Choose your own meatball adventure

My recipe for meatballs with any meat is ready for your swaps and substitutions.

View in browser|nytimes.com August 26, 2024 SUPPORTED BY INVESCO QQQ Melissa Clark's meatballs with any meat. Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Choose your own meatball adventure By Melissa Clark I almost never follow recipes, at least not exactly. I like to add a pinch of this and a spoonful of that, guided by what's in my pantry and what I'm hungry for. This is why I find it almost physically impossible to make the same thing twice. My recipe for meatballs with any meat is made for these sorts of improvisations — the variations are built right into the ingredient list. Like a culinary Choose Your Own Adventure, you select the meat (or your favorite meat substitute), the spices, the herbs and the aromatics to get the combination you want for dinner tonight, and you can rest assured that the recipe's basic structure will lead to a good ending. Try it out, and then recount your adventures in the notes to inspire fellow cooks. It's a risk-free way to be creative in the kitchen. Featured Recipe Meatballs With Any Meat View Recipe → Speaking of creative, Ali Slagle's way of constructing easy seasonal recipes never fails to include a touch of artistic wizardry. In her oven-seared salmon with corn and tomatoes, she brushes mayonnaise all over the fillets, which adds moisture and helps them brown while searing. Then, she adds loads of lime zest to the vegetables to spark their flavors. It's a beguiling and effortless late summer meal. Then there's her mojo chicken with pineapple, in which she marinates chicken in a garlicky Cuban mojo sauce after — rather than before — broiling. The warm meat soaks up the flavors while keeping the dish's colors bright and lively, casting a spell on both the eyes and the stomach. Another practitioner of culinary magic, Hetty "The Great Foodini" Lui McKinnon is always breaking vegetables out of their traditional molds. Take, for example, her spicy mushroom and tofu mazemen. This vegan riff on brothless Japanese ramen brilliantly uses seared mushrooms and nubby bits of crumbled tofu to add protein and heft to the noodles. Then the whole thing is zipped up with an umami-rich sauce of miso, sesame paste and chili crisp. It's a dazzling meatless dinner that's ready, presto, in half an hour. If you have a garden suddenly teeming with zucchini, those prolific bunnies of the vegetable kingdom, you know it takes a creative mind to keep up with the yield. Melissa Knific has a great way to help use up the bounty in her new recipe for zucchini fritters. She offers a couple of options for dipping (ranch dressing or tzatziki), bringing us around again to a choose-your-own-adventure dinner. In fact, these fritters, and their sauces too, would pair well with those meatballs. For dessert, how about a kid-inspired candy bar with a grown-up sensibility? My almond and goat cheese candy bars are a lot like no-bake peanut butter bars, but with an almond butter and goat cheese mixture as the base, topped by a fudgy layer of bittersweet chocolate. It has a not-too-sweet sophistication you never saw coming. Abracadabra! As always, you'll want to subscribe to get all these creative recipes and so many more (oh, just tens of thousands more). If you need any technical help, the brilliant people at cookingcare@nytimes.com are there for you. And I'm at hellomelissa@nytimes.com if you want to say hi. That's all for now. See you on Wednesday. A MESSAGE FROM INVESCO QQQ Recipe For Innovation with Jean-Georges Whether it's cookies remembering a childhood in France to a sichuan chili lobster that recounts creative inspirations from 5 years of living and cooking across Asia, Chef Jean-Georges' kitchen doesn't come with borders. Watch him remain at the forefront of culinary innovation as he creates five recipes inspired by companies within Invesco QQQ ETF. Watch Now IN THIS NEWSLETTER Mark Weinberg for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Oven-Seared Salmon With Corn and Tomatoes By Ali Slagle 25 minutes Makes 4 servings Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Mojo Chicken With Pineapple By Ali Slagle 40 minutes Makes 4 servings Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell. Spicy Mushroom and Tofu Mazemen By Hetty Lui McKinnon 30 minutes Makes 4 servings Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Simon Andrews. Zucchini Fritters By Melissa Knific 45 minutes Makes 12 (3-inch) fritters Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times Almond and Goat Cheese Candy Bars By Melissa Clark 30 minutes, plus chilling Makes 18 bars Sign up for the Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter Fresh dinner ideas for busy people who want something great to eat, with NYT Cooking recipes sent to you weekly. Get it in your inbox Sign up for The Veggie newsletter Tanya Sichynsky shares the most delicious vegetarian recipes for weeknight cooking, packed lunches and dinner parties. Get it in your inbox Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for Cooking from The New York Times. To stop receiving Cooking, unsubscribe. To opt out of other promotional emails from The Times, including those regarding The Athletic, manage your email settings. To opt out of updates and offers sent from The Athletic, submit a request. 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