Genevieve Ko

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Known in English as honeycomb cake for its interior pattern of holes stretched long like yawns, bánh bò nướng is tinted jade from pandan paste, which flavors the coconut milk batter. Glossy green pandan leaves, from which the paste is extracted, impart a scent that hovers like jasmine and vanilla with a grounding of soft herbs and toasted rice. The mix of tapioca starch and rice flour yields a texture that’s stretchy, sticky and soft. Hannah Pham’s take on this Vietnamese classic includes a crisp outer crust. She uses a Bundt pan so there’s more of the browned shell in each bite and, to make the exterior even more caramelized, cut down on the amount of butter brushed over the heated pan. For a foolproof cake, she calls for double-acting baking powder, avoids over whisking the eggs and passes the batter through a sieve. Genevieve Ko

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Nubby with oats, these tender brown sugar muffins have a hint of cardamom that brings out the richness of chocolate chips. Tiny quick-cooking oats offer a delicate chew in batter that comes together fast enough for weekday mornings. Right out of the oven, they’re crisp around the edges and fluffy. Over time, they become stickier and feel even more wholesome.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Think of these as a starter birthday cake to make for friends — they travel well and feel like a party wherever you’re handing them out. Despite the sheet of sprinkles coating the top, these blondies aren’t cloyingly sweet. The batter has just enough brown sugar for a gentle butterscotch richness and a good hit of salt. Toasted at the edges and chewy in the center, these bars also have tiny crackles of caramelized sprinkles throughout.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

For a hearty start to any day — or a fun take on breakfast for dinner — put together this casserole. Red enchilada sauce (you can use 2 cups store-bought) and cheese smother a breakfast burrito base of flour tortillas encasing crisp potatoes and chorizo. Sliding eggs into the dish at the end of baking gives you the bonus of sunny-side-up eggs without the hassle of washing another pan. You can assemble the enchiladas the day before serving to make the morning less hectic.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Chewy, yes, but these big cookies still have that essential crisp ring around the edge and also include crunchy bits of pecans throughout. Cooked in browned butter, the nuts take on a toasty depth and taste even richer if you start with Elliot pecans, a sweeter, fattier variety grown primarily in Georgia. It’s worth seeking out very dark maple syrup too, which is labeled as such. Intense and complex, it’s ideal for baking because it’s strong enough in taste to act as a seasoning. Even with standard pecans and other shades of syrup, these thoughtfully salted cookies come out caramelly.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Soft and chewy, these gingerbread cookies come together quickly and easily. Using oil instead of butter keeps the rounds moist and lets the warmth of the spices shine. A chai blend, which often highlights ginger and cardamom and includes the surprising heat of black pepper, gives them even more verve. If you don’t have one on hand, you can simply mix your own (see Tip). That spiced coziness is echoed in the glaze, but the cookies are just as satisfying unadorned. (For more of Genevieve's holiday cookie tips, see this article.)

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Homestyle Chinese soups, particularly Cantonese ones, distill the essence of bony meat and vegetables into subtle broths. This take does the same, but instead of simmering a huge pot for hours, it uses proportionally less water and cooks in under an hour for a satisfying meal. This method ensures that the broth is deeply flavorful, the meat still juicy and the vegetables and barley tender with an ideal bite. You can swap in other root vegetables for the carrots and other varieties of cabbage for the napa, but aim for options that end up naturally sweet when cooked. The resulting soup is warming with ginger and ideal for recovering from a cold, but if you prefer a punchier flavor, dress it up with bold condiments.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Can you wrap just about any filling in dough and consider it a dumpling? These bite-size desserts prove you can. Lightly salted melted chocolate, creamy like a truffle, is stuffed into chewy homemade wrappers, naturally sweet from glutinous rice flour. Taking cues from black sesame treats often made for Lunar New Year, these sticky steamed dumplings include toasted sesame oil in both the filling and wrapper. Making dumplings from scratch is a fun group project and these are especially great for kids. The dough is the easiest possible kind to shape — it doesn’t require a rolling pin; it’s simply rolled into balls then pressed into flat rounds by hand.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

There’s only one problem with cinnamon rolls: They taste best fresh out of the oven with runny icing. This Bundt cake is also delicious warm, but gets only better as it sits, so you can get a hit of cinnamon roll goodness for days. Including panko in the spiced brown sugar swirl allows the cake layers to pull apart the way yeasted rolls do. The simple vanilla pound cake batter is tender and tangy with cream cheese. More cream cheese — a lot more — cloaks the cake in the form of frosting. Just as there’s no end to holiday cheer, there’s no limit on cream cheese frosting.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

