. We love sushi rice, but cooking it on the stovetop never quite worked out for us, so we didn't make it often. Now, thanks to the rice cooker, we buy it in big bags from our local Japanese markets and cook it all the time. Every batch comes out just right: sticky, glossy, and profoundly satisfying to fluff and pad with a wooden spoon. (Here’s a recipe for stovetop Japanese rice from one of my favorite recipe sites that looks dependable!)

Our favorite way to eat sushi rice is with fish — maybe a fresh salmon filet cooked directly in the rice cooker or a can of oil-packed tuna flaked in at the end. Once everything is cooked, we season it with soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, and thinly sliced scallions. And we always serve it with plenty of nori to make little hand rolls as we eat, because it’s more fun to eat with your hands.

This is a good meal for a long day, since it requires minimal effort and almost no hands-on time — especially if you’re a fellow rice cooker parent.

2. Pasta + Sausage + Bitter Greens

The combination of sausage and bitter greens is one of my fiercest cravings and, thus, a staple in my dinner repertoire. The sausage could be almost any variety — spicy Italian, sweet Italian, chorizo, andouille, lap cheong — and the same goes for the greens, although my favorite type to use here is earthy, bitter broccoli rabe. As for the pasta, it could be any shape, but I’m partial to something short like orecchiette or rigatoni to catch the salty sausage bites. Finally, no matter what I choose for the sausage/greens/pasta, I always finish each plate with freshly grated pecorino or parmesan and black pepper.

This pasta is such a comfort, and I love that it’s in Teo’s mom Mary’s regular rotation, too.

If you’d like a reference, Alison Roman serendipitously just published a recipe for Pasta with Sausage, Browned Butter and Broccoli Rabe that looks divine, and I think that’s exactly where you should begin.

3. Chicken + Lemon + Potatoes

My dad taught me how to roast a chicken, and he always stuck a halved lemon inside the cavity at the instruction of his dad. As the lemon softened, the juices would seep into the chicken fat and create the loveliest drippings. Naturally, I do the same thing when roasting a chicken today, and since I never want the drippings to go to waste, I tend to roast the chicken over potatoes — waxy Yukon Golds, preferably, peeled for maximum soakage and chopped into manageable chunks.

The chicken could be a whole bird, but it could also be bone-in chicken thighs for a speedier dinner, in which case you can just chuck the lemon halves into the baking dish along with the potatoes. I like adding dried oregano to the chicken and potatoes to give them a Greek vibe, but rosemary and thyme are also good options. For a more complete meal, I make a green salad, but I think this is lovely as a simple, stand-alone meal. Here’s one reference recipe, and here’s another.

4. Chickpeas or White Beans + Garlic + Rosemary + Pasta

If I’m just cooking for myself, I’m probably making pasta e ceci, a humble, brothy Roman dish of chickpeas and pasta, infused with rosemary and garlic. Teo doesn’t like it very much, but I can’t get enough of it, and am convinced it heals my ails.

The way I make pasta e ceci depends on what I have around. Sometimes I use white beans instead of chickpeas, and sometimes I add a bit of crushed tomato to the broth to give it some color. Sometimes I add chili for some heat, and sometimes I let it stay mellow and mild. The pasta shape is also up to my discretion, and I usually go for whatever box we already have open (this is the perfect way to use up half-full boxes of pasta). Here’s a good recipe for a tomatoey version that I’ve made before, and here’s another that looks nice.

5. Ground Pork or Chicken + Shallots + Herbs + Lettuce

This one’s a nod to my mom, who often makes variations on larb — a flavorful Laotian ground meat salad that’s also popular in Northeastern Thailand. My version is far from traditional, I’m sure, but I love the contrast of rich meat cooked in a sticky-salty sauce with sweet shallots and loads of bright, fresh herbs like mint, cilantro, scallions, and basil.

For a lighter dinner, I serve it in crisp lettuce cups, and for some more heft, with a side of rice. At this point I tend to wing it when making larb, but here’s a helpful reference recipe (I always skip the toasted rice powder to save myself a step). This meal is particularly welcome in warmer months, when I want something fresh and light but still filling.

Hope these ideas give you some inspiration, and I’d love to hear what your weeknight dinner formulas are, if you’d like to share.

In other news, I recently attended a launch event for a food zine with a friend, and I kid you not: the person sitting in front of us turned around and told me she reads this newsletter. I was shocked, stumbled through introducing myself, and didn’t quite catch her name, but anyway, if you’re reading this: thank you so much for saying hello. This community was once exclusively friends and family, and has grown in a very gratifying, gradual way over the past three years, so thank you, all of you!

More from me soon.

x Phoebe