Plus, pesto pizza and more recipes our staff made this week

Happy August, all. Hope it’s already off to a grand start. Today, we’ve got:

Easy weeknight dinners for all of August (so your 5 p.m. brain gets the month off).
My stunning homemade pizza, made with life-saving pesto.
A look inside A24’s glitzy Tony premier party.
Creamy corn elote pasta (on the house this week) to savor summer and more recipes our editors are making at home.
A highly serious review of Trader Joe’s newest summer products.

NINA MOSKOWITZ
ASSOCIATE EDITOR, COOKING

BY JOE SEVIER AND NINA MOSKOWITZ

Blink, and somehow it’s August. The good news? Late summer also happens to be one of the most delicious times of the year. Which means cooking starts with wandering the market and letting the best-looking produce decide what’s for dinner.

Luckily, August is overflowing with ingredients to make that decision easy. Heirloom tomatoes resembling water balloons about to burst! Baskets of satsuma plums! A bouquet of basil that doubles as a centerpiece! Tote it all home. These 21 easy weeknight dinners (one for each weeknight of the month) lean into seasonality, offering ways to put that haul to good use. Think hearty salads and feel-good pastas. You’ll also find plenty of one-pot dinners, 30-minute meals, and make-ahead moments built for busy nights. From sweet corn fried rice to sippable Spanish gazpacho, these August weeknight dinner ideas are ones you’ll turn to all month long.

GET THE RECIPES

Basil and ground chicken on white rice in a white bowl

Recipes Our Editors Cooked This Week

BY NINA MOSKOWITZ

Welcome to What We’re Cooking, our weekly recipe dispatch. My pizza night this week went a little sour. Like actually sour: The red sauce we planned to use had oxidized in the fridge—unbeknownst to me—so after the yucky first bite, we had to compost the pie. Tragic. Luckily, I had some homemade pesto tucked away in the freezer, so my next pizza got a green makeover. And a gorgeous one at that, dotted with globs of salty mozzarella and spicy Italian sausage. Crisis averted.

Editors also made elote corn pasta, watermelon panzanella, and more.

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What Else We’re Cooking

Bowl of corn elote pasta on yellow background.

GIFT LINK: Creamy Elote Corn Pasta

Chili crisp vinaigrette being poured over a platter of tomato and zucchini panzanella.

Make One Last Summer Panzanella—And Break All the Rules

On the Side

The Best New Products at Trader Joe’s This Summer: Spicy queso dip, hot honey mustard, cookie dough ice cream, and more.
This Perfect White Button-Up Shirt Makes Me Feel Like Ina Garten: Wear it shopping, gardening, to work—everywhere! You'll look great.
At A24’s Tony Premiere Party, Stars Celebrated Anthony Bourdain’s Memory: Dominic Sessa, Kareem Rahma, and food media personalities sipped martinis and Negronis at Golden Steer in Greenwich Village.

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