If you're looking for a dish that's elegant yet quick enough to make any night of the week, this dish is a winner. It's a family favorite. My daughter Madison absolutely loves the tangy combination of capers and lemon, and I love how tender the pork turns out, even when using lean pork tenderloin. The light, flavorful sauce perfectly complements the delicate medallions of pork, and best of all, it comes together in just 30 minutes.

Serve over pasta or rice, or with crusty bread to soak up the delicious sauce. Roasted vegetables and a simple salad on the side would be great, too.

Skinnytaste High Protein: 100 Healthy, Simple Recipes to Fuel Your Day: A Cookbook

plate of high-protein pork picatta with caper garnish on plate in Food52 test kitchen

This quick, elegant pork tenderloin with lemon caper sauce is a family favorite from Skinnytaste. Ready in just 30 minutes, it’s light, flavorful, and perfect for weeknights.

Pork Tenderloin Piccata

Hot-smoked salmon is what you want for this recipe. While the others -- lox and cured smoked salmon -- would be perfectly acceptable, they don't have the same texture. If you have all the ingredients on hand, you can slap this together in 5 minutes but you will hear about how good it is for years. Make sure to make the plate look pretty because the sauce and salmon can be a little homely, but that doesn't make them any less lovable.

Smoked Salmon with Horseradish Caper Sauce

I used vegan mayo because it will work nicely in all home kitchens—including those of people who don't have high speed blenders with which to grind up cashews for cashew cream. The croutons can be swapped with cherry tomatoes in the summer, or with cubes of roasted squash in the winter for a more veggie-forward salad. 

 Traditional Vegan Caesar Salad

If you already have pickled eggs on hand, great; if not, use my grandma's recipe, below. Then devil them, bagel and lox-style.

Pickled Deviled Eggs with Smoked Salmon 

This salad is best served as a side dish to a main course. It is especially good with grilled fish, steaks, or roasted chicken. - Jennifer Ann

French Bean Salad with Tarragon and Green Peppercorn

I find that tinkering with classic recipes can yield great results, as long as the underlying flavors of the classic recipe remain intact. For example, with this recipe, I made sure to stay true to the original flavors of deviled eggs (creamy, savory, little hints of spiciness, background flavors of fresh lemon), but I have reduced the amount of mayonnaise and replaced it with fresh avocado. The addition of smoked salmon and fried capers completes the dish, resulting is something familiar yet new. Feel free to get creative and use crispy prosciutto instead of smoked salmon or kimchi instead of fried capers. Experiment with fresh herbs. Have fun.

Avocado Deviled Eggs with Smoked Salmon and Fried Capers

Everything I adore about a chicken caesar salad—but you can eat it with your hands. Instead of chopping up the romaine, you pull apart its leaves into cups. Use these to scoop up caesar-dressed grilled chicken and crusty croutons. 

Grilled Chicken Caesar Lettuce Wraps

Whether you have rosy associations with potato, macaroni, and other salads lovingly glommed together with mayo, or you’ve always been a bit uneasy about the whole genre—there is something for you to love in this recipe. Adapted slightly from 

Gena Hamshaw's (Vegan) Deli Bowls With Smashed Chickpea Salad

When I think of stale bread, bread pudding is always my first thought. It is one of my favorite comfort foods, sweet or savory. However, my family recently enjoyed delicious Spaghetti with Sardines, Dill and Fried Capers from Gourmet – a riff off the Sicilian classic Pasta con Sarde – and it immediately gave me the idea to shower a salmon fillet in seasoned breadcrumbs. From there the rest was easy, choosing accompanying flavors that pair well with salmon and a technique that is so easy, I wonder why I don’t do it more often. Gin imparts more fragrance than flavor, delicately perfuming the fish with juniper goodness.
Note: For a gluten free version, this is also delicious using Udi's Multigrain bread for the breadcrumbs. 

Aromatic Poached Salmon with Rye and Caper Breadcrumbs

This is basically a rustic pantry pasta sauce turned flavor-bomb condiment, and it's pretty versatile: It works as a dip (think bagna cauda or pinzimonio); or tossed with pasta and a little of its cooking water; or to sauce a plate of seared wax beans and assertive greens (such as arugula). I think it would also be the cat's pajamas spread on an open croissant, topped with sliced tomatoes and cheese, and put under the broiler to make an upscale tuna melt. 

