Sort of off-topic, but if you're looking for a pepperplate/paprika alternative (and happen to use iOS), my family and I have been using Mealboard for a few years now and it's fantastic. It's a one time ~$4 purchase, has family sharing support for up to 6 additional users, no subscription fee or in-app purchases, and is similarly fully featured. It has a calendar based meal planner, automatic shopping list creator which you can then send to others via email or SMS, a categorized pantry stock tracker, a categorized recipe list manager with a really solid web recipe import function that barely ever requires any manual editing of the imported data, and also has automatic sync between devices. I highly recommend it.

Here's a recipe for Vegan Bolognese. I've made it many times and it's always gone over well!

Ingredients

2 T olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 T ea. basil, oregano, thyme
1 bay leaf
1 t red pepper flakes
1 c textured vegetable protein
2 T soy sauce or liquid aminos
1 c vegetable broth
6-oz can tomato paste
28-oz can crushed tomatoes

Method

Saute onions and carrots in oil on medium heat in a large pot for
5 minutes, or until they begin to soften. Season with salt, pepper, and
Italian herbs; mix well and add oil if the pan is dry. Add garlic and
stir until fragrant. If cooking pasta, start the water now.

Add the TVP dry and stir to coat. Quickly add the soy sauce and
vegetable broth to rehydrate it. Stir to coat the TVP well, scraping the
side of the pan. Simmer for 2 minutes.

Add tomato paste, mix, and cook for a minute or two. Add crushed
tomatoes and stir to distribute.

Simmer the sauce until it's done or until the pasta's done.

This is going to be a little off topic.

I seldom follow recipes and this may be because of how I learned to cook. From my mother. She never has set amount of ingredients but adds ingredients and tastes and adjusts, recently I noticed I do this a lot too.

This method works really well for making Asian dishes (like Chinese, Indian, Thai, Korean, etc) too. I have a framework on how to make a dish a specific way, like Indian curry, Korean bul-kogi, etc.

So instead of a set recipe, here is a framework I use for making Indian styled curry. Welcome to my very disorganized method of cooking :)

To marinate the chicken mix the following powders together first:
salt, turmeric powder, coriander powder , cumin powder, chili powder. Minced garlic and ginger (or ginger/garlic paste or even powder)
Use Indian chili powder [1] if available, if not ground paprika or cayenne works well too.

If you want your end dish to be more dry ; mix the above powder with lime juice well and mix in with chicken.
If not, you can add some plain yogurt to the powder and mix it into a paste and then mix in chicken with it.

Tips:

• I generally prefer bone-in chicken thighs for Indian curry, but any chicken cut should work.
• I also prefer to marinate the chicken for at least an hour, preferable overnight in the fridge.
  I generally buy meat once a month and prep meal sized portions, into zip-lock back along with different spices for different dishes and freeze them. So I can easily thaw a bag of marinated meat for dinner!

For most Indian dishes, You start with heating up some vegetable oil, once the oil is hot.
Add the following:

• Red pepper flakes
• A little fresh ground pepper
• green Thai chilies (or even Serrano or jalapeno) (if available)
• fresh minced garlic
• fresh minced ginger
• cloves (optional)
• cinnamon stick (optional)
• ground nutmeg (optional)

Tips:

• mix and match the above list to change the base flavor profile, experimenting with it.
• If not using chicken, and making a vegetable based curry, you could also add curry leaves, coriander seeds, fennel seeds, and experiment!

Once you have added the above spice blend to the hot oil and the minced garlic is starting to golden brown, add in diced onions.
Saute the onions till they become translucent. Once translucent add in powdered spices, the base spices you used to marinate the chicken: turmeric, chili, coriander, cumin and salt.

Continue sauteing and mix in the spices till the onions are cooked.

If you want your end curry to be more liquid-y, add in chopped tomatoes and cook them well, if you want it to be more dry, skip the tomatoes.

Then add in the marinated chicken and mix in well. Now add in some chicken stock (or water if you don't have any stock) with some tomato paste (if available) and mix in well and turn the heat up and mix well and cook closed till the chicken is cooked.

Once chicken is cooked, cook on medium heat till the curry is reduced the the consistency you like.

