The Veggie
Creamy tomato beans and greens, maraq misir and golden potato soup won’t dirty all your dishes (or splatter your just-cleaned countertops).
Few things can redirect a bad mood or a bad week like basking in the glow of a freshly deep-cleaned kitchen. Sunlight refracts off glistening counter tops; the smell of synthetic lemon wafts in the air; every dish, rag, spice container and skillet idles in its rightful place.
After all that scrubbing and sweating, who dares touch the degreased burner? I don’t want to splatter the stove, I don’t want to pile the sink with plates, I don’t want to disrupt this fragile, newly restored ecosystem.
But I gotta eat! Minimal mess is ideal, so there will be no high-heat sautéing tonight. Just shy of ordering takeout lies the quick, single-skillet recipe, relying heavily on pantry staples and dirtying little save for said pan and a spoon — and no plates, if you eat straight from the pan like the free-will-possessing adult that you are.
I like a recipe that requires just a few minutes on the stove-top and then goes straight into the oven, like Melissa Clark’s cheesy chile crisp white beans. There’s minimal chopping (just slice up some garlic and scallions) and fewer than five minutes spent on a burner before the dish is baked to warm, melted perfection. “This is bananas tasty and fun to make,” wrote Claire, a reader. “Love all the cheesy bean bakes, but this is the best so far,” wrote Tanya, another reader (a coincidence, I swear!).
Still, I wonder if Tanya has had a chance to make Alexa Weibel’s five-star creamy, spicy tomato beans and greens. Readers rave about the recipe’s minimal effort, rich flavor and forgiving nature. The dish does, technically, require one additional bowl to toss together the panko and arugula topping. But if you eat out of that same bowl once you top the beans, things cancel each other out. That’s my kind of girl math.
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