Recipes By Alison Roman
149 recipes found
Chocolate-Molasses Cookies
All you need to shape this dead simple dough are your hands (and maybe a helper or two). Decidedly more “grown up” in flavor — both the molasses and cocoa give bitter notes that play off the spiciness of the fresh ginger — the cookies are tiny in size by design to complement their intensity. For rolling, any coarse decorative sugar works, as would Demerara or an unrefined sugar.
Classic Coconut Cake
One of the beauties of layer cake is that you can do much of the work in advance. The cake layers can be baked one day ahead, wrapped tightly and kept at room temperature. The frosting can be made up to a week ahead, wrapped tightly and refrigerated (bring it back to room temperature before using). You could even assemble and frost the whole glorious thing a day ahead; store it at room temperature, covered loosely with plastic wrap or a cake cover.
Crisp Smashed Potatoes With Fried Onions and Parsley
Some of you may be thinking, “Does the world need another crisp smashed potato recipe?” At least some of you are saying, “Yes, we do!” So here you go. Regular olive oil works if you don't have chicken fat around, but this recipe is so good, it's worth roasting a chicken. A few tips: Don’t over-steam the potatoes or they will fall apart, but don’t under-steam or you’ll never be able to crush them. Also, let the potatoes cool a bit before you smash them so they dry out a bit; this, too, helps them stay intact. Finally, the chicken fat (or oil) must be very hot. If it is not hot enough, it will soak into the potato rather than crisp it. These are the best. And the crispiest. Make them. You’ll be so happy. (This recipe is adapted from "Dining In: Highly Cookable Recipes" by Alison Roman.)
One-Pot Meatballs and Sauce
Made with equal parts ground beef (for flavor) and pork (for fat), these meatballs use a time-saving technique involving softening bread crumbs in an egg-ricotta mixture. This keeps them impossibly light and fluffy while forgoing the usual step of soaking bread in milk, which many meatball recipes require. Aside from leaving you one pot fewer to clean, making your tomato sauce in the same dish you’ve seared your meatballs in means you can take advantage of the flavorful bits left behind. Serve these however you see fit (this recipe makes enough sauce to dress four portions of spaghetti), but know that eating them out of the pot with a hunk of bread is also an option.
Crushed Baby Potatoes With Sardines, Celery and Dill
Boiled potatoes are great to keep on hand for out-of-hand snacking and as a quick addition to things like a skillet full of chicken fat or a midday lunch salad, but also excellent as a foil for rich, fatty, tinned fish. In this recipe from “Nothing Fancy” (Clarkson Potter, 2019), the potatoes are crushed because it allows the chunkiness (which lends texture) to coexist with the more broken-up pieces (which lends creaminess). Plus, those exposed craggy edges are here for maximum lemony, scalliony, salty dressing absorption.
Sautéed Brussels Sprouts With Sausage and Pickled Red Onion
There’s a special place at the dinner table for anything cooked in bacon or sausage fat, but brussels sprouts pair especially well with that kind of smoky, fatty flavor. Caramelized in sausage drippings, the sprouts stay lighter than expected thanks to some quickly pickled red onion and lots of fresh parsley.
Brussels Sprouts Gratin
The most indulgent way to eat any vegetable is to bathe it in cream and top it with cheese, but few benefit from that treatment as much as brussels sprouts do. Whether or not you decide to top them with crispy bread crumbs (you should), the end result is a decadent, but never too heavy, side dish that could easily become your main course.
Roasted Sweet Potatoes With Hot Honey Browned Butter
Doubling down on sweet potatoes’ sweetness by adding honey is like adding fuel to the fire, but the nuttiness from the browned butter, heat from the crushed red pepper flakes and bright acidity from the vinegar all work together to bring it back from the brink. This hot honey browned butter is also good on roasted winter squash, over plain oatmeal and — if we are being honest —probably over ice cream. But that’s a different conversation. (This recipe is adapted from "Dining In: Highly Cookable Recipes" by Alison Roman.)
Cauliflower Gratin With Leeks and White Cheddar
A sort of cheater's gratin, this cauliflower cooked with leeks and cream doesn’t require blanching or a béchamel, making it a low maintenance, deeply comforting side dish. To skirt the blanching, the cauliflower and cream is covered in foil to give the vegetables a chance to get tender without drying out. The foil then comes off so the top can brown and the cream can reduce, creating a thick, velvety sauce. If your heart desires a crunchier texture, add a scattering of bread crumbs tossed in olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper when the aluminum foil comes off.
Honey-Roasted Brussels Sprouts With Harissa and Lemon Relish
Roasting brussels sprouts may be the best and most delicious way to prepare them. Exposed to high heat, they caramelize and become very crispy (even more so when tossed in a sticky and spicy honey-harissa mixture before roasting). Here, they're finished with a slightly bitter and wonderfully tart lemon relish to bring them back from the brink of too much sweetness.
Lemony Turmeric Tea Cake
This cake, which is adapted from “Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food for Having People Over,” is so good and so simple to put together, you might come to call it “house cake,” which is, of course, cake to keep in your house at all times. Just slicing into it makes a bad day better, the baked equivalent of burning sage or palo santo to clear the energy. It travels well, and can truly be brought anywhere for any occasion, but most of the time it won’t make it out of your kitchen.
Salted Lemon-Ginger Spritzer
A little sweet, lightly sour and a touch briny: This spritz is inspired by the salty lemonade found in Vietnam as a way to beat the heat. Without ice and ginger beer, this mix keeps well in the fridge, so consider making a large batch to help get you through the summer. If adding ginger kombucha, bear in mind that, though most brands are not legally considered alcoholic by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, they do contain trace amounts (up to 0.5 percent). If you're strictly abstaining, opt for something like non-alcoholic ginger beer or ginger ale.
