Meatless meals to savor on Lenten Fridays 18 Recipes
Feb. 17, 2021
With Lent upon us, now is as good a time as any to add to your repertoire of meatless recipes. Although many Americans eat meat three times a day, any vegetarian or vegan will tell you that you don’t really need meat to eat well. If you want something other than good old fish sticks and tuna casserole for dinner, read on.
Jackfruit carnitas tacos with a spicy chipotle sauce are a quick, easy meaty-feeling vegan option. Another almost effortless option is zesty sizzling ginger scallion sauce with pan-seared tofu. “Blackened” snapper with a salad of crunchy pickles will also light up your taste buds with little effort. Orecchiette, little pasta “ears” with breadcrumbs and broccoli rabe, is a texture fest that leaves you feeling like it was hours rather than minutes in the making.
Feb. 13, 2021
Some people love to go out for Valentine’s Day, some people like to stay home. I fall in the latter camp, and if you do, too, you may be looking for some ideas of what to put on the table for dinner.
It’s nice that this year Valentine’s Day falls on a Sunday. For me, that means no after-work mad rush to make dinner. You can spend as much or as little of the day (and weekend) cooking as you like.
I tend to plan and make dessert first. Times cooking columnist Ben Mims has you covered there, with three delightful and decadent chocolate desserts that he has crafted specifically for this Valentine’s Day. All can be made the day before.
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Hanukkah started just a couple days ago, and I’ve taken the opportunity to follow our recipe tester Julie Giuffrida’s advice of eating latkes every day. As Julie notes in her roundup from last week, “At Hanukkah time, potato latkes fried in oil are center stage. To many, eight days of potato latkes may not sound so bad one or two or five or six are never enough. My family of four could easily put away a 5-pound bag of potatoes’ worth of latkes in one sitting.” Check out her curated list of L.A. Times’ Hanukkah recipes to keep you cooking with new ideas throughout the holiday. Or do like I do and make one batch of Jonathan Gold’s favorite potato latkes and just keep re-crisping them in a skillet to eat with each meal.
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There are two types of people come the holidays. Some of us like to decorate and make a cozy home by staying in baking and drinking mulled cider in anticipation of opening presents or being with family by year’s end. And then there are those people who just need to get out of Dodge for some end-of-the-year escapism.
The latter scenario isn’t an option this year, so with everyone forced to be at home, what better way to travel in your mind, at least for the holidays than with a meal that allows you to feel as if you’ve broken free of your four walls? In search of specifics, I talked to four food-industry friends in L.A. to ask what they’ll be making for the holidays to escape the routine of this year.