Recipes By Ali Slagle
505 recipes found
Tinned Fish Hand Rolls
With tinned fish, tender rice and mixed vegetables, these meal-worthy hand rolls are all at once rich, fresh, crunchy and tender. They’re also pantry-friendly and customizable: Crack open a tin of any assertively-flavored fish (save the canned tuna for spicy tuna) and slice any mix of crunchy vegetables. (Pro tip: Baby carrots stay juicier in lunchboxes than regular carrots.) Clementines may be a surprising addition, but sweet citrus and oily fish are a common duo in Persian, Mediterranean and Mexican dishes. Try to use toasted nori sheets if you can; nori snack sheets are more brittle.
Mushroom and Egg Donburi
There are many different types of donburi, a Japanese rice bowl topped with some combination of meat and vegetables, including gyudon (beef), katsudon (pork) and oyakodon (chicken and egg). In this meat-free version, which was inspired by oyakodon, mushrooms and leeks simmer in a dashi-based sauce before beaten eggs are poured over and cooked until custardy. The combination of mushrooms and leeks is especially satisfying because it doubles down on the savory and sweet contrast in the sauce, but vegetarian versions of oyakodon are also frequently made with cubed tofu or other thinly sliced vegetables and egg. To keep it vegetarian, use fish-free dashi, which can be purchased or made with dried shiitakes and kombu. (You can add the rehydrated shiitakes to the mushroom mixture.)
Orange-Ginger Brussels Sprouts
Bring sunshine to your vegetable routine with a sharp dressing of turmeric, ginger, citrus and lots of black pepper. The combination is reminiscent of nose-clearing tonics and the spices in sabzis which can brighten roasted brussels sprouts as well as cooked beets, squash, carrots, cabbage or other hardy vegetables. Juicy orange chunks, chopped peanuts and cilantro (including crunchy stems) add pops of texture and freshness. This side would glow on a dinner party spread, or make it a weeknight meal by stirring in chickpeas or eating it with grains and yogurt.
Sheet-Pan Sausages, Sweet Potatoes And Balsamic Kale
This cozy sheet-pan dinner has flavors we love to love all year long. As sausage, sweet potatoes and whole sage leaves roast together, the sage seasons the sweet potatoes and crisps as if you fried them. Meanwhile, kale leaves soften in a combination of balsamic vinegar, dried cranberries (or cherries), honey and shallot. When the sausages and sweet potatoes are browned, transfer them to plates, then use the pan drippings and residual heat on the sheet pan to turn the kale silky and tangy.
Bubble and Squeak
Bubble and squeak is a deeply caramelized, homey cake of leftover mashed potatoes and other vegetables, traditionally made the morning after a Sunday roast. This classic British dish gets its name from the cooking process: As the moisture from the vegetables bubbles away, the vegetables sizzle and squeak — especially the cabbage, a common addition. Be sure to let the bottom brown and crisp, mix those bits into the mash, then repeat until the cake is strewn with golden vegetables throughout. Eat alongside a fried or poached egg for breakfast. To make it vegetarian, replace the bacon with 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
Miso-Butter Chicken With Grapefruit
Buttery miso pan drippings add richness to this lively combination of crunchy greens, juicy grapefruit and sticky chicken. Start by roasting boneless thighs with a sweet-savory combination of butter, miso, mirin and grapefruit zest. As the chicken rests, toss grapefruit segments in the drippings, then use that mixture to dress bitter lettuces. If you’d like, instead of grapefruit, use an orange and add white wine vinegar to the sauce to taste. To make it a heartier meal, roast bite-size pieces of winter squash, carrots or sweet potatoes on a sheet pan in the oven at the same time as the chicken, then add them with the grapefruit in Step 4.
Little Gem Salad With Crispy Halloumi
Meet halloumi crumbs, a best-of-all-worlds garnish for salads, pastas and more. They’re crisp like toasted breadcrumbs, salty like Parmesan and still maintain some of halloumi’s signature chew. To make the crumbs, grate the sturdy cheese on the large holes of a box grater, then sizzle the strands in an oiled skillet. Here, pistachios and whole spices, like fennel or coriander seeds, are also added for a boost of flavor and even more textures. Even the simplest salad of crunchy, lemon-dressed lettuces can wow when these crumbs are showered on top. To make it a meal, serve it with roasted root vegetables, lentil soup or a grilled or roasted protein.
