The Dinner Plan

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Articles

Feeding Others? Chetna Makan Says: Cook For Yourself First

3 weeks ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

New around here? This recipe newsletter is just part of the puzzle! Tune into The Dinner Plan podcast to get full conversations—and don’t miss this ever-growing list of my guests’ favorite cookbooks. Buying through the affiliate links there (or in this send) will help to keep the recipes coming!Long emails get cut off—click “read in app” above, or use this link to see the whole thing.
Crispy Zucchini Tacos with Andrea Aliseda

1 month ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

This newsletter isn’t the whole story! Follow The Dinner Plan podcastfor cookbook-author conversations every week. You can see every cookbook recommended on the show here. If you end up making a purchase through an affiliate link, I may receive a small commission. Considering becoming a paid subscriber? Don’t miss this discount:This send has several recipes and might be too long to read in email—you can click here to view online. When Andrea Aliseda is feeling depleted, she knows what she has to do.
Grilled kielbasa and cabbage with harissa oil, plus ember-cooked leeks

1 month ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

I’m just popping in with two bonus recipes for your holiday weekend—just in case it’s sunny where you live and you’ve got the urge to cook outside. These dishes come from Diana Yen’s new book, Firepit Feast: Adventurous Recipes for Live-Fire Cooking, which offers tons of inspiration for getting more out of your backyard firepit than just toasty-warm hands and charred s’mores.
The snacks we’re eating this summer

1 month ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

If you’ve ever visited me, you’ve eaten from my many-hued collection of East Fork pottery. So I’m thrilled to partner with the Asheville-based company for today’s list of snacks for low-key summer gatherings. This newsletter also includes a few affiliate links (don’t miss the discount code!) for things I use every day—shopping this send is a great way to support The Dinner Plan. Come over for snacks. Come over for a glass of wine. Come over in the afternoon or anytime, really.
A Crowd-Sourced Meal With Casey Elsass

1 month ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

Inviting people for dinner over can feel like it’s adding too much to your already-full plate. But a recent conversation with Casey Elsass, author of What Can I Bring?got me thinking about ways that gathering together—especially in summer—can actually lighten your load. It starts, of course, with letting go of control of the menu, and really answering the question in the title of Casey’s book.
Rethinking Dinner With Georgia Freedman

1 month ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

It often feels like there’s a lot weighing on dinner. “There’s this pressure we put on ourselves to have this complete meal,” says cookbook author Georgia Freedman in this week’s podcast conversation. “It’s going to have all the vegetables, it’s going to have all the protein.” To pile on more pressure, dinner’s also supposed to be a time of connection and somehow perfect parenting at the very end of the day.
We’re roasting our radishes

1 month ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

Welcome back to a little series called The Recipe Files, where I share all the recipes I’ve been saving for every bit of in-season produce. Lately, we’ve been gorging ourselves on asparagus, but there’s a lot more ground to cover before we get to the tomatoes and corn. I’ll be back later in the week with our regularly scheduled podcast conversation—did you catch the recent episodes with dream guests Noor Murad and Hailee Catalano? Have you heard the one with Melissa Clark?
Welcome to the Massive List of Every Single Cookbook Recommended on The Dinner Plan

1 month ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

I own around 500 cookbooks, split between a number of rather precarious shelves. It is decidedly enough. But I cannot help myself. Every week when I talk to a cookbook author on The Dinner Plan podcast, I need to hear about their favorites: the most dog-eared cookbooks in their collection, the books they turn to for inspiration, the cookbooks that changed the course of their career paths or taught them something new in the kitchen.
Rick Martinez’s new salsa book will transform your weeknight cooking

2 months ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

Meal-prep books and so many new books focused on easy recipes have started to blur together a bit for me. I want more varied flavor. I want recipes that aren’t pulled from the same generic list of commonly-searched terms. But I still want ways to make my cooking life easier. Which is why I feel especially grateful for Salsa Daddy, the new cookbook from Rick Martinez. “A good sauce makes a dish,” Rick tells me in this week’s podcast conversation.
One of my favorite cookbooks of 2025 so far

2 months ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

Some cookbooks are so full of evocative writing that they become treasured bedtime reads. Others take their place immediately in the kitchen, because every dish is calling to you. Lugma, the new cookbook from , really does both. I want to cook Noor’s baked mushroom rice with cinnamon, her white bean and lamb stew, her savory “trifle” of crispy pita, minty yogurt, roasted eggplant, and smoked-paprika-spiced pine nuts.