Fast Recipes for Any Forecast

Here in the northeast, the weather has been all over the place: sunny and summery one day, chilly and bleak the next. This makes a couple of things difficult. First, convincing my tween that she needs a jacket on a 50-degree day when she wore shorts the day before, and second, planning meals in advance.

This explains how I ended up feeding my poor, sweaty family steaming bowls of white chicken chili on an 84-degree day, when we all would have preferred something like grilled huli huli chicken tucked alongside a cool cucumber salad. (We happily ate chili leftovers over rice the next day, when the temperature dipped yet again.) Since the weather shows no signs of stabilizing any time soon, here’s a handful of recipes that you can shop for now and cook come rain, sun or (please no) snow.

1. Shrimp Pasta

Lidey Heuck subs shrimp for clams in this weeknight riff on vongole rosso, a classic Italian pasta dish of clams, tomatoes, garlic and white wine. You can use fresh or frozen shrimp; just defrost fully and pat dry with a paper towel before adding them in Step 2.

2. Potato Soup

The coziest of the cozy, Naz Deravian’s cheesy potato soup is the culinary equivalent of your grandma’s quilt, comforting and nostalgic. Play around with adding different vegetables and herbs, subbing prosciutto or smoked ham for the bacon. You get the drift.

View this recipe.

3. Grilled Soy-Basted Chicken Thighs With Spicy Cashews

This recipe, which Sam Sifton adapted from Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby, has been a big hit in our house all year long. (I roast the chicken on a sheet pan when we don’t feel like grilling.) The kids love the sugary soy-marinated chicken, and the sriracha-roasted cashews are a crunchy grown-up complement. If you can’t find sriracha, use any other red chile paste, like sambal oelek, or save time by using store-bought spicy cashews.

4. Dumpling Tomato Salad With Chile-Crisp Vinaigrette

I know, I know, tomatoes aren’t officially in season yet. But! The chile-crisp vinaigrette in this very clever recipe from Hetty Lui McKinnon transforms supermarket hothouse tomatoes into something juicy and bright. (This recipe inspired me to add dumplings to store-bought Caesar salad, and now I can’t stop.)

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