Good morning! Today we have for you:

• Green goddess roasted chicken, a Melissa Clark classic

• Perfect instant ramen

• And, seven better breakfasts that focus on vegetables

There are several strong contenders for the title of My Favorite Kitchen Toy. My silicone spoonula is up there for its sheer practicality, as is my bench scraper. But I might have to give the win to my kitchen shears. They’re useful, of course — excellent for snipping up kimchi or sticky dried apricots, and my husband reaches for them to portion out his sheet-pan pizza. But really, I just love how clever I feel wielding them, and the bit of whimsy they add to my kitchen time: I’m not cooking — I’m having arts-and-crafts time with food.

I’ll use them to cut a chicken in half through the breast and back bones for Melissa Clark’s green goddess roasted chicken, a five-star recipe that ups the inherent likability of roast chicken with a zippy, herby, anchovy-enhanced marinade. It might take a bit of muscle to cut through the breastbone with my shears, but I’m up for a little work (see “ambient exercise” in my previous newsletter).

And if I don’t want to bother halving the chicken, I’ll go the spatchcock route and just remove the backbone, cutting along each side of the spine and saving that for stock. I asked Melissa how she would adjust her recipe for this scenario, and she replied, “I’d probably roast it at 450 for 35 to 50 minutes.” An assist on green goddess chicken from our own cooking goddess.

Featured Recipe

Green Goddess Roasted Chicken

View Recipe →

Don’t go to the store, go to the pantry

Chickpeas al limone with burrata: The hardest part of this Hetty Lui McKinnon recipe is fighting the urge to drain the chickpeas after you open the cans. That liquid is key to the silky, lemony, garlicky broth that becomes even more luscious after a heavy cloud of burrata melts into it. I don’t have burrata, though, so I’ll follow Hetty’s note to add a runny-yolked egg instead.

Cottage pie: This Dan Pelosi recipe gathers some pantry, fridge and freezer all-stars — tomato paste, ground beef, peas, potatoes, onions, carrots and celery — into a supercozy skillet dinner. If your skillet isn’t ovenproof, you can bake your cottage pie in a 9-by-13-inch casserole dish. Dan also encourages swapping in different vegetables in the base (oh, parsnips! Maybe some mushrooms?) and using mashed sweet potatoes for the topping.

Perfect instant ramen: I’ll let Peter, a reader, describe this Roy Choi recipe, adapted by Jeff Gordinier. Take it away, Peter. “OK. I love ramen and saw this a while ago and was: naw. American cheese? Hardly cooked egg? But tonight, I tried it. Oh, my God. Whatever is in ‘American cheese’ — it’s not cheese — melts instantly and alchemically gives the broth the lovely, thickened, rich texture of real ramen shop noodle broth. I don’t know how it works, and I don’t care. Never eating instant ramen any other way again.”

And before you go

Speaking of green goddesses, Tanya Sichynsky, the writer of The Veggie, is back with a new video all about making better breakfasts. Specifically, making breakfasts that capitalize on vegetables (and fruit): New Mexico breakfast burritos, strawberry-basil cottage cheese bowls, green shakshuka and more. Click here or on the image below to watch her in action.

Thanks for reading!