Meal Prep

If you love mushrooms, this sauce will hit the spot. You could use it as a topping for pastas, meats, and—my favorite—polenta. The secret to a rich, deeply flavorful sauce is to use a variety of mushrooms, preferably the wild varieties. I’m partial to cremini, oyster, and shiitake, but you could also add portobellos, hen-of-the-woods, chanterelles, or any other variety you find. The only ones I’d steer clear of are regular white button mushrooms. Their mild flavor will get lost amid the stronger tastes of the wild varieties, and their high water content will thin your sauce without providing much flavor.

A spicy sauce that’s perfect tossed with pasta. Be sure to wash your arugula thoroughly, in at least two changes of cold water, to remove any soil and grit, which you definitely don’t want in your pesto.

In my family, pesto was always a green sauce. But like many people, I’ve stretched the definition of pesto and expanded its horizons. (That’s what makes cooking so much fun.) This recipe uses a combination of dried and fresh mushrooms, both of which bring their own pronounced textures and flavors to the dish. Dried porcinis are easy to find year-round. And although they’re not cheap, they’re a great pantry item that you can use to jazz up a pasta dish, make a sauce to accompany a meat dish, or, of course, use as the base of this pesto.

In the past few years, Americans have been treated to a dazzling array of new convenience food; the supermarket aisles are lined with items you can eat right now! I’m not a big fan of most of these. But I am a big fan of prewashed, pretrimmed greens, like the bags of baby spinach that are almost universally available. Cleaning fresh spinach is no treat: The bunches are filled with sand and grit, requiring multiple changes of water to remove; and it’s time-consuming to separate the fibrous stalks from the tender leaves. But these bags of baby spinach, on the other hand, are ready to go: Tear open the bag, dump the greens into a salad bowl, and they’re ready to dress. Or just toss into the sauté pan with a little olive oil and garlic, and you can be eating bright, fresh spinach in mere seconds. Or throw into the blender with some other ingredients—and bingo! Pesto!

When we were kids, this was our favorite sauce, hands down. I used to love it on everything—pasta, rice, bread, potatoes, and polenta—you name it, I covered it in bolognese. We went through a lot of it in my household. So my parents had to figure out a way to make it that was quicker than the traditional recipe, and here it is. It’s just as rich and mouthwatering as the more time-consuming traditional recipe; I promise you won’t know the difference. Now that I’m all grown up, I try not to use bolognese for everything, but it’s tempting because it’s perfect as a sauce for any type of pasta shape.

The most basic, most traditional pesto is this basil-based one that was invented in Genoa, in northern Italy; it’s bright green and wonderfully aromatic. Be sure to add your oil slowly, so that the sauce fully emulsifies—that is, all the ingredients bind together, creating a thick, uniform consistency. Lots of basil varieties are available, some sweeter, some spicier, and in fact basil is an important ingredient in the cooking of southeast Asia, especially in curries. Each variety will impart its unique flavor to a pesto, so be adventurous, and try whatever type appeals to you. Just remember: You need a lot of it, and it should be fresh and crisp, not wilted or soggy.

This is Rome’s most famous pasta sauce, but the recipe actually originated in a town outside of Rome called Amatrice. This sauce is bold and perfectly balanced with tangy tomatoes, sweet onion, and the salty meatiness of pancetta. My parents would make it for dinner on weeknights when they either didn’t have a lot of time to cook or when my mom hadn’t gone to the grocery store. In the time it takes to boil the water the sauce is finished. Perfect with bucatini, perciatelli, or spaghetti.

The classic recipes for roasted pepper use just red peppers, but you can use an assortment of colors—red, orange, and yellow. Keep a close eye on the yellow variety while they cook under the broiler to ensure that they don’t char; their flesh is delicate and you’ll lose the beautiful yellow color.

Here’s the answer when you have to have a kid-pleasing entrée in next to no time. This recipe even gives you a bonus—planned-overs to use in Asian Chicken and Wild Rice Salad (page 87).

Although these highly seasoned chicken breasts are delicious on their own, they also make a fine foundation for a variety of other dishes, such as Sour Cream Chicken Enchilada Casserole (page 160).

One kind of roasted potato is good, and two kinds are doubly delicious. This recipe is twice as good in another way, too: You get roasted potatoes for today and a start on German or Mexican Potato Salad (pages 80, 81) for later.

