In Cookish, Christopher Kimball and his team of cooks and editors harness the most powerful cooking principles from around the world to create 200 of the simplest, most delicious recipes ever created. These recipes, most with six or fewer ingredients (other than oil, salt, and pepper), make it easy to be a great cook—the kind who can walk into a kitchen and throw together dinner in no time.

In each of these recipes, big flavours and simple techniques transform pantry staples, common proteins, or centrepiece vegetables into a delicious meal. And each intuitive recipe is a road map for other mix-and-match meals, which can come together in minutes from whatever’s in the fridge.

With most recipes taking less than an hour to prepare, and just a handful of ingredients, you’ll enjoy:

• Pasta with Shrimp and Browned Butter
• West African Peanut Chicken
• Red Lentil Soup
• Scallion Noodles
• Open-Faced Omelet with Fried Dill and Feta
• Greek Bean and Avocado Salad
• And for dessert: Spiced Strawberry Compote with Greek Yogurt or Ice Cream

When it’s a race to put dinner on the table, these recipes let you start at the finish line.

Milk Street: Cookish: Throw It Together: Big Flavors. Simple Techniques. 200 Ways to Reinvent Dinner is available at Amazon.com and Indigo.ca.

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Steamed Lemon Chicken with Scallions and Oyster Sauce

Start to finish: 20 minutes

Servings: 4

In this dish, the clean, mild flavour of chicken breasts meets salty-sweet oyster sauce, tangy lemons and pungent scallions that are tempered by moist steam heat. Use a Dutch oven or a similar wide cooking vessel so the chicken is in a single layer in the steamer and cooks evenly. A tight-fitting lid is essential for trapping heat in the pot. Serve with rice and a crunchy cabbage slaw.

¼ cup oyster sauce

2 tablespoons mirin

1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon, plus 1 lemon, sliced into thin rounds

Ground black pepper

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 6 ounces each)

1 bunch scallions, whites thinly sliced, greens cut into 1-inch pieces, reserved separately

In a small bowl, mix the oyster sauce, mirin, oil, lemon zest and. teaspoon pepper. Measure 2 tablespoons of the mixture into a medium bowl, add the chicken to it and turn to coat. Into the remaining mixture, stir the lemon juice; set aside. In a large Dutch oven, bring 1 inch of water to a boil. Place the chicken in a steamer basket, then top with the scallion whites and lemon slices. Add to the pot, cover and cook until the thickest part of the breasts reach 160°F, about 12 minutes. Remove from the heat and let stand, covered, for 5 minutes. Sprinkle with the scallion greens and serve with reserved sauce.

Excerpted from MILK STREET: COOKISH. Copyright © 2020 by Christopher Kimball. Photographs by Connie Miller. Used with permission of Voracious, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved.