Casseroles are a great way to stretch your cooking-without a-recipe muscles. As one reader, Carolie, reminded me, they require little prep time, yield many meals, and the leftovers are easy to store. Casseroles also let you easily tailor an existing recipe to your own tastes.
So here’s my adaptation of one of Carolie’s favorite casseroles, itself a play on cabbage rolls, a traditional Eastern European dish that is delicious but labor intensive. This version is a good way to use up leftover rice or grains and lentils.
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This salad of beets and chickpeas, from Good and Cheap was a surprise hit! Although I love it, I worried it might seem too odd for many people to try. But I hear about it a lot when I speak to people about what they’ve made. It’s especially popular among the early-twenties crowd! A very simple few ingredients, and it’s satisfying and balanced enough to be a meal in itself.
This dish is spicy, crunchy, and almost certainly the pinkest salad you’ll ever eat! Don’t be scared.
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Beef stroganoff is one of my husband’s favorites, so I make it as a treat for him—and one of my early readers, Dave, says his mother made it for him growing up. It’s a classic winter meal from Eastern Europe that warms up a cold house and fills the air with rich aroma. You can use any cut of beef; just adjust the cooking time based on the toughness. Dave’s mom made it with red pepper instead of carrot, so feel free to do the same if you can get red peppers at a good price.
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Roasted veggies are always delicious, but there’s something magical that happens to cauliflower in the oven. It gets so crispy and nutty, and that flavor is brought out even more with the spices here. If you are on the fence about cauliflower, try it prepared this way and you’ll become a believer. I’m happy to just eat a bowl of the cauliflower for dinner, but when I feel like making a truly proper meal out of it I nestle the cauliflower into tacos. The crunchy bits, spices and the meatiness of the cauliflower texture make these really satisfying. I have made these for large crowds and always get good reviews from young and old, vegetarian and non-vegetarian alike.
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