A spoonful of coconut cream scents these crepes with a tropical aroma that takes you somewhere beautiful. It also helps toast the sizzling batter, giving the edges a crackle and the whole thing a nutty note. To make swirling the batter into thin rounds even easier, this blend is quite thin, with just a little more swish than heavy cream. Coconut’s fragrance extends to the accompanying whipped cream, which also includes pandan extract (see Tip). Inspiration for this crepe’s topping came from Diane Moua, the chef and owner of Diane’s Place in Minneapolis, who pipes coconut-pandan diplomat cream into croissants for a spectacular pastry. Coconut brings out the subdued bouquet of pandan and that duo is streamlined into this simply whipped cream.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Jammy tart-sweet cranberry sauce gives way to cheesecake fluffy with ricotta, which also gives this dessert a fresh-cheese milkiness that pairs perfectly with the tart fruit. Citrus zest and juice tie all the flavors together and give the whole dessert a holiday party vibe. The filling comes together quickly in a food processor, which purées the ricotta to smoothness. You can skip the cranberry topping to enjoy this cheesecake any time of year. Simply serve it on its own or with any fruit that’s in season. Despite the precautions taken in the recipe below, the top still may split and that’s OK. The cheesecake will still taste great and the cranberry topping will hide the cracks.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

A half chicken, cut right between the breasts and back, is sold in most supermarkets and just what you want when cooking for one, offering both light and dark meat, and the juiciness that comes with all the bones. After it cooks — quickly, relative to a whole bird — it leaves you with two meals or one very hearty dinner. Here, this curry-rubbed chicken roasts over peppers and onion, which release their natural sweetness into the pan juices. It’s great over rice or with bread, and leftovers can be simmered with coconut milk for a stewed curry, or chopped and mixed with mayonnaise for a chicken salad sandwich.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

A specialty from Sichuan, a province in the southwest of China, vendors once balanced baskets of noodles and sauce on their shoulder poles and cried out “dan dan mian!” to hawk their wares. Dan dan refers to those bamboo shoulder poles and mian means noodles, but there’s no one way to prepare them. Nowadays in the Western diaspora, the dish is associated with a few essentials, namely chile oil and sesame paste, but another is worth adding: preserved vegetables. Salty and a little sweet with the sour oomph of fermentation, pickled mustard greens give the soothing noodles an umami zing. These noodles are especially rich with sesame, but you can adjust all of the seasonings to your taste. Toasty and salty, tangy on the cliff of funk, chewy with pops of peanut, dan dan noodles are a bowl of contentment.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

All you need is a bowl, fork and baking sheet to make these scones, which end up crisp on the outside and tender within. The recipe doesn’t include the added step of cutting butter into flour, which yields the kind of sturdier, breadier scones found in bakeries and requires extra tools, skills and time. Instead, it’s a streamlined version of cream scones, where the dough is often rolled or patted flat then cut into rounds or wedges. Dropping the batter onto the baking sheet in mounds not only makes these easier to throw together, it also ensures the scones stay soft, as does a short rest in the refrigerator. Folding in berries make these lovely for breakfast or brunch, while stirring in currants gives them a classic tea time feel. They’re rich enough to enjoy on their own, but they also taste great slathered with jam and clotted cream or butter.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

The whole point of carrot cake is that, in its most ideal form, it’s a vehicle for cream cheese frosting, a triple stack of fluffy spiced cake, finished with generous swoops of frosting. Baking the cake batter in a half-sheet pan, then cutting the flat cake into three rectangles delivers thin, even layers and skips the hassle of baking and slicing tall cake rounds. To highlight the tang of cream cheese, this frosting includes sour cream instead of butter. It gives the whole thing a fresh lightness, each forkful equal parts tender cake and silky frosting. The resulting cake looks modern with its sharp angles but can still be cut into classic triangular wedges.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

An egg cooked in an egg-size hole cut out of butter-sizzled bread feels like a treat. But it’s not quite enough to make a meal. Here, the classic egg-in-a-nest merges with a grilled cheese and a breakfast sandwich into a meal for one that’s meant to be savored leisurely. It’s as delightful with coffee at the beginning of the day as it is in the middle for lunch, or ending it, whether at supper or at midnight. The bread slices — one cradling the egg, the other holding cheese — cook at the same time over relatively low heat so that they end up perfectly golden brown while the egg sets and the cheese melts. If you’d like a little heat, add hot sauce or any chile powder or flakes.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

