Chicken and tomatoes and peppers, oh my
A skillet dinner that hits all the right summer notes.
Cooking
August 22, 2026

Good morning! Today we have for you:

A cast-iron skillet holds bronzed chicken thighs with peppers and tomatoes. A bowl of rice and small bowl of chopped herbs for garnishing are nearby.
Yewande Komolafe’s skillet chicken with peppers and tomatoes. Kelly Marshall for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Samantha Seneviratne. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks.

I’m a pepper

By Mia Leimkuhler

There’s a stand at my farmers’ market that I refer to as the pepper stand, which is unfairly reductive. It offers so much more than peppers: eggplants of all shapes and sizes; big buckets of oblong tomatoes; the heaviest and most perfectly spherical onions I’ve ever seen.

But the peppers. Oh, the peppers. Every kind and color you could want, sold in basket sizes that range from “I’m going to make one or two peppery dishes this week” to “I run a large restaurant downtown and I need to make hot sauce for the weekend brunch rush.”

Yewande Komolafe’s vivid skillet chicken with peppers and tomatoes calls for two medium bell peppers of any color. I’m leaning toward orange or yellow to complement the fire-truck red of the cherry tomatoes. I also might toss in a couple of “long sweet” peppers I brought home — I think they might be Jimmy Nardellos? — and one sliced Espelette pepper (which I also grabbed a small basket of; I have no self-control at the pepper stand). Yewande’s easy one-pan dish, bright with garlic, honey and vinegar, really lets your summer produce shine. This is a dish to make over and over while tomatoes and peppers are at their peak.

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New and noteworthy

Grilled hoisin pork tenderloin: Hoisin is such a powerhouse sauce and condiment, the dictionary definition of salty-sweet. Mixed with a little honey, oil, garlic, ginger and chile-garlic sauce, it makes a really killer marinade and glaze for quick-cooking slices of pork tenderloin. Not a pork person? This Yossy Arefi recipe works well with boneless, skinless chicken thighs, too.

Sticky glazed tofu sandwiches: “Wow! Excellent! Great balance of sweet and sour and hot. Looks complicated, but isn’t, really. Great Sunday afternoon project you can pull together between chapters of a good book.” That’s B Lou, a reader, on this Nisha Vora recipe, which you can watch her make right here.

Chaat masala corn: Yotam Ottolenghi uses elotes as the starting point for this finger-licking corn dish, adding salty, sour and funky chaat masala spice mix to really make that sweet corn sing. Did I mention the crushed corn nuts? There are crushed corn nuts in here, too.

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Linda Xiao for The New York Times

Grilled Hoisin Pork Tenderloin

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And before you go

Speaking of peppers and tomatoes: Here’s Rick Martínez’s wonderful guide to making salsa, complete with recipes for aguacate ahumado (spicy avocado salsa) and pure jalapeño salsa. And yes, you can freeze salsa! “When you have salsa in the freezer, dinner can come together almost instantly,” Rick writes. “I store mine in plastic deli containers, but you can use freezer bags, too. To thaw, transfer it to the fridge the night before you need it. Who am I kidding? I never plan that far ahead. I usually thaw it in the microwave or leave it in the sink until dinnertime. Keeping a freezer full of salsas will save you from boring weeknight dinner hell for months and months.”

An overhead image of tomatillos, chiles, tomatoes, limes and peppers, the ingredients for aguacate ahumado.
Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Sue Li. Prop Stylist: Sarah Smart.

5 Tricks to Make Amazing Salsa Every Time

I’ve made salsa my whole life. These tips changed everything.

By Rick A. Martínez

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