Cooking
These crispy Korean scallion pancakes can be made with pretty much whatever vegetables you have on hand.
A small zucchini and half a bell pepper (yellow). A few carrots, some scallions and a half-bunch of kale. That’s what was in my vegetable drawer a few days ago, begging me to make a clean-out-the-fridge dinner. Usually, such a motley mix would call for soup, because soup is the great uniter. But I was more in the mood for something I could bite into, something with crunch.
Lucky for me, I’d just received my advance copy of “Easy Weeknight Dinners,” a collection of 100 of New York Times Cooking’s best speedy, simple recipes, edited by our own Emily Weinstein. The first page that flipped open was for Sohui Kim’s vegetable pajeon, crispy Korean scallion pancakes that can be made with pretty much whatever vegetables you have on hand. Half an hour later, my crisper drawer was cleared out, and my plate was filled with the golden, nubby cakes, drizzled with soy sauce and Sriracha. The plate, in turn, was cleaned pretty quickly.
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Vegetable Pajeon (Korean Scallion Pancakes With Vegetables)
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Another excellent cookbook to land on my desk in the last week is Carolina Gelen’s “Pass the Plate.” Carolina, a regular contributor to NYT Cooking, shares recipes that reflect her childhood in Romania along with the stylishly crowd-pleasing, unfussy dishes that have made her, quite deservedly, a social media darling. I’m very interested in her Marsala chicken meatballs for the contrast between the syrupy wine and the woodsy mushrooms. Make sure to let the mushrooms and onions get deeply bronzed before adding the Marsala to the skillet: Those browned bits on the bottom of the pan are the foundation of the savory, glossy sauce.
Speaking of glossy, savory sauce, check out the melted brown butter and fried sage leaves drizzled over Lidey Heuck’s bangers with mashed winter squash. The dish is seasoned with maple and a pinch of cayenne, making it both company-worthy and cozy, a meal to keep in rotation all autumn long.
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