Recipes By Ali Slagle
497 recipes found
Four-Cheese Flatbreads
You can make personal pizzas quickly by using premade naan, flatbread or pita as the base, then topping with whatever sounds good to you. Here, the combination of feta, Parmesan, ricotta and mozzarella hits every note — salty, creamy, tangy and gooey. Corn’s sweetness balances the savoriness, and a generous amount of black pepper cuts through the richness, as it does in cacio e pepe. Feel free to swap the cheeses based on what you have — pecorino instead of Parmesan, fontina instead of mozzarella — and incorporate any toppings you like: spinach, herbs, garlic, red-pepper flakes, hot honey and so on.
Spicy Glazed Chicken Breasts
This one-skillet chicken has a spicy, pleasantly tart and punchy glaze that’s built on frying a little tomato paste in garlic- and almond-infused oil, then deglazing with lemon juice. It tastes like you sun-dried lots of tomatoes for weeks. (But you don’t need to do that.) The final flourish is the crunchy fried almonds and garlic. You could skip them, but they add a special touch that belies how fast the dish comes together. Besides chicken, the dish also can be made with any other ingredient that browns well, like tofu or even broccoli.
Midnight Pasta With Roasted Garlic, Olive Oil and Chile
This recipe is a version of aglio e olio pasta, which is often known as midnight pasta because it can be made quickly with a few pantry staples: garlic, olive oil, red-pepper flakes and pasta. This recipe takes a bit more time because it calls for roasting the garlic first, but doing so adds a complex, mellow flavor to the entire dish. If you’re a planner, you could even roast a couple of heads of garlic in advance. (Roasted garlic will keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to two weeks and in the freezer for up to two months.) Add whatever vegetables or proteins look good to you.
Brown-Butter Salmon With Scallions and Lemon
This dish is a celebration of soft food and subtle flavors. To prevent overcooking, the salmon bakes in a light yet comforting sauce that’s made with just three simple ingredients: butter, scallions and lemon peel. The salmon comes out silky, and the sauce is nutty from the browned butter and slightly sweet from the roasted scallions and lemon peel. Serve with a squeeze of lemon for freshness and a simple side like broccolini, green beans, grains or pasta. This technique also works for other fish like cod, halibut or arctic char.
Crispy Grains and Halloumi With Smashed Cucumbers
This vegetarian sheet-pan meal is inspired by crispy rice dishes like tahdig, fried rice and pegao, but, instead of white rice, this recipe calls for whole grains like brown rice, wheat berries or farro. For best results, spread the grains and chickpeas on a sheet pan and pat lightly with a paper towel to remove moisture before cooking — the drier they are, the more they’ll crisp up. Then top everything with smashed cucumbers that have been combined with citrus and fresh herbs. As the whole grains cook, the cucumbers marinate, releasing sweet, grassy juices that are then used as a dressing. (You can also use the liquid on a simple panzanella or a baby-green salad.)
Herby Farro With Butternut Squash and Sour Cream
The herb and chile paste that seasons rice in arroz verde is also a great match to nutty farro and sweet butternut squash. As everything bakes in the oven, the garlic and onion lightly steam, the herbs wilt, and the farro tenderizes while maintaining its signature chew. Fresh lime zest and juice perk everything up. This dish is great with salmon, pork or chicken — or, skip the sour cream and this becomes a hearty, vegan main that partners well with black beans.
Pasta With Chopped Pesto and Peas
This pesto doesn’t call for a food processor, blender, or mortar and pestle — and it’s better for it. Instead, all of the elements are chopped and mashed together by hand. (Pesto means “to pound, crush or smash” in Italian.) In Tuscany, this would be done with a half moon-shaped mezzaluna, but a chef’s knife does the job, too. The result is a more textured mix with bright pops of flavor, like a sauce, herb salad and nut garnish in one. Basil and pine nuts are classic choices, but this version, “I Dream of Dinner (So You Don’t Have To),” by Ali Slagle (Clarkson Potter, 2022), was guided by the pesto ratio in “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” by Samin Nosrat. It works with whatever soft herbs and nuts that you like and have on hand.
Coconut Creamed Kale
These are not your typical creamed greens: Here, curly kale, rich coconut milk, curry powder and chile sauce are tossed together, then baked. The result is two textures in one: creamy on the bottom and crunchy (like a kale chip) on top. Crisp coconut flakes bring even more texture. Serve the greens with plenty of the curry coconut sauce spooned over. Pair them with rice, chewy noodles, roasted squash or red lentils, or alongside white fish or shrimp.
