Main Dish – The Kitchen Tourist

Tomato Chicken Balti

A great end-of-summer dish with a rich sauce full of fresh tomatoes – it will only taste better if you happen to make it ahead or have leftovers!

Madras Sambal

This dish is creamy, flavorful, and colorful – a great fall comfort food. It’s easy to adapt with different vegetables and vary the spice level to match your taste. Plus it’s cheap!

Flavorful, colorful, easy to make – easy to see why it’s a family favorite. A Spanish sofrito of tomatoes, peppers and onions are baked with the chicken & rice to make an easy one-dish meal that also freezes well.

Lemon-Herb Marinated Chicken

My family’s favorite make-ahead summer chicken recipe, it uses a handful of fresh herbs from the garden with a few lemons for amazing flavor that doesn’t require heating up the kitchen at all. Plus it all goes into a ziplock bag for minimal dishes!

Rosemary Roast Chicken

Our favorite roast chicken recipe is also the simplest – 4 ingredients, quick prep, easy to make ahead and so fragrant and delicious!

Sauerkraut Pork Casserole – Kolozsvári rakott káposzta

If you love Eastern European smoked sausage as much as I do, you’ll find this recipe balances rich smoky meat wonderfully with sauerkraut and spices – made ahead. the melding of the different seasonings is especially delicious.

Korean Spicy Pork – Jeyuk Bokkeum – 제육볶음

This is one of our favorite Korean dishes, with a lovely sweet, complex spicy sauce that highlights the best of Korean flavors – garlic, chilies, ginger, soy, green onion, sesame oil and more.

Persian Beet Burgers

Like my Sri Lankan Fish Cutlets recipe, this recipe takes fairly basic ingredients and turns them into a dish that’s full of complicated, surprising flavors and very easy to serve people. The recipe came from Louisa Shafia’s New Persian Kitchen cookbook, with a few adjustments for my friends’ allergies and to make it more convenient…

Family Favorite: Roasted Red Pepper Lasagna

If I was going to list my family’s top 10 favorite dishes, I think I could confidently say this would make the top five. It’s the most common dish on the menus I found when I reviewed my family’s Italian Birthday Feasts, and that doesn’t even include our non-Italian birthday menus, which still often manage to…

A Taste of Autumn: Sweet Potato Corn Chowdert

This is the perfect fall soup – I love the blend of colors coming with red peppers, sweet potatoes and corn and the smoky aroma from the bacon. I’ve made it twice in the last few weeks, doubling it the second time since there were complaints about the lack of leftovers the first time. The…

Fish Tacos & Strawberry-Mango Margaritas

I’m on vacation in California, making fish tacos with homeade roasted tomatillo salsa and mango-strawberry margaritas. Yum!

Lentil Meadow Pie

The first time my sister made it, we almost started a fight over the last piece. Since then we always make it in large quantities, and it frequently appears at holidays and parties, since it’s a delicious dish that’s easy to make ahead and vegetarian – yet also appealing to picky eaters.