This breakfast startles in the best way: It tastes like cozy, steaming porridge, but looks and feels like delightful buttermilk pancakes. Tiny quick oats soaked in buttermilk, along with flax and honey, lend a unique tenderness. Biting into a round, crackly with butter and caramelized from honey on the outside, reveals the pleasant, familiar creaminess of oatmeal in the center. Flax meal softens alongside the oats, amplifying their nutty flavor and binding the batter, eliminating the need for eggs. The pancakes are flavorful enough to enjoy on their own, but also taste great with toppings like fresh berries.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

The buttery blend of oats and nuts in this easy, warm dessert stays nubby and crunchy while baking over the juicy fruit. (It also happens to be gluten-free.) A chai spice blend is especially nice in the mix, but other sweet-leaning spices like cinnamon and cardamom taste just as good. Any blend of fruit works, and keeping the peel on apples, pears and stone fruit not only streamlines the preparation but also adds a pleasant chewiness. If you want to go all berry, stick with fresh options; frozen fruit ends up too wet. (Thawed frozen berries work just fine with a mix of sturdy fresh apples and pears, though.) You don’t have to serve a warm bowl of this crumble with ice cream, but you probably want that creaminess swirling into the jammy fruit.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

This game-changing pancake recipe from Sam Yoo, the chef and an owner of Golden Diner in Manhattan’s Chinatown, combines all the nostalgia of diner pancakes with innovative techniques for a dish that makes your eyes widen at first taste. Mr. Yoo cooks a yeast-risen buttermilk batter in individual skillets to give them height like Japanese soufflé pancakes and a perfect roundness like those in the flapjack emoji. As soon as he stacks them on a plate, he drenches them with buttery maple-honey syrup, then tops them with salted honey-maple butter, both inspired by Korean honey-butter chips and reminiscent of Werther’s hard candies. A berry compote completes the meal with its fresh tang. Genevieve Ko

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

A satisfying grain bowl doesn’t need to take a lot of time, especially if you start with a quick-cooking grain like fonio. Fonio, tinier than even couscous or quinoa, takes five minutes to cook and delivers a deep nutty taste. This ancient whole grain, which is also gluten-free, is prepared throughout West Africa, as is sauce moyo, a sauce of crisp onion and pepper, juicy tomatoes, chile and lime. Here, that sauce adds crunch to the tender, sandy grains, and tinned smoked fish delivers a savory richness. You can assemble the whole thing to enjoy at home or pack up to eat as a fresh and filling desk lunch.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Buttery and snappy with the floral sparkle of orange zest, these shortbread get an extra zing from a glossy lemon glaze. These holiday cookies — delicious any time of year — highlight the milky allure of butter in their not-too-sweet dough and come out tender if rolled thick and crisp if thin. For an extra-toasty depth, leave the cookies in the oven until they burnish to a deep brown. The tangy zip of these cookies, whether cut into decorative shapes or simply sliced into rounds or squares, glazed or not, is the perfect counterpoint to the season’s sugar excess.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Making your own protein bars may sound like a project, but this recipe comes together quickly and doesn’t require turning on the oven. Its greatest appeal, though, is how it combines the crackle of nuts and the creaminess of nut butter with earthy maple syrup. A fat pinch of salt and a touch of pepper bring out the nuts’ toasty bittersweetness. The black pepper sharpens the syrup’s caramel roundness, but try ground chipotle or other dried chiles for a smoky heat. There’s plenty of salt, but if you want even more, sprinkle flakes on top before chilling. Feel free to customize the nuts and seasoning: Just be sure to keep the ratios the same.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

These mahogany treats deliver the toasted nuttiness and hearty chew of bran and avoid whole wheat’s common afflictions of heaviness and bitterness in baked goods. The key to making these muffins tender and keeping them from drying out is simply liquid — in all different forms. Water helps soften the bran along with orange juice, which adds a floral aroma; molasses and honey highlight bran’s natural sweetness; and oil and buttermilk add a touch of richness. Soaking the bran before baking and infusing the muffins with an orange-honey syrup while they’re still warm ensure they stay soft and moist for days. Dates lend a caramel depth to the mix, but if you’re nostalgic for classic bran muffins, you can use raisins instead.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Tanya Sichynsky, a New York Times Cooking editor, tops salty, snappy grilled hot dogs with bright pico de gallo. Combining those two elements of fully loaded Mexican hot dogs makes these easy to cook for a crowd and tote to a cookout. You can prepare the pico de gallo early in the day and keep it in an airtight container until ready to pile onto the hot dogs, split to cradle the fresh filling. Be sure to keep the grill heat moderate. Too hot, and the hot dogs — and buns — will burn and dry out. Too cool, and they won’t take on a smoky char. Genevieve Ko