Butter-Basted Chicken Breasts
For juicy, bronzed and flavorful chicken breasts, all it takes is a butter-baste. Spooning hot butter and aromatics over steak is a common technique, but applying that method to lean, quick-cooking proteins like boneless chicken breasts is particularly beneficial because the butter keeps the white meat from drying out while imparting the flavor of whatever ingredients are sizzling in it. Here, that’s garlic and woodsy herbs, but you could also use ground or whole spices or finely chopped ginger or scallions. Serve with rice pilaf or lemon linguine, and a green vegetable like roasted brussels sprouts or stir-fried green beans.
Cheesy Breadsticks
While cheesy breadsticks made with pizza dough are a classic appetizer at pizza chains, making them at home doesn’t require much effort — and guarantees you can enjoy them when the cheese is as ooey-gooey as can be. These are baked in a metal pan to ensure a soft interior with a crisp crust. They’re topped with a swipe of garlic-herb butter and a shower of mozzarella and Parmesan for a thick layer of melted cheese in every bite. For that true pizzeria experience, be sure to dip your breadsticks in marinara, ranch or a combination of the two.
Microwave Nutella Pudding Cake
This warm, gooey, flourless chocolate cake requires just three ingredients, five minutes and a zap in the microwave. Nutella does the heavy lifting here, standing in for sugar, fat and flour and offering its milky cocoa sweetness and toasty hazelnut flavor to every spoonful. This cake is best slightly underbaked so the center is molten like a lava cake. A dollop of vanilla ice cream or Greek yogurt is optional, but a wonderful way to balance the richness of the cake beneath.
Stovetop Berry Crisp
You don’t need to wait for summer’s ripest fruit to enjoy a fruit crisp. This quick, small-batch version delivers jammy fruit beneath a crispy topping any night of the week, no matter the season. Start by making the topping in the microwave, then as it crisps, simmer the berries on the stovetop. Once they resemble a compote, add more berries for pops of freshness. You can use a mix of berries or just blueberries, and they can be fresh or frozen — no need to thaw the frozen ones first. Because the topping is already cooked when it’s scattered on the fruit, it won’t get soggy, delivering a brown-sugary crunch in every bite.
Microwave Sticky Toffee Pudding
You’re just 10 minutes away from a bowl of soft, date-flecked cake draped in a brown sugary sauce. This speedy take on sticky toffee pudding is made for one or two people and doesn’t require turning on the oven — just the microwave. Topping your warm cake with cold ice cream, whipped cream or sour cream is a welcome contrast and helps temper the sweetness. A few toasted pecans on top would add a nice crunch.
Fairy Bread
If you go to a children’s birthday party in Australia or New Zealand, you are very likely to find fairy bread: triangles of untoasted white bread covered with margarine or butter and “hundreds and thousands” (you can use round rainbow sprinkles stateside). Fairy bread is a much-loved treat with fairly murky origins; one variation is hagelslag, a Dutch treat that uses chocolate sprinkles instead of rainbow-colored rounds. After one bite of fairy bread, it is clear why the combination of soft bread, creamy butter and crunchy, sugary sprinkles is beloved by so many — and may be soon by you, too.
Tajín Chicken Wings
These chile-lime baked chicken wings get their spunk from Tajín, a tangy and mild combination of dried chiles, salt and dehydrated lime juice that is often sprinkled on fruit. Bake the wings with the seasoning (as well as baking powder and salt for crackly skin), then gloss them in a buttery sauce that’s bright with Tajín, lime juice and fresh chile. Take a cue from tajín fruit cups (as well as the carrots and celery typically eaten with Buffalo wings) and serve alongside spears of jicama, cucumber and pineapple.
Easy Cooked Grains
If you can boil pasta, you can cook most any grain. While grains come in all shapes, sizes, hues and textures, they can all be cooked using the same straightforward method. For evenly cooked grains, just let them tumble in a saucepan of simmering, salted water until tender, then drain them of excess water. For a warm side, rest them in a covered pot. For separated grains to add to salads or bowls or refrigerate for the future, cool and dry them on a sheet pan before using. With such a simple, multipurpose method, the bouncy chew of barley, the springy pouf of quinoa, the bitter edge of buckwheat and the sour tang of rye berries can all easily be incorporated into your cooking routine.
Kimchi, Egg and Cheese Sandwich
For heat, crunch and a jolt of brightness, add kimchi to your breakfast sandwich. Most classic egg sandwiches, like sausage or bacon, lack the necessary acidity to balance out the richness of the other ingredients, which is why we often slather on ketchup — it’s sweet, but also tart. By replacing the meat with kimchi, the flavors in the sandwich are awakened. If your fridge isn’t always stocked with kimchi, you can also use another pickled vegetable, like sauerkraut or chopped pickled peppers or dill pickles.