The trick is in cooking the jarred tuna with a heady mix of alliums, herbs, aromatics, and white wine. Like broccoli and cauliflower, its cruciferous cousins, radish has a natural affinity for anchovies and butter, so those get thrown into the mix as well. The result is complex and deeply flavorful even before it hits the food processor. Don't forget to reserve the oil the tuna was packed in for adding the pureé later. It adds yet another dimension of flavor.

Zippy Salsa Tonnato (Cold Tuna Sauce)

Purists may cringe at the use of "Provençal" and "Melt" in the same phrase, but if the shoe, so to speak, fits . . .  I've grouped some of the flavors that remind me most of Provence, put them between some good, grilled bread, and added a soft, melt-y cheese. And any day I can stand on a soapbox and proclaim the glories of tuna packed in olive oil is a good one.

Provençal Goat Cheese Tuna Melt

Right before moving away from Boston a couple of weeks ago, I went out to lunch with one of my best friends there. Several nights before, she and I had struck up a conversation with a waiter from B&G Oysters while we were trying to spy on a cooking class in at Barbara Lynch's "Stir" that turned out not to be a cooking class but rather a bunch of staff eating cold, leftover pizza, which they offered to us. The waiter made us promise to come for lunch at B&G that week because it was restaurant week and they were serving a special fried clam sandwich. I don't love fried clam sandwiches in general (or fried oyster or shrimp sandwiches for that matter), or at least, I thought I didn't.  Turns out I don't like soggy, heavily battered deep fried seafood, but the clam sandwich we had at the restaurant was amazingly crispy and flavorful with a lovely herby mayo.  

I got a craving for another last week, but as it turns out, shellfish (unless you want zebra mussels) aren't quite as abundant in the Midwest as they are in New England (I know, big shock). But they had just gotten a shipment of Bay Scallops from Newfoundland at our grocery store and they were having a special, so I got a bunch of those and figured they might work sort of similarly to clams. Something about frying scallops made me feel sort of Italian (who knows...), so instead of plain old mayo, I made a quick salsa verde mayo, packed the scallops onto some toasty ciabatta, and added arugula and some slices of the last of the season's tomatoes. Insanely messy. These sandwiches don't want to stay together for anything. They're not company food, but they were crazy delicious.  

On a side note, in general I haven't been super successful at making fried food. (I think it knows I'm scared of it.) But, one thing I have learned through a lot of screwing it up is, make sure your oil is hot enough! Hot, I tell you! 

Fried Scallop Sandwich

No real story behind this one - just thought, I like artichokes and I like crab cakes, so why not stuff one into the other?  Came out tasty! - aargersi

Crab Stuffed Artichokes

I’ve always loved Caesar salads, to the point where I’ll eat them in any form. I’m as into the grab-and-go style salad, with its pouches of dressing and bagged croutons, as I am the $20 version with baby gem lettuce tossed tableside. I've been eating Caesar salads all summer and have been looking for a way to carry that flavor over into the colder months ahead. So I took the best parts of a Caesar salad—AKA the dressing and croutons—and turned it into a creamy comforting bowl of pasta.

The ingredients in a classic Caesar dressing are primed to work as a luscious sauce with rich egg yolks, anchovies, Parmesan cheese, and mustard. Adding extra egg yolks and pasta water elevates the dressing to a noodle coating, slurp-inducing, pasta sauce. It’s very similar to the process of making a carbonara sauce but one that's been Caesar-ified.  Olive oil fried bread crumbs complete the transformation, turning one of the world's most loved salads into a rich pasta. 

The sauce is made in the blender, so no need for aggressive whisking to achieve that coveted silky emulsion, making this an ideal weeknight meal.

You can make the breadcrumbs in advance and use them beyond this recipe on top of roasted veggies, silky scrambled eggs, or any other pasta dish. 

With a jar of prepared breadcrumbs and easy-to-find pantry staples, this is the perfect anytime cozy pasta. 

Creamy Caesar Salad Pasta

Canned salmon is a super versatile and affordable pantry item that effortlessly transforms into satisfying meals. Bonus points: it’s an excellent source of protein, calcium and heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Since it’s shelf-stable, keep a few cans on hand for those days when you need a convenient way to get dinner on the table fast. Look out for fish that’s sustainably wild-caught, which helps overfishing and limits bycatch of other species. Orange-red sockeye salmon is used here for its firm texture and richer flesh, but pink salmon is a great alternative if a milder flavor is desired. 

