Though your week may have started on a rough note (mine began with dental work), it’s looking to end on a sweet note, as Halloween and Diwali overlap. Although they celebrate entirely different things — Halloween the dark and the spooky, Diwali the light and the good — they both do it with dessert, which is something that I can absolutely get behind (despite the dental work).
With its Barbie-pink color and cardamom-y aroma, Hetal Vasavada’s resplendent badam burfi bark would be just the thing for a Diwali celebration. (Or Halloween, for that matter.) The recipe, adapted by Priya Krishna, calls for ruby chocolate, which is made from a specific variety of cacao bean that turns rosy instead of brown during fermentation and has tangy, fruity notes. Topped with crushed, freeze-dried strawberries for increased pinkness and a burst of tart flavor, it’s a showstopping sweet no matter when you serve it. And if that’s not quite right, we have loads more delightful Diwali recipes, both savory and sweet, for you here.
Featured Recipe
Badam Burfi Bark
When my daughter was small, trying to get her to eat dinner on Halloween before trick-or-treating was always a challenge. A healthful, balanced one-pan meal, like Kay Chun’s sheet pan chicken and cheesy broccoli, is the pro move here. This easy meal is quick to put together and very kid-friendly, at least if your kids like crispy chicken skin and broccoli covered with Cheddar and Parmesan. Serve this, and feel better about letting your little zombies and ghouls out into the candy-strewn wilds.
Also perfect for Halloween is Anna Francese Gass’s cauliflower Milanese, which stars thick cauliflower steaks dressed up as veal cutlets. These meaty, crumb-coated slabs are baked rather than fried, which makes them highly appealing for weeknights — or anytime you don’t feel like cleaning the stove after dinner. For me, that would be just about always.
I’ll make an exception, though, for Romel Bruno’s excellent pork tocino, which needs slow frying so the thin pieces of pork shoulder can gently caramelize in their pineapple-soy-sauce marinade. Bucking tradition, Romel swaps the usual annatto seeds for beet juice to provide color and earthiness. Serve this with rice and fried eggs for breakfast, lunch or dinner. And fear not the stove wiping — this rich, complex dish is well worth it.
Since Halloween and pumpkins go hand in hand, Pierre Thiam’s pumpkin-peanut rice balls with maafé (adapted by Eric Kim) could be another excellent fright-night meal possibility. To make it, you mash hot short-grain rice and pumpkin purée (canned or homemade) until it holds its shape enough to shape into balls, which you then plop in a bowl of creamy, spicy Senegalese maafé, a traditional peanut stew. Hearty and warming, it will lay a nutritious foundation for the sugary treats to come.
One more to consider: my seared shrimp with chard, chiles and ginger. I love this dish because it uses the chard stems as well as the leaves and is especially pretty when made with rainbow chard, which glows yellow and red next to the plump pink shrimp. I keep bags of frozen wild shrimp on hand just for recipes like this one. They defrost immediately, and the quality is superb. Also, feel free to substitute different peppers for the ones I call for. As long as you use one spicy chile (maybe a jalapeño or serrano) and one mellow one (a red, orange or yellow bell pepper), the dish will have the right balance of sweetness and bite.
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One-Pot, Once a Week: Sheet-Pan Gnocchi With Mushrooms and Spinach
For this week’s one-pot recipe, let Ali Slagle thrill you with her sheet-pan gnocchi with mushrooms and spinach. Inspired by classic steakhouse side dishes (baked potatoes, roasted mushrooms and creamed spinach), this hearty meal hits all the coziest, most autumnal notes — without the steak!
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