Miso-Parmesan Noodle Soup for One
This speedy, veggie-rich, solo bowl of soup uses a combination of water, miso paste and Parmesan to create a creamy, savory broth. Leeks, peas, kale and pasta add sweetness and heft, while ginger and black pepper (or chile oil) bring a little heat. For more protein, add a handful of cubed tofu or white beans, or swirl in a beaten egg like stracciatella. The recipe is also easily doubled.
Roasted Mushroom Soup
You don’t need fancy mushrooms to make a rich soup, you just need to brown them. To do that, spread creminis — save fancier mushrooms for another recipe — on a sheet pan and roast them until they’re juicy. Pour off and save the umami-heavy juices — they’ll provide a savory backbone to the soup — then keep roasting the mushrooms until they’re glistening brown. Blending so many mushrooms with plain water (or stock, if you have some) creates a thick soup, not to mention one with a deeply earthy flavor. For a more substantial meal, top with croutons, farro or sautéed spinach, or serve alongside buttered toast, roasted sausage or a green salad.
One-Pot Beans, Greens and Grains
Many filling, flavorful and flexible meals are within reach with this technique: It produces fluffy grains, just-soft-enough greens and creamy and garlicky beans all in one pot. Customize your mix based on your cravings and your pantry: Use any dark leafy greens and any cooked legumes. Use quinoa, rice or a mix of the two for a variety of textures; for other grains, refer to the cooking instructions on their package and add the greens in the last 5 to 7 minutes. You can infuse the grains with flavor by stirring ground spices or other seasonings into the pot. Add brightness with lemon and garnish wildly — or not at all. This meal can be eaten warm or cold, which means lunchtime grain bowls are now easier to pull off.
Scrambled Eggs for a Crowd
Making fluffy, tender and creamy scrambled eggs for a crowd is easier than you might think — and it doesn’t require learning a totally newfangled method. This recipe makes just a few tweaks to a common technique to accommodate two dozen eggs. Trade the skillet for a Dutch oven and add the eggs to a warm, not hot, pot. As you slowly scrape in long sweeps, the eggs will begin to clump. Once you see the bottom of the pot behind your wooden spoon, take the pot off the heat and add cold butter, which will drop the temperature to prevent overcooking. Flip the curds until the still-runny egg and melting butter form a creamy, obviously buttery, coating.
Baked Brie Puffs With Chile Crisp
This flaky, creamy, sweet and spicy appetizer shrinks baked brie into single-bite, snackable sandwiches. (It’s hard to eat fewer than five.) They’re made by filling small squares of seeded puff pastry with a combination of Brie, raspberry preserves and chile crisp. The assembly is repetitive but not difficult — enlist friends to help, and they can be made up to 1 hour ahead of serving. If you want to serve the puffs warm, stick them in the oven for just a minute or two until the brie is gooey. If you have extra filling, add more to the puffs or save it to spread on tomorrow’s turkey sandwich. If you have extra puffs, eat them on their own as crackers.
Parmesan and Crispy Prosciutto Tower
Add drama to appetizer hour by making a tower of crispy prosciutto, Parmesan and crackers. Here, the crackers are made of puff pastry triangles sprinkled with black pepper, rosemary and sage leaves, then baked into herbaceous, flaky wafers. Shingle the crackers, oven-crisped prosciutto and Parmesan shavings into a tower, as if you were playing a delicious game of Jenga, but reduce the number of crackers each round so it peaks to one or two crackers at the top. Light in feel but hefty in flavor, with pops of salt, herbs and black pepper, this tower is exactly what you want from cheese and crackers, but in an altogether new, eye-catching format.
Ginger-Scallion Squiggles
Crunchy, flaky and aromatic with ginger and scallion, these squiggles are a fun twist (pun intended) on the classic cheese straw. Instead of cheese, these puff pastry appetizers are studded with ginger, scallions, nori, peanuts and red pepper flakes — and instead of straight sticks, they’re curved and curled to make snake-like squiggles. Serve them at your next cocktail party, as an afternoon snack to visitors or as an appetizer before a bigger meal. They’re the most crisp the day they’re made, but can be kept in an airtight container at room temperature for up to one day.
Roasted Squash and Bacon Salad
This sweet and savory sheet-pan recipe has everything you want in a full-meal salad: caramelized winter squash, crisp bacon, mustard-dressed kale, maple-toasted pecans and piquant blue cheese. By using one sheet pan for all the cooking, the bacon’s smoky drippings coat the squash for added flavor, and clean-up is a breeze. This salad can be eaten right when it’s made, warm or at room temperature — leftovers are great for lunch the next day. If you have them, feel free to add fresh apples or grapes, dried dates or cherries or another bitter green like radicchio or frisée.