Weeknight Kitchen

I love cucumber salads. This water-rich vegetable makes a great guilt-free snack because of its crunch. It’s also a refreshing side. Much of a cucumber’s nutrition is in its skin, so I leave it on here.

My children call out for this as soon as they see new potatoes coming in from the garden.

This is a great one-skillet meal that you can endlessly customize with vegetables and spices. Silky zucchini, briny capers, and salty Parmesan cheese is my current go-to-but feel free to swap in broccoli or bell peppers for the zucchini, or, if you crave heat, sub pickled pepperoncini and a teaspoon of chili flakes for the capers and oregano. We love eating this dish over rice, tossed with cooked pasta, or all on its own.

I think there's something so enjoyable about eating this way, whether for dinner, snacking, or sharing plates. While I love more traditional nachos, I tend to lean more to this flavor proflle, which means it's essentially all my favorite snacking foods on one giant plate. It looks like a lot of ingredients, but please forge ahead as you're mostly piling a ton of delicious ingredients on top of each other. Pita chips can be made one of two ways: Either peel apart the two layers of the pita for thinner chips, or keep them as is for thicker ones. Here we're going for thicker chips that can hold up to the toppings.

The appeal of this salad comes from its contrasting flavours and textures. Make this in midsummer, when the nectarines are ripened by the sun and the green beans are still tender. It is best served on a wide plate, rather than piled into a deep bowl. 

This salad just screams summer, with its bright colors and many textures. We always have some version of a squash salad at Cured during the summer, because at a certain point we inevitably have more squash than we know what to do with. And I don’t think people know how good raw summer squash can taste!

I absolutely love making this soup now that I have figured out how to make it using my food processor. It used to be quite labor-intensive to cut all the vegetables by hand. Now, I just throw them into the food processor to chop into small pieces, then toss them into my Dutch oven. So quick, so simple, and I also vastly prefer the texture of the soup prepared this way to the traditional way I was taught to make it. The vegetables don’t all come out the same perfect size, which I like, and the rice or pasta is cooked at the same time, making it possible to get my soup on the table pretty quickly.

You can, literally, put any vegetables in soupe au pistou. In spring, I add asparagus and loads of fresh peas. In summer, more ripe tomatoes. In fall, I add butternut squash. It is a substantial soup, and served with a baguette, it could easily be the meal’s main course. A green salad is a nice accompaniment.

When Forbes asked me for tips on eating well, I immediately offered this recipe, which is a stew filled with vegetables and dal. My version of a one-pot vegetable dal—an easy weeknight meal—is a play on a traditional recipe to incorporate more vegetables and greens. This stew is packed with protein and fiber. I love adding stewed tomatoes for a pop of color on top, versus cooking them down in the recipe. 

My godmother Zia Mimma taught me this recipe, and it’s something that we’ve been making together for what feels like my entire life. The preparation is simple—so simple that we were able to teach it to my stepmom, which is saying something because the woman does not cook—and isn’t much more than pasta simply dressed in a fresh tomato sauce, flecked with good-quality tuna, and tossed with oily, crunchy bread crumbs. It’s the ultimate comfort-food dish, especially for those nights when cooking feels like the last thing you want to do.

Vegan  |  Gluten-Free |  Dairy-Free