10 meals I made again and again

And more affogatos in 2023

For Christmas, my brother Zac hand-embroidered my newsletter logo onto a shirt!

Hi, hello, HNY!

There’s a running joke in my house that if I make something delicious for dinner we’re unlikely to have it again any time soon. There are just too many recipes to try!

But even in this new-recipe-loving house, there are meals and snacks I make again and again. They’re the ones I can shop for and make on autopilot and things we both look forward to eating.

Here are my fave recipes from 2022 and my food resolution for the year ahead (silly, achievable resolutions only):

Most-made dish for visitors — Tokyo-style French Toast

This recipe by Julia Busuttil Nishimura is well worth the 24 hour prep time, where milk bread soaks in the custardy mixture ready for a quick fry the next morning. Plus everyone can look forward to it for a full day. I love it with banana, mascarpone and maple syrup or with roasted rhubarb if I feel like making a special topping. Highly recommend picking up a loaf of milk bread from your Asian grocer to stash in the freezer so you can make this whenever.

Best veggie-filled meal for cool, busy nights

Rainbow chard for a rainbow bean stew.

I’d never eaten anything like this beans and greens stew with doenjang (NYT Cooking gift link) but it came specially recommended by my food hero Eric Kim for my first winter in Tasmania. It’s made with a handful of ingredients — tinned beans, a red onion, a bunch of chard and of course doenjang. I have the nicest memories of stirring this up while the rice cooker on the counter bubbled away. We ate it after busy Sundays road tripping around our new state or after work when dinner was more of an afterthought. We always rejoiced in how good it made us feel.

Orzo orzo orzo 

2022 was a big orzo year for me. What’s not to love about a pasta shape that looks like rice and cooks very quickly? My top three orzo meals are 1) Creamy orzo with sausage and spinach (bonus points for being a one-pot meal) 2) Molly Baz’s Orzo al limone (cheese, pasta, lemon, pepper) 3) Julia Turshen’s Creamy roasted tomato and orzo soup (from her cookbook Simply Julia, though there’s a similar version here).

Meal-saving scallion oil

The best thing to do with a half a bunch of scallions (or shallots as I grew up calling them)? Make a jar of scallion oil to stash in the fridge (I am still yet to buy the dried shrimp for this recipe, and yet it always comes out great!). They make the tastiest noodles, whether you’ve got frozen udon or instant noodles in your pantry. It’s delicious stirred through noodles with stir-fried Asian greens. Even better with a few chunky pieces of steak if you’ve got it handy.

Pad Thai for when I want takeaway but am already hangry

For an even faster noodle dinner with very little prep, I’ve made this Pad Thai with prawns, tofu, whatever’s in the fridge! It’s the reason we always have packets of rice noodles in the pantry and a jar of crushed peanuts ready to go. My only tip is to check the cooking instructions on your noodle packet — the brand I buy only needs around 10 minutes soak time. Any longer and I end up with broken noodles.

Slow cooker baked beans for warming winter breakfasts

I bought my slow cooker to make this brisket but last year, it was used exclusively to make batches and batches of slow cooker baked beans. I loved waking up to a warm pot of beans on icy mornings and they became breakfast for the week or a hearty addition to a cheese toastie.

Two cheery sweet snacks

Year three of mostly WFH meant I needed new treats. I made two things on repeat last year — cookie dough oat bars and fruit juice jellies. The muesli bars came on road trips, were packed for the office and were enough to get me out the door to the markets on Saturday mornings. And the jellies were eaten any time! I currently have a batch of cranberry jellies setting in the fridge.

Fun food New Year’s resolutions only

My new year’s resolution for 2022 was to eat more garlic bread. Any kind would do, from the fancy pizza shop in town which made the bread itself to the foil variety you can buy at the supermarket for lasagne night at home. It was nostalgic, achievable and fun!

So in 2023, I’m updating it and am going to order more affogatos. Wish me luck 😋