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September 5, 2026 
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Good morning! Today we have for you:
- Cacio-e-pepe-ish cream cheese ramen, ready in nine minutes
- A no-recipe recipe for garlicky ricotta-bean toasts
- And, because you have the brown bananas but not the energy to make banana bread, banana nut oatmeal
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| Kevin Pang’s cream cheese ramen. Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Prop Stylist: Megan Hedgpeth. |
Superfast noodles and fancy-feeling beans
Hello! Today I’m going to hand the mic to Kevin Pang, a recipe authority who’s created many wonderful dinners for New York Times Cooking. He’ll tell you about a no-recipe recipe he made during his week of budget-focused meal planning, but not before I tell you about his cream cheese ramen, perhaps one of the quickest dinners on our Weeknight 100.
“There is such a thing as a noodle emergency,” he writes in the headnote, “when hunger strikes at an inconvenient hour and the only remedy is a bowl of noodles.” These cacio-e-pepe-ish noodles, made with an instant ramen noodle brick, a bit of butter and cream cheese and some grated Parm, are exactly what to make when you come home on a busy Saturday, you’re hungry and tired, and you need sustenance, stat.
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OK, that’s enough from me. Kevin?
For many of us with kids, school starts up again on Tuesday — a blessed relief for many working parents. And it’s these busy parents who reached out to me about the creative meal plan I put together for my family on a budget of $28 a day. I appreciated the nice notes, which shared a soldiers-in-the-foxhole spirit — that we’re all in this together, fellow parents, so let’s get those chicken tenders on the table, move, move, move! |
Do check out that article for some lessons learned from my week of budget cooking. (And a high-five to all parents with kids heading back to school.) |
When we were grocery shopping for that week, my wife was ecstatic to have found fava beans in the produce section. It’s unfortunate that the most well-known mention of fava beans is in “The Silence of the Lambs” — that association overshadows how buttery, sweet and delicious the beans are. |
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| Kevin Pang’s garlicky ricotta-bean toasts. Kevin Pang |
We always prep them the same way (it’s not with liver and a nice Chianti). After shucking the fresh beans, we blanch them for about 45 seconds, and then shock them in ice water; if you’re using frozen favas, you’ll want to blanch them a touch longer. Meanwhile, we toast slices of baguette and rub a raw garlic clove on the crisp surfaces. Then we spread on ricotta or cream cheese, lay the fava beans on top and finish the toasts with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of flaky salt. (I’d imagine this preparation would work nicely with rinsed and drained canned beans, too, like Great Northerns.) It feels very sophisticated, until you realize it’s just beans on bread. But oh, Clarice, is it delicious. — KEVIN PANG |
More budget-friendly meals
Rotisserie chicken tostadas: Rotisserie chickens are dinner savers, a ready-to-go protein that’s happy to land in your soups, stews, noodles and salads. In this Christian Reynoso recipe, shreds of that chicken are tossed in a cumin-y, limey dressing with avocado and thinly sliced onion before being piled on crunchy tostadas. No ripe avocado? A spoonful of sour cream or plain yogurt will mimic its creaminess.
Japanese ground beef curry: I stock up on Japanese curry bricks when they’re on sale; I’m not partial to any particular brand (though I do try to get the hot or extra hot ones if possible; I’m wild like that). With those on hand, I’m all set for a super savory dinner that uses up whatever protein and veggies I have; in Amelia Rampe’s recipe here, that’s ground beef, a carrot, a potato and frozen peas.
Banana nut oatmeal: Weekends are for good breakfasts, or at least hot breakfasts eaten out of a dish and not out of hand on the way out the door. This new banana-bread-inspired oatmeal from Ali Slagle has a double dose of banana, with mashed banana adding sweetness and body to the oatmeal and banana coins as a topping. Cinnamon and chopped nuts join the fun, too; I’m going to add a dollop of nut butter to my serving.
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And before you go
If I’m not eating oatmeal for breakfast, I’m eating pancakes. (Flipping things is fun, and you can’t flip a waffle.) Our pals at Wirecutter taste-tested 16 popular pancake mixes to determine the very best ones, and if you’d like to make your own dry mix, I have a five-star recipe from Melissa Knific right here.
Thanks for reading!
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