This fast weeknight pasta brightens canned salmon by pairing it with fresh spring asparagus in a lemony sauce, balanced by caramelized sweet shallots and aromatic garlic. The flaked salmon is cooked in the brown butter until it breaks down into the sauce (crumbling much like ground meat), absorbing all of the flavors and coating the pasta for even bites of salmon. The asparagus smartly gets a quick blanch with the pasta during the last minute of boiling, keeping it bright green and crisp-tender. Capers and golden hazelnuts add a crunchy nutty finish with briny notes that balance the rich brown butter sauce. 


Brown Butter Salmon Pasta With Hazelnut-Caper Bread Crumbs 

This little green sauce that goes with every grilled or roasted protein in your repertoire. I like to add this to tuna salad, vegetable-based soups, and brothy beans, and spoon it over fried or hard-boiled eggs, too. You could also use it as the dressing for a grain salad or put it out with roasted, boiled, or steamed potatoes (any type, including sweet potatoes). 

Salsa Very Verde

 so much that it could ever truly replace the goodness of a bagel, but I 

 saying that I love me some smoked salmon and cream cheese with all the fixins so much that I needed to try it in pie form. My fellow bagel-loving assistant, Katie, had the brilliant idea to cut a hole in the center of the crust so this delicious breakfast or brunch pie (or breakfast-for-dinner pie) would look like a bagel, too. But this concept is fairly adaptable, and you can prepare the dough in a variety of shapes and sizes. Looking to serve a crowd? Try a bigger slab version, rolling the dough out to a large rectangle instead and adding 12 to 15 minutes to the total bake time. Adapted from 

Smoked Salmon “Everything Bagel” Pie

Caponata is a sweet and tangy Sicilian staple that transforms the often-underrated eggplant into the star of the show. There are dozens of caponata variations, each spotlighting local ingredients from Palermo to Catania. In many recipes, large cubes of eggplant are fried, then cooked down with celery, onions, tomatoes, capers, and olives (sometimes bell peppers and sometimes raisins, too), then dressed in sugar and vinegar. The result is a jammy agrodolce spread meets stew that’s equally delicious as a topping for crusty bread as it is for fish. Here, the vegetables are roasted together slowly, then tossed with farfalle (Italy’s chosen shape for pasta salads) and finished with buttery burrata. And, like the original, this dish is best served at room temperature or, better yet, the next day. Note: The sauce can be made ahead and stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.


Roasted Caponata Pasta With Burrata

These easy sandwiches capture all the flavors and textures of a classic chicken Caesar salad in handheld form. Lightly toasted Potato Sandwich Buns from Arnold®, Brownberry®, and Oroweat® stand in for the croutons—if you like more crunch, toast them slightly longer. 

Instead of drizzling dressing over the chicken, here you’ll poach chicken then toss it with a quick Caesar-inspired dressing; the slightly warm chicken soaks up the dressing, making every bite perfectly packed with flavor. 

Using bottled mayonnaise (instead of egg yolks or oil) is a shortcut to get the same lusciousness of both ingredients into the dressing without as much work—perfect for weeknight dinners or lunches for a crowd. A few little flavor boosters (Worcestershire sauce, mustard, and capers) are key to elevating these sandwiches beyond the basic.


Chicken Caesar Sandwiches

When I close my eyes after taking a bite, this light, brothy weeknight pasta immediately transports me to the seaside vacations and sand castles of my childhood. It starts with my favorite summer staple—tomatoes, of course—and finishes with a sizzled caper topping that I could easily eat by the spoonful, along with one of my most treasured condiments: colatura di alici. Colatura is an aged Italian fish sauce made with anchovies and salt that imparts a deliciously savory, sea-like flavor without being overtly fishy. It adds great depth to this dish—along with other seafood, meats, vegetables, pastas, and vinaigrettes—but feel free to omit it or use a dash of Southeast Asian fish sauce instead (the flavor is different, but equally wonderful). I’ve paired it all with mezzi paccheri to soak up the broth and catch the tender flakes of fish, though whichever pasta you have in your pantry will do the trick.

A note on the wine: If you prefer to omit the alcohol, you can deglaze the pan with 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar and 2 tablespoons water to add a similar acidity to the broth.

