Fall greatest hits and a sneak peek at the podcast!

You’re the first to hear it...

Hi friends,

I have lots of recipe ideas to share below, but the big news is that we are about one week out from the official launch of the podcast I’ve been dreaming about for more than a year now.

Next week, you’ll get the first taste: TWO episodes full of dinner ideas and real talk about finding happiness in your cooking life. 

We all have to eat, but feeling good in the kitchen ebbs and flows for many of us. We try to come up with meal idea after meal idea; we teeter on the edge of burnout. 

The Dinner Plan aims to offer inspiration and understanding: I’ll talk with great cooks, experts across a wide range of cuisines, and best-selling cookbook authors about the dishes they have on repeat, the ways they make their cooking life easier, the ingredients that help thrown-together meals taste more delicious, and what they’d make with whatever’s in your fridge and pantry right now.

I’m so excited to learn from these folks—and so excited to add new recipes to my own go-to dinners list.

You can get a little sneak preview here.

Some of you have asked how you can help with the launch. I’m so grateful—after so many years of building and editing cooking websites for other folks, The Dinner Plan is an independent operation. Which is both terrifying and exhilarating.

First and foremost, please subscribe / follow wherever you listen to podcasts, whether that’s Spotify or Apple Podcasts or somewhere else.

Make sure you’re subscribed here on Substack as well—these missives are the place to get all the recipe links and cookbook recommendations that come up during the course of each conversation.

You’ll also get full recipes in each week’s newsletter—a great preview of the new cookbooks written by the authors who appear in each episode.

Let us solve your dinner conundrum

Want to share what’s in your fridge and pantry and get pro-level advice on how to turn those things into dinner? Record a voice memo with a little tour (12 or so items is ideal) and email it to thedinnerplanpod@gmail.com. We’ll play one reader fridge clip each week to spark some easy dinner ideas.

Need a dinner plan right now?

I wouldn’t leave you without a few recipes to try. Here are a few of my favorites lately, plus recently-bookmarked dinners.

Melissa Clark’s Harissa Chicken With Leeks, Potatoes, and Yogurt (Reprinted from Dinner: Changing the Game—that’s an affiliate link—on The Splendid Table) If you’ve tried this before, you know how much it deserved its moment on the cover. The book is an absolute winner overall.

More Melissa Clark, more chicken: Garlicky Chicken With Lemon-Anchovy Sauce (New York Times) My friend who makes this constantly uses even more anchovies and even more capers.

Andrea Nguyen’s Minimal Mess Smoky Eggplant With Scallion Chile Oil (Pass the Fish Sauce). Love a clever microwave move.

Ali Slagle’s Crispy Baked Fish With Tartar Sauce (New York Times) A friend calls this easy fish dish his most-cooked recipe.

I recently made a loose approximation of this Nam Khao Tod recipe, referencing this air-fried variation as well, and added baked tofu. Really good!

Ina Garten’s Zuni-ish Roast Chicken With Bread and Arugula Salad (Barefoot Contessa)

Hetty McKinnon’s Spanakopita Rolls With Tomato, Chickpea, and Dill Salad (ABC.net)

River Cafe Zucchini Soup (Washington Post)

Okay, I’ll give into the squash peer pressure: Provençal Squash Gratin (Saveur)