Lemon-Caper Dressing
Here’s a salad dressing that falls somewhere between special-occasion Caesar and “toss lemon juice and olive oil onto lettuce.” By adding a craggy paste of capers and garlic and a pouf of shaved Parmesan to the lemon and olive oil, you get a puckery, salty mix that’s packed with umami, just like Caesar, but isn’t weighed down by mayonnaise or egg yolks. It works great on arugula, Romaine, kale or radicchio; steamed or roasted vegetables; hard-boiled eggs; and even grains. The recipe developer's mom has been feeding her this dressing since she could chew. Ali adds a bit more garlic and lemon than what you’ll find here, so adjust it until it tastes good to you.
Charred Tangerines on Toast
For an unexpectedly good hors d’oeuvre, char tangerines. Yes, tangerines. Letting the blackened citrus steep in an herby oil yields a sweet, silky and pleasantly bitter result. They’re delicious on baguette toasts with just a spoonful of the oil, flaky salt and cracked black pepper. Or serve them with rich crème fraîche, ricotta, prosciutto or leftover ham, which offsets the sourness of the citrus.
Hot Honey Nut Mix
Almond, cashew, almond, cashew. Oh, a Brazil nut! There’s a kind of pattern to every nut mix, but in this one, each bite is a little different, pushing you to keep scooping for more surprises. It’s a roasted jumble of nuts (whichever you choose) and flavorful pops — a seed, a honey-crystallized cluster, a pebble of coarse sugar, a bite with swelling heat, then a salty one. Serve them next to olives and cheese at a party, keep a stash in your tote or office snack drawer, or tie a bag of them up with a bow.
Grilled Cheese Sandwich on the Grill
If you have a hankering for a next-level grilled cheese, make it over the fire. Cooking it low and slow with the grill lid on means that the bread not only crisps, but also acquires a deep smoky flavor. (Stale bread works especially well here.) If you want to add chopped grilled vegetables, pickled peppers or anything else to your sandwich, mix it cold or at room temperature with the cheese before piling it onto the bread.
One-Pot Creamy Pasta and Greens
In this recipe, frozen spinach, pasta and a whole lot of milk come together to create a satisfying pasta dish that will remind you of the best creamed spinach you’ve ever had. Stir the mixture often and vigorously to help the pasta release its starch and create a rich sauce. The lemon peel provides a bright citrus flavor, but you can leave it out. If you’d like a spicy version, add a dash of red-pepper flakes along with the shallot and garlic. You can also substitute different greens: Instead of frozen spinach, you can use 2 cups of chopped dark leafy greens, like chard or kale.
Spring Soba With Tinned Fish
While tinned mackerel and sardines may look like they’re hibernating, they’re actually hard at work, their confident flavors intensifying in that salt and olive oil. In this recipe, that seasoned oil is used to fry capers, char scallions and sauce whole-grain noodles. It’s balanced with spring’s sweetest vegetables: thinly sliced asparagus, crunchy snap peas or snow peas, slackened only slightly by salt and residual heat from the pan. Feel free to trade the scallions for garlic scapes or leeks, add fava beans or peas to the noodles in their final minutes of boiling or top the finished dish with pea greens or soft herbs.
Skillet Roast Chicken With Caramelized Shallots
Chicken, shallots, a splash of oil and vinegar — that’s all you need to make this deeply flavorful one-pot dish. The shallots caramelize and sweeten under the crisping chicken, while vinegar adds tang to keep things interesting. You could toss in mustard, herbs, fresh chile or toasted spices with the vinegar for a twist. Don’t forget some crusty bread or rice; you’ll want either as a landing pad for the sweet, schmaltzy shallots and pan juices.
Sesame-Crusted Pork Cutlets With Cabbage
Do you ever wish that the crackly outside of your fried cutlet tasted like — anything? Instead of throwing a bunch of garlic or even Cheetos into the coating, swap bread crumbs for a something that’s probably already in your pantry. By crusting your pounded-thin pork with crushed sesame seeds and shallow-frying for just a few minutes, each bite of juicy pork has a snap and crackle racing through, in addition to deep sesame flavor. To cut through the richness, take a cue from pork tonkatsu and serve these with extra-crisp wisps of cabbage and lemon. With such a minimalist ingredient list and process, you might think you need to add a thing or two, but everything you need is right here.
Cauliflower Rice
Cauliflower is a kitchen chameleon that’s available at most every grocery store year-round. Once pulverized into granules, it becomes a weeknight savior, keeping in the refrigerator for nearly a week and stepping in easily for normal rice. For the most flavorful cauliflower rice, use a little fat; add alliums like onion, garlic and scallions; and roast it instead of steaming or sautéing it, so the raw edges caramelize. Pop the little florets into the oven while you make the rest of dinner, then serve it as you would rice: with curry, a stir-fry, a protein and a vegetable, or just an egg on top. Cauliflower rice is also very amenable to having flavors added before or after roasting (see some ideas in the recipe below), or simply being eaten raw, dressed like a salad.