Five Weeknight Dishes
Ali Slagle’s tortellini with prosciutto and peas turns a refrigerated staple into a surprisingly luxurious one-pan dinner.
I took one of my kids to the grocery store last week with the specific goal of divining what she might happily eat at home for dinner and in her lunchbox at school, as opposed to what she vehemently claims she won’t eat under any circumstances.
This kid, who is still really young, is a good eater. She likes an array of different foods. She tries new things. She accepts what’s on her plate, even if it takes a little coaxing, and she finishes it all. She seems to get that choosing what you eat is a privilege, and one that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Still, it’s unpleasant to cook while a children’s chorus of two howls lines like, “I hate bow-tie pasta!” (This is a lie. They love bow-tie pasta.) I can tell them to stop or divert them from the kitchen. But ideally we’ve already agreed on dinner and can skip this whole drama.
Cut to the store, where I’m in front of the refrigerated cheese tortellini — an amazing all-ages convenience food. You can easily find versions stuffed with spinach, or ravioli stuffed with squash. But I’m starting simple with plain cheese. I want to boil a big package of this at night, feed it to everyone for dinner and then put the leftovers in lunchboxes. I show it to my kid and talk it up. She wants to put it in the cart.
I’m hoping this is the gateway tortellini moment that leads us to dinners like one-pot tortellini with prosciutto and peas. I also got the ingredients to make smashed chicken burgers, in the hopes they will join the rotation, alongside the sweetest corn on the cob. Those two recipes are below, along with three others for the weeks ahead.
Ideas? Feedback? I’m at dearemily@nytimes.com. And for an easy way to answer that “What’s for dinner” question, there’s our new Dinner Tonight newsletter, which kicks off next week! We’ll send one fast and delicious recipe to your inbox around 4:30 p.m. Eastern, Monday through Thursday. Sign up for that here.
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