Mix and match any pantry vegetables to create a colorful skewer. These can be grilled or roasted in your oven.
Dice-a-mango Tip
Mangos have a large seed in the middle which can make it tricky to cut. Check out the tip below if you’ve ever struggled with cutting up a mango….
Mango Salsa
Mango salsa is great with any fish, a refreshing compliment. Or even scooped, generously atop crispy tortilla chips.
As with the pineapple salsa, the cuts of the ingredients play a big role with taste and texture, so take your time cutting everything up.
This comes together super quick and taste best chilled. Ingredients are built around 1 mango, but can easily be doubled or tripled.
Toasted Coconut + Lime Fish-sticks
Using the cod in the pantry, these fish sticks are an elevated take on an old classic. There’s a couple ingredients that can be substituted depending on if you want the recipe completely pantry friendly or made with a few ingredients from the commissary.
These come together fairly quickly, after a little soak in a milk brine for max time of about an hour (you can factor that into your prep time. Or if your pressed for time, just do a 20 minute soak).
Serve hot with your favorite dipping sauce.
Easy Chorizo Pasta
This chorizo pasta recipe is quick, easy, and has only a handful of ingredients! It’s ready in about 30 minutes.. This makes 4 servings.
Stewed Chicken Thighs + Puffed Corn Crust
This is an extra-large-spoon-worthy dish of comfort. It’s like a cross between a chicken pot pie and a Chicken molé. Lots of deep smoky spices and sweet creamy corn. A great combo. The topping can be left off and the chicken served more like a stew, but honestly, you’d be missing a pretty great part of the dish.
This dish uses a spice, harissa. Which is a hot chili paste, or sometimes powder, from North Africa. If you have it, great! If not you can substitute it with sriracha, or if you really don’t want any spice, just up the paprika .
Serve alongside steamed green beans, or a crispy fresh salad.
The directions are for slow cooking the chicken on the stove top, but feel free to adapt to using your instant pot. You could add all the ingredients, for the chicken and cook on high pressure for about 7-10 minutes, or until the chicken “falls apart”. Transfer to a casserole dish and bake in the oven with the corn crust.
Focaccia Mosaic
Here’s where your inner creative mode kicks in.
Use the dough as a blank canvas. Use the veggies as your colors and shapes.
Notice the picture? Just a springboard example! create create create.
The results? A tasty treat and bonus, a conversation stater.
The dough used in this recipe is the frozen Italian bread from the pantry, but you could always use pizza dough. Try and use good fresh olive oil. The oil is what makes the dough into a crispy crunchy focaccia gem.
Because the dough is frozen, the prep time doesn’t include the first proof time. Defrost dough in the fridge, preferably overnight.
Potato Leek Soup
This simple soup (my mom’s recipe) can be customized to be as healthy or as decadent as you want!
Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Herb and Lime Salsa
This recipe elevates the sweetness of the potato with a herbaceous-tangy salsa. A change up from a typical sweet potato casserole.
Serve alongside a grilled steak, pork chops or roasted chicken.
Asparagus + Almonds
These lovely green veggie stalks get a snazzy flavor boost from the combination of butter and herbs along with crunchy almonds and briny capers. Don’t shy away from the butter, using other oils will alter the flavor. Plus, it’s a veggie dish. It’s ok to butter.