Brothy Tomato Pasta With Wild Alaska Pollock, Shallots & Capers

"Fish" is intentionally vague here. I've pan-seared cod, but the preparation could be poached, grilled, roasted, 

 (which I appreciated even more after this recent go at pan-frying), etc. And the fish could be anything you like—this sauce is very versatile. With that in mind, too, the sauce could work with chicken, steak, polenta, eggplant, cauliflower, etc.—it's versatile. Recipe comes from 

Fish with Sauce Niçoise

This dish reminds me of being in my garden, picking wild fennel and crushing it in my hand—the soft aniseed scent is so fragrant. Mixed with the sweetness of shallots, thyme, and salty capers for crunch, this dish makes the most of its fresh flavor—I hope you will love it, too.

Fennel, Shallot & Caper Tagliatelle From Mateo Zielonka

My canned chickpea dinner once followed a predictable path: Open can, drain and rinse chickpeas, sauté onions and garlic in olive oil, add the beans, stir around till warm, eat. (Then look around the kitchen for something else.) 

But Joy the Baker figured out how to take a similar route and end up at a 

. Canned chickpeas don't want a quick stir-around: All they need for a bit of rejuvenation is a warm bath in olive oil, herbs, and spices. 

Forty-five minutes in a covered pan in the oven and they're fattened up and flavored to the core, without any of the original chalky-hardness. The briny ingredients (capers in Joy's original recipe, with the addition of cured olives here) soften into the oil before whole baking dish is topped with cheese and smoked paprika, tying all of the salty-spiciness together. 

I want to eat these chickpeas for dinner every night and, since there are one zillion ways they could go (I've counted!), it's tremendously hard to get bored of them. 

Once you've got the basics down—chickpeas + oil + things salty, fresh, and acidic—there's plenty of room to wiggle within that formula: 

Skip the capers and go solely with olives, trying the milder Castelvetrano in place of the black and oil-cured. 

Throw in half a lemon instead of the dainty slices, then squeeze its juices over the warm beans. 

Add a splash of vinegar—red, sherry, white, Champagne, apple cider, 

—and a couple of tablespoons of chopped preserved lemon. 

Replace the thyme with rosemary or sage; the feta with goat or ricotta; the smoked paprika with cumin. 

Or pick a region of the world to provide some guidance: 

Add mustard and cumin seeds, crushed coriander, a pinch of curry powder, crumbled dried red chile, and forgo the thyme for curry leaves, fresh or dried (Indian-ish). 

Or go with cinnamon, ground ginger, cumin, chile flakes, golden raisins, and a spoonful of harissa (Moroccan-ish). 

Or lean more heavily towards the Mediterranean: Melt down an anchovy with olive oil before you sauté the onion; supplement the thyme with marjoram and oregano and the capers with sun-dried tomatoes.

Then add any vegetable you'd braise in oil: coarsely chopped 

, cauliflower or broccoli florets, strips of red bell pepper, carrots sliced on the bias. 

As much as you play, stick with chickpeas if you're looking for a forkable texture: White beans and black beans, already spineless from the can, might turn into a mushy stew. 

It's natural that you'll want to spoon the chickpeas and their warm oil over absorbent bread—or hummus, or baba ghanoush, or a mound of Greek yogurt. But you can also mix the chickpeas with cubes of that bread, then add bitter greens for a salad of sorts. Or add in shredded roasted chicken and spoonfuls of yogurt. 

Or stir the chickpeas into a pot of couscous, or quinoa, or wild rice—there's no extra dressing needed, and you can add volume with hearty greens, fresh herbs, vegetables you roasted while the chickpeas cooked, and toasted nuts. A nearly instant grain salad! Ali Slagle has been known to mix Joy the Baker's chickpeas with 

Add them into a shakshuka before you crack in the eggs, or to any tomato sauce, for that matter. Mash the oven-soft chickpeas slightly and eat with pita as a warm dip. 

Or collect the extra oil to marinate fish, to start a vinaigrette, to dress a salad, to be the base of a mayonnaise, to coat vegetables pre-roast. Or, you know, just make the recipe as written, spoon it into a bowl, and do the whole thing again tomorrow night... 

This recipe comes by way of blogger extraordinaire and cookbook author 

. We made a few small tweaks, like adding lemon wheels and chile flakes.

Olive Oil–Braised Chickpeas From Joy the Baker

An easy dish to prepare, this chicken piccata still makes a presentation elegant enough for company.

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