Lasagna that Won’t Wear Out Its Welcome We redesign our recipe to serve two by trading a baking pan for a loaf pan. A few ingredients added to the sauce gives us a velvety texture reminiscent of a Bolognese sauce, meatloaf mix (a combination of ground beef, veal, and pork) adds more flavor and richness than ground beef alone, and no-boil lasagna noodles were a timesaver and fit neatly into the pan.
Single Skillet Feast for Two There’s nothing more satisfying than fork-tender beef slow-roasted with creamy potatoes and sweet carrots. But when you’re cooking for two, you want all that, and less (less meat than called for in a classic pot roast recipe, and less prep and cleanup, too). We found top blade steak to be a very tender and richly flavored cut of meat that’s well suited to pot roasting; it has plenty of collagen to break down and add flavor during cooking.
Just the Right Number of Freshly Baked Cookies Our favorite recipe for Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies yields 24 cookies—far too many even for a pair of die-hard cookie fans. We wanted a recipe for 12 cookies, and we wanted it to be quick and convenient. Our secret? Melted butter gives the cookies a chewy texture and enables us to easily stir our ingredients by hand (no lugging out the electric mixer to cream the butter and sugar).
Greek-Style Lamb Pita Sandwiches We wanted restaurant-style Greek gyros—slices of shaved, marinated lamb, tomato slices, crisp lettuce, and cooling cucumber-yogurt sauce stuffed inside a soft pita—that we could make at home. Rather than the traditional shaved slices of meat from a vertical rotisserie, we pan-fried ground lamb patties flavored with mint, onion, and minced garlic.