I got that summertime skilletI’m not entirely sure why I returned home from vacation last month with a stack of red-rimmed enamel plates. It’s not like I have the space: My kitchen cabinets are nearing capacity. I store my kitchen towels in various pots and, much like my Manhattan-dwelling grandmother, I treat the oven as overflow storage, home to stacks of sheet pans. Go ahead and add another five minutes to the recipe prep time for New York City kitchen maneuvering. Unless, of course, it’s a skillet recipe. In my apartment, the cast-iron never leaves the stovetop. It’s as much a fixture of the countertop horizon as the dish rack and the coffee machine. In this world, you’re either a skillet girl or a sheet-pan girl. You must choose. Or let Sarah Copeland’s skillet lasagna with spinach and summer squash choose for you. You read that right: lasagna for summer. With the help of no-cook or oven-ready lasagna sheets, this vegetable-rich meal comes together without having to bake a thing. And let me go ahead and assuage a common fear: Yes, you can cook tomatoes in a cast-iron. I do it all the time, swear on my skillet. A well-seasoned cast-iron — one you’ve cooked with amply, seasoned repeatedly and made slick and nonstick — will hold up against acidic ingredients just fine, so long as you don’t long-simmer or store them in it. Skillet Lasagna With Spinach and Summer SquashSo go on and make Ifrah F. Ahmed’s five-star white bean shakshuka (or Melissa Clark’s beloved shakshuka with feta) with the same pan. I’ve had a near relentless, inexplicable craving for a full English breakfast lately, and I wonder if the combination of eggs, tomato sauce and beans here might satisfy it in some way. Maybe I’ll throw in some mushrooms. My stainless steel skillets are never far from reach, either, hanging on hooks an arm’s length from the burners. I like to use them when I’m switching quickly between the stovetop and the broiler, as with Ali Slagle’s instant-classic crispy gnocchi with burst tomatoes and mozzarella or Sheela Prakash’s skillet chickpea Parmesan. I have weak wrists! In each recipe, a single skillet moves seamlessly between tasks: in Ali’s, from pan-frying the gnocchi and softening the cherry tomatoes to melting the mozzarella; and in Sheela’s, from cooking the tomato sauce and simmering the chickpeas to quickly toasting the bread-crumb topping and browning the cheese. “It was OK, so we made it again the week after,” a cheeky reader wrote in the comments of Sheela’s chickpea Parm. “And then again, and again and again and again. Just to be sure it was still OK on different days of the week, and for different meals of the day.” All you need for Melissa’s one-pan orzo with spinach and feta is a 10-inch skillet and an appetite for all things verdant, as this 30-minute pasta overflows with scallions, peas, dill and the titular leafy greens. If you have the skillet but none of the ingredients, you can swap the orzo for frozen vegetable dumplings, the scallions for garlic, the peas for ginger, the dill for cilantro and the spinach for kale. OK, I’m mostly kidding. But that is, technically, Ali’s recipe for one-pan dumplings and greens. And it’s nearly skillet fruit season. Are you ready? I’m most excited for cherries and berries, so I can make Yewande Komolafe’s cherry-studded brown butter cornmeal cake and Kayla Hoang’s warm cherry skillet cake and Christian Reynoso’s strawberry pudding cake and Jessie Sheehan’s blackberry slump. I may not have room for any more dishes, but there’s always room for dessert.
White Bean Shakshuka
Crispy Gnocchi With Burst Tomatoes and Mozzarella
One-Pan Orzo With Spinach and FetaFor a limited time, you can enjoy free access to the recipes in this newsletter in our app. Download it on your iOS or Android device and create a free account to get started. One More Thing!Bleak: “Why is everyone waiting in line for frozen yogurt? Why am I?” Chic: The Aperol spritz has been dethroned. All hail king Hugo. Thanks for reading, and see you next week. Email us at theveggie@nytimes.com. Newsletters are archived here. Reach out to my colleagues at cookingcare@nytimes.com if you have questions about your account.
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