If Your Ideal Weekend Involves Cooking With Friends, These Recipes Are Meant for You

When we go on vacation with friends who love to cook and eat as much as we do, the day’s main event, naturally, is spending the afternoon casually throwing together lazy yet luxurious spring meals—all while making our way through a few well-chilled bottles of wine. And we can’t think of anyone who’s mastered the category of unfussy-yet-utterly-delicious food for a crowd better than BA contributor and cookbook author Alison Roman, who developed these recipes with vacation on the mind. There’s a crowd-pleasing garlicky leg of lamb with minty artichokes; low-and-slow chickens with spicy spring onions and thick slabs of chicken-fat toast; fish roasted in butter with armfuls of peak-season asparagus; and brothy meatballs with tiny pasta and tons of fresh shoots and herbs. And because all of these recipes take less than an hour of hands-on time to prepare, there’s plenty of time left for the important things—like napping off that wine.