Recipes worth opening.

Joshua Weissman's 15-minute vodka pasta from his "3 Lazy Pasta Recipes (15 Minutes)" video — gochujang + tomato paste base, shallot and garlic, finished with cream, butter and pecorino. Prep 5 min, cook 10 min. To taste: kosher salt, Parmigiano Reggiano, black pepper.

By ari • Serves 4

The crumble we bring to every team potluck. Browning the butter first makes the topping taste like toffee.

By johnnyappleseed • Serves 6

Overnight oats with grated apple, cinnamon and a spoon of apple butter. Ready before your first meeting.

By johnnyappleseed • Serves 2

Deep, dark, spiced apple butter that makes the whole house smell like an orchard. Great on toast and in the oats.

By johnnyappleseed • 3 jars

Baked, not fried, with reduced cider in the batter and a crackly cinnamon-sugar coat.

By johnnyappleseed • Serves 12

Golden pork chops braised in hard cider with apples, onion and thyme. One pan, thirty-five minutes.

By johnnyappleseed • Serves 4

Crisp apples, celery, grapes and toasted walnuts in a light lemony dressing. Lunch for the whole design review.

By johnnyappleseed • Serves 4

Apples cooked in amber caramel under a lid of puff pastry, then flipped. The one dessert worth saying "one more thing" for.

By johnnyappleseed • Serves 6

A free-form apple tart for people who think pie crust is too fussy. Thin slices, a buttery fold, and a glossy apricot glaze.

By johnnyappleseed • Serves 8

The crumble we bring to every team potluck. Browning the butter first makes the topping taste like toffee.

By timstestkitchen • Serves 6

Soft, melty Cosmic Crisp apples under a thick crumble topping that's crunchy, chewy, and full of big clusters. Made start to finish in one 12" cast iron skillet. The apples are softened on the stove before baking; keep the heat at medium or higher, because apples held at low heat firm up. To keep the spice light, leave out the cardamom or cut the cinnamon to ½ tsp. Rewarm leftovers at 350°F for about 15 minutes, and don't store them in the cast iron.

By ari • Serves 8

One-saucepan walnut cake soaked in lemon-honey syrup; better the next day. Scaled to ~0.7x from the original 9x13 version for a 9x9 pan (same batter depth, so bake time is about the same).

By ari • 16 squares

Chickpea, eggplant, mushroom and fig tagine with saffron and cinnamon. Adapted from "Haradrim Tagine" in Recipes from the World of Tolkien by Robert Tuesley Anderson (Thunder Bay Press, 2020), p. 134. Changes from the original: cremini instead of button mushrooms and seared separately before going in; olive oil for the aromatics and avocado oil for the eggplant rather than sunflower throughout; saffron bloomed in warm stock; eggplant salted first; pearl couscous toasted in butter instead of the fine couscous the book steams and bakes. Vegetarian.

By ari • Serves 4

Joshua Weissman's quick & easy aglio e olio — restaurant-worthy garlic-and-olive-oil pasta in about 15 minutes. Note: parsley can be swapped for basil in a pinch — use ~⅔ the amount, tear/chiffonade it, and stir in off the heat right before serving so it doesn't bruise or lose its perfume.

By ari • Serves 4

A bright, simple mango salsa built for nachos. Use ripe yellow mangos (Ataulfo/Champagne) — they're sweeter, softer, and less fibrous than the big red-green kind. Dice everything small so it scoops cleanly onto a chip, and drain off excess juice before topping so the nachos stay crisp.

By ari • ~2 cups

My go-to pizza dough for a home oven maxing at 500°F with a baking steel. Tuned for bread flour (NOT soft-wheat 00 — that goes slack without 800°F heat). Slightly lower hydration for easy launching, plus oil and a little sugar to help browning that a hot oven would otherwise do for free.

By ari • 5 personal or 3 large