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Here’s a sticky elixir to drizzle over everything. Spicy and sweet, this homemade hot honey starts with fresh chiles for a fruity brightness that you can’t get from dried chiles (though they work in this formula, too). Fresh chiles become even more complex when simmered with vinegar. Cooking the acid mellows its harshness but still gives this condiment a nice tang. If you can’t find bird’s-eye chiles or chiles that are as small, you can use a few habanero or Scotch bonnets instead. (If you love heat, you can add as many chiles as you think you can handle.) Be sure to wash the chiles well before using. This honey is delicious drizzled over vegetables, biscuits, cheese, fried chicken, pizza, grilled meat and sandwiches. With its fresh notes, it’s a nice addition to salad dressings, too.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Glossed with a tangy blend of honey and lemon, this salmon caramelizes around the edges while staying juicy and tender. Dill, lots of it, brings freshness, green as cut grass. Wild salmon works especially well here because the butter in the sauce gives the lean fish richness. (Fatty farmed salmon will simply taste even richer, not a bad thing at all.) Quick-pickled cucumbers and mustard seeds offer a cool, crunchy pop to this dish, but the salmon is also tasty on its own. Serve this with rice, potatoes or a tray of asparagus roasted alongside the salmon.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

In his cookbook “Ghana to the World: Recipes and Stories That Look Forward While Honoring the Past” (Clarkson Potter, 2025), the chef Eric Adjepong calls this his “favorite dessert of all time.” Malva pudding originated in South Africa and is beloved there and throughout its diaspora, but its creation remains a mystery. The lack of concrete facts behind the history of malva pudding seems less important than the dessert’s strong foundation — tender sponge cake seasoned with apricot jam and drenched in buttery sweetened cream. It comes together quickly and easily, and tastes best served warm, making it the ideal way to end a party with friends. Genevieve Ko

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

With its welcome bitter edge, matcha balances the usual sweetness of sugar cookies. Although its tannic overtones are subtle here, its grassy hue naturally tints these tender cookies a festive green. Because it’s become a popular drink worldwide, true matcha can be difficult to find and expensive if you do track it down. For these cookies, culinary grade matcha works fine. Royal icing, also known as decorating icing for how hard it sets, gives the tops of these cookies a nice crackle. (For more of Genevieve's holiday cookie tips, see this article.)

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Sometimes, you just want a slice of bacon (or two) for yourself. Maybe for someone you love, too. And if you want — need? — that bacon now, there’s no faster way to cook it than in the microwave. The strips brown on a plate while a paper towel laid over them soaks up grease and prevents splatters inside your machine. Once you try this technique, you’ll have a better sense of how long your microwave takes to cook a strip or two.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

The key to making a perfect baked potato in the microwave is cooking it at half power. Because microwaves generate heat that penetrates foods from the outside in, they can overcook the exterior and undercook the interior of big, dense ingredients like potatoes. At 50-percent power, the machine cooks the spuds evenly all the way through. Even at that lower wattage, the potato will cook far more quickly than it would in an oven and is a great method for preparing just one serving.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

In a microwave, corn steams to juicy sweetness in minutes without heating up the kitchen. The husks trap the vegetable’s natural moisture, and the silks slip off easily after being zapped. (In fact, this method is great for shucking corn quickly. You can microwave the corn for just a minute or so, until the husks and silks come off easily, then finish cooking the ears on the grill.) Microwaving corn is ideal when you’re preparing just an ear or two, but you can microwave as many as can fit in a single layer in your machine at one time. You’ll just have to cook them longer, about 4 minutes for two ears and 5 minutes for three.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

This pork roast tastes and smells like the holidays, savory with the scent of rosemary, cozy with a caramelized crust and warming with black pepper. Even though the marinade has only four ingredients, the finished roast has the wow factor of a restaurant dish. The best part about this centerpiece? You can’t mess it up. And though the accompanying cranberry sauce is optional, it brings a welcome fruity tang and pop of red to the table. The sauce can be made up to a week ahead of time and the pork can be marinated the morning you plan to roast it.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

