It’s no secret that Bon Appétit editors cook a lot for work. So it should come as no surprise that we cook a lot during our off hours too. Here are the recipes we’re whipping up this month to get dinner on the table, entertain our friends, satisfy a sweet tooth, use up leftovers, and everything in between. For even more staff favorites, click here.
June 12
Camera-ready fattoush
I was filming a social video about my favorite air fryer and needed a side to serve with crispy chicken thighs. This fattoush salad was an obvious choice—colorful enough to look great on camera and easy enough to throw together while the chicken cooked. I used a mandoline for the vegetables and whisked together the dressing, a sweet-tart mix of pomegranate molasses, lemon juice, and sumac. We recommend making your own pita chips, but I bought a bag of Stacy’s and had the whole thing done by the time the chicken came out of the air fryer. —Olivia Tarantino, senior shopping editor
Blissful skillet cherry cake
I don’t often feel meditative when I’m cooking. I wish I did, but something in my core is too neurotic to feel calm as I’m chopping or dicing or watching for proper browning. At least, that’s what I’ve always thought. But this week, I discovered the zen of pitting cherries by hand, as I prepared to bake a skillet cherry cake. Sitting at my kitchen table, I found myself blissfully blank-brained and in a rhythm: slice, rotate, pit, toss. For what might be the first time in my life I wasn’t thinking of…anything. I plopped the cherries on top of the buttery batter and everything was ready to go in the oven—wait…why isn’t this batter sweet? Ah, I forgot to add sugar. Cherries back in the bowl, mix sugar into batter, re-plop cherries. In the end, this mercifully forgiving recipe still turned out great. —Sam Stone, staff writer
Heat-wave spring rolls
The erratic heat waves of spring have made me want summer rolls for dinner on a weekly basis. Velvety lettuce and crunchy vegetables, sweet-spicy dipping sauce, and hardly any cooking are compelling reasons to heed the call of my hyperfixation. I only turn on the stove for a little bit of steak that appears, finely chopped up, inside the rolls. My colleague and station-mate Jesse Szewczyk’s soda-marinated skirt steak is excellent for this, caramelizing quickly in a hot cast-iron pan, after its overnight slumber in miso and soy. —Shilpa Uskokovic, senior Test Kitchen editor.
One-and-done pork shoulder
When I’m hosting friends for dinner, I have a rule for myself: Whatever I’m serving has to be 80% done before my guests arrive. I’ll happily slip away to do small tasks before the meal, but I don’t want to spend any time actively cooking dinner. To abide by this self-imposed standard, one of my go-to meals has become Alison Roman’s Harissa-Rubbed Pork Shoulder With White Beans and Chard from her cookbook, Nothing Fancy. (Roman made a video with Bon Appétit featuring a very similar dish, though this version omits the chard and preserved lemon.) After putting it in the oven, it’s basically done. And with creamy beans and wilted chard (I sometimes use kale), this is a one-pot dinner that feels fancy, at least to me. —Carly Westerfield, associate manager, audience strategy
