Chili Crisp Dressing

We are in peak lazy-dinner season, and this is a peak lazy-dinner recipe. It’s fast, it’s summery, and it’s really more of a method than a recipe — meaning it bends to whatever’s in your fridge or garden without any real consequences. Kid’s wont eat caper? Fine. Too many herbs growing that need using? Throw them all in. Got a surplus of those cherry tomatoes I mentioned last week? This is where they can go.

It also falls into my single favorite category of recipe: the kind you can assemble in the baking dish the night before, keep it in the fridge and just pop in the oven when you’re ready to start dinner.

Into a big baking dish:

• cut-up a bunch of peppers

• a generous amount of olive oil

• chopped fresh garlic

• any herbs you’ve got — rosemary, thyme, or none at all.

• Add some capers…or don’t.

• Season the whole thing well with salt

• A bit of tomato paste is nice here, but not necessary.

• Using your hands, scrunch everything together in the dish.

• Take Italian sausage links (hot or sweet, your call) and squeeze chunks of the meat out of the casing, scattering it on top of the vegetables.

  Totally optional but nice additions:

• other vegetables like cherry tomatoes, zucchini, or cubed eggplant.

• Olives.

• Chickpeas or white beans.

• A splash of white wine.

1. Bake at 400°F for 20-25 minutes, until the sausage is crispy and the vegetables are soft.

2. Once it’s out of the oven, shower it with basil or parsley — or nothing at all.

Serve it with good bread, spoon it over quinoa or pasta, or just eat it straight out of the dish, no carb required. Ultimate lazy dinner, uses up a pile of vegetables, and makes everyone — okay, some people — happy.

Today I’m giving away the recipe for our Chili Crisp Dressing — which we also refer to as a dip, because we use it both ways at the shop.

If you’ve been to Olivia’s more than once, you already know the salad this goes on. People come in weekly for our “Chili Crisp Chicken Salad”. Around the shop, we just call it crack sauce, because that’s genuinely what it is. The salad is popular for one reason, and it’s not the chicken — it’s this dressing. You could technically make it with any chili crisp, but we use the Lao Gan Ma brand, the one with the lady’s face on the jar. It’s addictive in a way that feels almost unfair for something this simple to make.