Braised Chicken Thighs With Squash and Mustard Greens

This sauce is slightly magical. The texture cloaks pasta much like a traditional meat sauce does, and the flavors are deep and rich, but it’s actually vegan!

This is what I call a fridge-eater recipe. The key here is getting a nice sear on the sausage and cooking the tomato down until it coats the sausage and vegetables well.

This grandma-inspired soup is equal parts cozy and bright.

Among the top tier of sauces is Indonesian satay sauce, because it is the embodiment of joy and life. In fact, this sauce is also trustworthy and highly respectful of whatever it comes into contact with—perhaps it is, in fact, the perfect friend?

Reliable cabbage is cooked in the punchy sauce and then combined with store-bought baked tofu and roasted cashews for a salad that can also be eaten with rice.

Cabbage is the unsung hero of the winter kitchen—available anywhere, long-lasting in the fridge, and super-affordable. It’s also an excellent partner for pasta.

The mussels here add their beautiful, briny juices into the curry, which turn this into a stunning and spectacular dish.

Oyster mushrooms are a strong all-rounder in the kitchen, seeming to straddle both plant and meat worlds in what they look and taste like when cooked. Here they’re coated in a marinade my mother used to use when cooking Chinese food at home—honey, soy, garlic and ginger—and roasted until golden, crisp, and juicy.