The classic cocktail transforms into a cookie here, with bourbon-soaked cherries and candied orange studding buttery shortbread. Balancing that fruity sweetness are sliced almonds, which give the rounds extra crunch and richness. To fully capture the spirit of an old-fashioned, the dough gets a final egg wash with whiskey on top. Keep a log of this slice-and-bake shortbread in the fridge to prepare fresh batches over a couple of days or bake them all at once and save the rest in an airtight container.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

How to make the viral 2024 Olympic chocolate muffins at home.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Savory and a little sweet, this light dinner tastes like spring but can be made any time of year — and any night of the week if you keep a stash of shrimp in your freezer. By quickly thawing them under running water, then dry-brining them with salt for a minute, you end up with juicier, snappier shrimp that taste incredibly fresh. Asparagus spears also cook fast until they’re as crisp-tender as the shrimp. By slicing them at a sharp angle, you reduce any stringiness in the stalks. For a spicy stir-fry, use the chile and keep the seeds in. For a little less heat, remove the seeds after slicing. Stirring a final pat of butter into the sauce, which is sweetened with onion and salty with soy, binds together all of the ingredients with a touch of richness. Serve over rice to sop up that sauce or over tender, leafy greens for a warm salad.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Can this be considered chili if it’s ready in half an hour? For a completely fresh take, yes — yes, it can. Right when it’s done, the kale, cilantro and peppers remain green as grass with a bright bite. The turkey is still tender and juicy, the tomatoes tangy and the spices tingly. Those distinct lanes of flavor merge if you keep the pot over low heat for an hour or more, or if you pack up leftovers and reheat them throughout the week. Thickened with lentils and a whole pound of kale, this chili is hearty with protein and fiber, making it as satisfying as it is satiating.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

This is the dessert you want from late spring to high summer when rhubarb and strawberry flood markets (or your garden). Tart rhubarb mellows to a juicy tang when baked with berries and this filling is even more flavorful because it starts with roasting the fruit. Caramelizing strawberries to the brink of char eliminates the wateriness that threatens to make them bland and concentrates their natural sweetness. The filling would be great even in a store-bought crust, but this homemade one carries the rich milkiness of butter and, thanks to the shortening, is so flaky it shatters like broken glass. This is delicious on its own, but, like all fruit pies, even better with vanilla ice cream.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

San choy bao literally translates from Cantonese to “lettuce wrap,” and its contours are wide: cold iceberg lettuce, a stir-fry of finely diced vegetables and protein, and sweet Chinese bean sauce like hoisin. (The deep-fried noodles here aren’t essential, but they add a fantastic crackle to the juicy filling.) Unlike soft, warm comfort food, which lulls you, san choy bao wakes you up. It feels like a duel, with jabs of hot and cold, lunging back and forth between two worlds. The crunch of icy lettuce snaps into the filling’s steaming crisp bits, and if you can find fresh water chestnuts, you’ll be rewarded with their unique woodsy crunch.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

In 1939, New Orleans chef Lena Richard self-published a cookbook to meet the demand for her recipes. She was the first Black person to host a cooking show and also owned restaurants, had a line of frozen foods and founded a catering company and cooking school. In addition to showcasing the Creole dishes of New Orleans, “Lena Richard’s Cook Book” included a whole chapter on sandwiches for luncheons and tea time. This four-ingredient mix comes together easily and tastes both complex and comfortingly simple. The recipe below reflects her book’s version and the tips added here offer guidance for cooks today. Genevieve Ko

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Crackly fried Chinese scallion pancakes take the form of baked buns here, crisp on the sesame-speckled outside and tender within. Sizzling scallions in hot oil captures the aroma of the pancakes and brings out scallions’ savory side while preserving their bright green hue. To mimic the pancakes’ scaffolding, the blend is spiraled into a simple yeast dough, subtly sweet and a little buttery. Be sure to bake them right before serving so you can pull apart the hot, soft layers and inhale the fragrant steam before taking a bite.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Imagine cocktail sauce, but with a fresh, fruity tang. That’s what you get when cranberries take the place of tomatoes in a dipping sauce with the welcome bite of horseradish mellowed by the woodsy sweetness of maple syrup. As special as it tastes, it requires only blending in a food processor. Be sure to use frozen cranberries straight from the freezer, which will purée into a smooth, tasty dip. (Fresh cranberries won’t break down as much as you try to blitz them and their sour bite is too sharp.) This fun spin on shrimp cocktail is a welcome-mat appetizer to a Thanksgiving feast, but also fun for any party.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