Brown rice is a must-have staple for healthy eaters. I used to think I wasn’t a fan—and then I was introduced to short-grain brown rice (long- and medium-grain varieties are much more commonly found but not nearly as tasty, if you ask me). The short-grain has a nuttier taste that I’ve truly come to crave. If you haven’t tried it, it’s definitely time to do so. One of the best things about brown rice is that you can make a pot on Sunday and it keeps all workweek if refrigerated in an airtight plastic container or resealable plastic bag.

I almost always have Basic Grilled Chicken on hand in my refrigerator. Not only is it great for adding to salads, it makes it a cinch to make nachos, pizzas, and so much more. Plus, it’s great cubed when I just get the munchies and want something healthy to snack on.

This chicken is excellent to have on hand if you’re as huge a fan of Mexican cuisine as I am. Add it to salad, soups, Southwest wraps, and more. If you use just a touch of salt along with a salt-free Mexican or Southwest seasoning, it will have a ridiculously small fraction of the sodium of any taco, burrito, or fajita seasoning I’ve seen in grocery stores, not to mention far fewer preservatives.

These beans are a great prepare-ahead option. They reheat well, and the flavor is even better after a couple of hours. Try them chilled with a few baked tortilla chips for an excellent high-fiber snack. Or heat them up—they’re fantastic stirred into brown rice for a tasty side dish to accompany Luau London Broil (see page 105). Or simply toss the chilled beans into a salad.

Gina: Homemade chicken stock is our way of adding a little extra love to any dish, from soup to stew to rice pilaf. And it’s so easy to make: We throw a whole bird (yeah, the whole thing) in the soup pot, along with plenty of aromatics, and let it simmer for a few hours. This gives our stock plenty of taste. For an even richer chicken flavor, add the carcass of a roasted chicken to the stock as you are cooking it.

Traditionally, we made polenta with coarse-grain cornmeal and cooked it for 40 minutes or even longer. Today, there is instant polenta, which cooks up nicely in about 15 minutes from start to end. I’m introducing you to polenta by cooking instant polenta; once you master the instant, you can move on to the traditional coarse polenta and you’ll notice the difference in texture. Polenta is unbelievably versatile. I could give you a thousand ways to enjoy it, because that’s how many ways we ate it while we were growing up. It is delicious poured into a bowl and served as is, or allowed to chill and sliced, at which point you can grill or fry it for the next day’s meal. You can even make a “mosaic” by folding diced cooked vegetables into the soft polenta, packing it into a loaf pan while it is still warm, then allowing it to chill. When you cut the chilled loaf into slices, the vegetables will form a mosaic and make an even prettier presentation when cooked.

Pesto is at its best when used immediately after it is made. However, it can be refrigerated for up to a few weeks if it’s spooned into a container, topped with olive oil, and sealed tight. If you find yourself with an abundance of basil in summer, make some pesto and store it in small portions in the freezer, where it will last for up to a few months. Frozen pesto gives great freshness of taste to hearty winter soups and pasta sauces. Long pasta shapes, like fresh tagliatelle or dried spaghetti or linguine, pair well with pesto. When dressing pasta with pesto, remember these important points: Don’t actually cook the pesto—you’ll lose its fresh quality—but warm it together with the cooked pasta for a minute over low heat. There should be just enough pesto to coat the pasta lightly. If necessary, spoon in a little of the pasta-cooking water to help the pasta and pesto glide into a bowl.

Bolognese is a very versatile sauce. Not only can it dress all shapes and sizes of pasta, like fresh tagliolini (page 180) or dried spaghetti or rigatoni, you can also use it instead of the Italian-American Meat Sauce (page 144) in the lasagna on page 156, or in a meaty version of the pasticciata on page 158. This recipe makes enough sauce to dress 1 1/2 pounds of dried pasta or one and a half recipes of tagliolini—good for feeding a hungry crowd. It also freezes well, if you’d like to enjoy it in smaller quantities. Warm the sauce while the pasta is cooking and toss it with the cooked pasta, adding a little of the pasta-cooking water if necessary to make a creamy sauce. Toss in some grated Parmigiano-Reggiano just before you serve it.

Sometimes I peel eggplants completely, sometimes not at all. Leaving the peel on adds a slightly bitter taste—which I like—but also helps the eggplant hold its shape after you cut it into cubes or slices. If you want the best of both worlds, remove thick stripes of peel from the eggplant, leaving half the peel intact. Caponata can last several days in the refrigerator and is even better after marinating for a day. It is best eaten at room temperature, so remove it from the refrigerator about 2 hours before serving. Caponata is usually served as part of an antipasto assortment, although it makes a wonderful summer contorno, or side dish, to grilled meats or fish.