Finish off with some fresh cilantro and/or mint leaves :)

Tip:

• You can replace the above recipe with a vegetable mix like green-beans, cauliflower, carrots, etc too.
• The curry would go well with some white rice (long grained, ponni, jasmine, etc, avoid short grained rice for Indian curries)
• making unleavened bread with wheat or all-purpose flour is fairly easy as well, which goes very well with Indian curries, or just buy pita bread or corn tortilla from you local grocery store
• if you have a Indian/Asian store near where you live, you should be able to get the base Indian spice mix (turmeric powder, coriander powder, cumin powder and chili powder) for fairly cheap and should last you a while.

Okay my turn (thanks to @tomf for the prompting).

Self-promotional link to my other favourite recipes (erhem, on my website): https://www.convergencemenu.com/recipebook.xhtml?recipebook=Marco's+Recipes

I recently did Bon Appetit's Best Lasagna recipe and while it was a tonne of work, it was also amazing.

Bolognese

Ingredients

• 1 kg ground pork
• 0.5 kg group beef (I used venison)
• 30 ml Olive oil
• 5 slice of pancetta or bacon
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 1 celery stalk finely chopped
• 1 large carrot finely chopped
• 20 grams minced garlic
• 30 ml tomato paste
• 175 ml White wine
• 590 ml of whole peeled tomatoes
• 235 ml of broth
• 235 ml of whole milk

Instructions

Meat balls

• Preheat oven to 105°C.
• Mix pork and beef with your hands in a large bowl;
  • Season generously with salt and pepper, then mix again.
  • Form into about 18-ish large meatballs.
• Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high.
• Brown & Crisp meatballs on each side.
  • Don't crowd the DO, do in batches.
• Set aside as they are done.

Sauce

• Reduce heat on dutch oven to medium.
• Add pancetta and cook, stirring often until lightly browned and beginning to crisp
• Add onion, celery, carrot, and garlic
• Cook, stirring occasionally, until softened.
• Add tomato paste and cook, stirring constantly, until paste darkens.
• Add wine and cook, stirring occasionally, until nearly completely evaporated.
• Add tomatoes, crushing with your hands, and increase heat to medium-high.
• Cook, stirring occasionally, reduce by ~1/2.
• Add broth and milk and return meat to pot.
• Bring to a simmer.
• Cover pot, leaving lid slightly ajar, and transfer to oven.
• Bake sauce
  • No need to stir, but check after 1–2 hours to ensure liquid is at a low simmer, adjusting oven temperature as needed
• Cook until meatballs are falling-apart tender, ~3–4 hours.
• Using a potato masher, break meatballs apart and incorporate into liquid
• Season with salt and pepper.
• Reduce over medium-low heat if needed to thicken.
  • Optionally I took a cup of the Ragu and blended it until completely smooth and added it back into the sauce, it makes it really creamy.

This sauce be made ahead can be stored in the fridge for a few days or in the freezer for up to 3 months. It's seriously amazing on for any pasta dish that calls for bolognese.

Béchamel

This is where the recipe kind of deviates from most lasagnas you'd normally make, instead of ricotta we're using a Béchamel sauce.

Ingredients

• 100 grams unsalted butter
• 65 grams of flour
• 1.4 litres milk
• 115 grams grated parmesan cheese
• Pinch of cayenne
• Pinch of nutmeg

Instructions

• Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat.
• Whisk in flour and cook, whisking occasionally, until flour begins to smell a bit nutty.
• Quickly whisk in milk
• Increase heat to medium-high.
• Bring to a simmer and cook, whisking occasionally, until béchamel thickens.
• Reduce heat to medium-low and cook, whisking occasionally, until smooth.
• Remove from heat
• Whisk in Parmesan, cayenne, and nutmeg
• Season with salt and pepper.
• Transfer to a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap.

Use within one hour or chill overnight (then re-heat to loosen)

Lasagna

Assembly

• Preheat oven to 175°C
• If using dried noodles pre-cook by boiling to very al dente
• Ragu -> Noodle -> Béchamel
• Repeat as many times as necessary to fill your cooking dish.
• (BA's recipe ends it there but I topped with fresh mozza to get some string cheesiness.)
• Cover with lightly oiled foil
• Bake for 1 hour
• Uncover and bake until top is browned and edges are crispy
• Remove and rest for at 10 minutes

You can also freeze and store the unbaked lasagna for a month, I did this, also skipping boiling the noodles, and it work out great great by portioning them in 3-4 serving sized dishes. Let thaw overnight and bake as per instructions above.

This seems relevant, a blog post about AI Generated Recipes