At the restaurant RVR (pronounced “river”), the chefs Travis Lett and Ian Robinson toss this dressing with winter chicories from the local farmers’ market, speckled and striped pink and green. Any crisp leaves from the supermarket, including lettuces and other chicories like radicchio, endive and escarole work well. At their restaurant in Venice, Calif., they top the tossed salad with shaved Parmesan, anchovy-toasted bread crumbs, lots of parsley, fresh squeezes of lemon juice and plenty of black pepper. It’s also delicious as a dip for crudités, with roasted or steamed vegetables, tossed with noodles or used as a spread for sandwiches or savory toasts. Genevieve Ko

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Cold-smoking salmon is a time-honored tradition in Indigenous communities in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, as well as other cold regions where wild salmon runs. The days-long process of infusing the fish with wood smoke without heating it is a tricky one that requires a smokehouse. To replicate the subtle smokiness and tender chew, this recipe cures the fish using a dry brine seasoned with coffee beans, smoked paprika and mezcal, ingredients that bear the scent of fire. A fillet of uniform thickness will yield a consistent firmness, while a tapered one will have thin ends that become like jerky. If you’re concerned about uncooked salmon, you can start with flash-frozen fish, thawing it thoroughly and patting it dry before curing, or you can cook the salmon after it’s been cured.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

This pasta sauce captures the soul-soothing essence of a long-simmering Bolognese even though it cooks quickly. Searing ground beef gives it a caramelized taste that mimics the depth of slow-cooked meat. Adding a few spoonfuls of red curry paste doesn’t make it taste like curry, but gives it instant nuance and depth. Some rich cream at the end rounds the sharp heat to an enveloping warmth. To save even more time, you can chop the vegetables while the meat is cooking. The sauce tastes great on any type of pasta, but it’s especially nice with varieties that can capture it in their curves.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

This is a quick from-scratch mac and cheese ideal for kids — or anyone craving the simple, pure cheesiness of creamy mac and cheese. A standard white sauce comes together with the kitchen staples of butter, flour and milk and can take any blend of cheeses, which should include a large portion of sharp yellow Cheddar for its distinctive mac-and-cheese taste and texture. But this is a great way to use up any odds and ends of cheese in your fridge. A bit of American cheese makes the sauce stretchy and extra smooth, while Gruyère and Swiss add a nice nuttiness and Parmesan and pecorino some deep savory notes.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Trade between China and Thailand began centuries ago and with it came the commingling of people, culture and cuisine. Here, the signature hot, sour, salty, sweet flavor profile of Thai food takes the form of super-savory dumplings with a chile-spiked dipping sauce. Formed into little round patties, these resemble a pan-fried dim sum dumpling filled with garlic chives. The filling is encased in rice paper wrappers (see Tip) because I didn’t have time to buy fresh dumpling wrappers and my local store only carried these dried sheets. They worked beautifully and not only echo the use of wide rice noodles in Thai and Chinese dishes — think pad see ew and beef chow fun — but are also a wonderful pantry ingredient to keep on hand for other recipes. The chicken filling ends up juicy thanks to plenty of napa cabbage and Thai basil in the blend and becomes even more flavorful when dipped into the sauce. Be sure to divide the sauce among individual dishes so everyone can double dip.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Tuna salad often includes mayonnaise, but this version delivers a similar creaminess with Greek yogurt, which imparts a freshness to the mix. Here, the yogurt is seasoned with the classic garlic-dill combination of tzatziki, which goes surprisingly well with sharp yellow mustard. Cucumber is traditionally used in tzatziki, but for this tuna salad, celery is also a fun, crunchy variation. (You also can add celery to the salad if starting with store-bought tzatziki.) If you have only tuna packed in water on hand, simply drain the tuna well and stir olive oil into the salad for richness. Sandwich the tuna between bread, mix it into a salad or enjoy it as a dip with chips or crackers.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

If you’ve never tried to bake anything before, this is a great place to start. (You don’t even need a cake pan!) And if you’re an expert in the kitchen, you’ll be delighted with this quick bread that’s as tender as cake. Overripe bananas not only deliver their deep sweetness, but also bind together the batter made from pantry ingredients. With neither dairy nor eggs, this treat tastes like the purest form of banana bread and also ends up being vegan. You can skip the crunchy topping or swap in your favorite nuts, or black or white sesame seeds. You also can stir a cup of mini chocolate chips or finely chopped chocolate into the batter before baking to take this from breakfast treat to dessert.