Week of Meals: Chef and food writer Jenny Dorsey's recipes

Week of Meals: Chef and food writer Jenny Dorsey’s recipes

Five new recipes for weeknight cooking in our series from chef Jenny Dorsey.

By Ben MimsCooking Columnist

Aug. 5, 2021 6 AM PT

This is the fifth installment in our “Week of Meals” series, which gives you five weeknight dinner recipes with all the planning and strategizing built in. Each meal makes four servings, comes together — start to finish — in less than 60 minutes, and requires 10 or fewer ingredients (not counting cooking oil, salt and pepper or water). The groceries for all five meals can be bought from a single grocery store and in a single shopping trip and will cost less than $100 total.

Chef and food writer Jenny Dorsey provides the recipes for this installment in our Week of Meals series. Here’s how she plans her weekday recipes, some of which utilize an electric pressure cooker to prepare offal — even on a busy workday — while others show how she gets two completely different meals from just one chicken.

“No week is complete for me without offals. I’m very pro-offals, and I think we could help solve some important food supply and access issues if we could destigmatize and encourage offal eating in this country, to be honest. Trotters are one of my favorite cuts because they don’t require any pre-cleaning (versus my other favorites, which are kidney, stomach and intestine — in that order).

“My tomato-and-egg stir-fry is a classic Chinese ‘home-style’ comfort dish that most everyone will make. I know it seems odd (because tomatoes are a New World crop, and also, with eggs??) but truly it’s one of the easiest and most delicious things I’ve been eating since I was a kid. I add garlic and scallions to my version but some purists literally only use tomato and egg. As with everything, I encourage everyone to dress this up/down and make it their own.

“I like to get a whole chicken and cut it up so I can play with different flavors throughout the week and not get bored eating so much chicken. So I started making this braised dish with the dark meat parts regularly because I live so close to El Super and can always get tomatillos and fresh tortillas. It’s such a versatile marinade that can be used for anything from chicken to pork to beef to fish!

“And for the breast pieces, I like to use them in my adaptation from a salted duck recipe my mother shared with me a while ago. It requires a little more effort to salt the chicken, but it really is worth it to get juicy poached breasts as a result. The ginger-garlic-scallion sauce is a variation of the ones you’ll find for Hainanese chicken, and it’s probably my favorite sauce in the whole world.”
— as told to Ben Mims

Jenny’s neighborhood grocery store:
El Super, 5610 York Blvd., Los Angeles, 90042, (323) 916-8218