Hibiscus Fizz
It’s hard to beat the natural sweetness, unique tartness and stunning color of hibiscus, but this fizzy drink can be modified with any chilled tea. Don't turn away at the mention of apple cider vinegar: It’s decidedly tame. But if you’re into the aggressive sourness of vinegar, feel free to add more.
Baked Ziti
This baked ziti is layered almost like a lasagna to ensure every bite has enough creamy ricotta, stringy mozzarella and tangy tomato sauce. But the key to its success comes from undercooking the pasta during the initial boil so it stays perfectly al dente, even after a trip to the oven. Heavy cream is added to prevent the ricotta from becoming grainy or dry during baking, letting it be its most luscious self. While this baked ziti is meatless (there’s plenty of richness from the cheese — three types, to be exact), you could always incorporate a bit of sausage, ground meat or pancetta, if you like. Simply add 1/2 pound to the onions while sautéeing and proceed with the recipe.
Spiced Chickpea Stew With Coconut and Turmeric
Spiced chickpeas are crisped in olive oil, then simmered in a garlicky coconut milk for an insanely creamy, basically-good-for-you stew that evokes stews found in South India and parts of the Caribbean. While the chickpeas alone would be good as a side dish, they are further simmered with stock, bolstered with dark, leafy greens of your choosing and finished with a handful of fresh mint. When shopping, be sure to avoid low-fat coconut milk, coconut milk meant for drinking or cream of coconut: All are very different and would not be suitable here.
Spiced Roasted Cauliflower With Feta and Garlic
Cauliflower undergoes a few stages of cooking in this recipe, and, for a deep brown and ridiculous flavor, it’s important to see it through all of them. It will be cooked through about halfway through roasting, but to transform it from pale and tender to crisp and golden brown, it must continue roasting at very high heat. Make sure to keep the smaller bits that fall away as you prepare and slice the cauliflower. They'll get the most golden and crunchy, almost like little cauliflower bread crumbs.
Lemony White Beans With Anchovy and Parmesan
These white beans, adapted from Alison Roman's cookbook "Nothing Fancy" (Clarkson Potter, 2019), could potentially be a whole meal, but they are also great alongside another protein since they pull double duty as both starch and salad. While this dish is beautifully seasonally agnostic, it is a summery dream with grilled whole trout or lamb shoulder, and lots of cold red or white wine, preferably in the sunny outdoors.
Sweet and Salty Grilled Pork With Citrus and Herbs
Typically prepared as a long-cooked stew or braise, pork shoulder is remarkably (and perhaps surprisingly) fantastic when treated like a steak. This means cooked hot and fast so it’s charred on the outside and medium-rare on the inside. While a grill is ideal here, it can also be prepared on the stovetop in a very hot cast-iron skillet. The garlicky, salty, sweet marinade also doubles as a dressing to be poured over crunchy leaves of lettuce, fresh herbs and, if you’re looking for something more substantial, some sort of rice noodle or plain cooked rice.
Pork Noodle Soup With Ginger and Toasted Garlic
This soup, based mostly on pantry staples, can be made with a variety of proteins, noodles and greens depending on what you have on hand. Snow pea leaves are exceptional here, which can be found in many Asian grocers year-round, but spinach, Swiss chard or other dark leafy green would work well. Don’t skip the raw onion, the soup’s finished complexity depends on it.
Vinegar Chicken With Crisp Roasted Mushrooms
Not quite a braise and quicker than a roast, this saucy, tangy one-pot vinegar chicken can be prepared in under an hour with ingredients you probably have on hand. Feel free to use a whole chicken broken down into parts or any combination of breasts, legs, thighs and-or drumsticks, making sure whatever you use is bone-in and skin-on. While the crisp roasted mushrooms and lettuces are optional, they’re unfussy ways to elevate this dish without adding much time to the preparation. Crunchy toast to soak up all the juices is another low-key, brilliant item to add to the table, as is a bowl of seasoned sour cream, which will act as part dressing for the lettuces, part topping for the toast and part dipping sauce for the chicken.
Butcher’s Steak With Leafy Greens Salsa Verde
Butcher’s steak is the name of a specific cut of steak, also known as hanger steak (and, occasionally, bistro steak). It’s a cut that hangs off the cow’s diaphragm, resulting in a steak that has the beefy flavor of a short rib, the fat marbling of a rib-eye and the tenderness of filet mignon. There is only one per animal, making it somewhat exclusive but not especially expensive. It is also a term used for the secret-ish cuts typically available only to butchers and restaurants; but a good butcher will gladly help you unlock those secrets. Other lesser-known, surprisingly affordable cuts that work well here include boneless short ribs, Denver steaks and center-cut top sirloin. These cuts are great with little more than salt and pepper, so you can truly assess their flavor. But a tangy, garlicky salsa verde made from dark leafy greens doesn’t hurt. Serve with a squeeze of lemon and a bowl of salty potato chips for a truly faux-bistro experience.
Spiced Lamb Skewers With Lemony Onions
This is the type of scalable recipe that is ideal for feeding large groups of people in a short period of time. More snack than a meal, the idea is to build a table of these lightly spiced, grilled skewers (if you don't like lamb, then pork, beef or chicken all work) and fill out the rest of your table with store-bought ingredients like pickles, olives, yogurt and flatbread for sopping it all up.
Lemony Cauliflower With Hazelnuts and Brown Butter
Steamed cauliflower has a bad reputation, but doused in enough fresh lemon juice, warm browned butter and crunchy hazelnuts, it’s impossible not to appreciate its soft, creamy texture and delicate flavor. Steam larger florets so the cauliflower doesn’t become waterlogged, then coarsely crush it after cooking for easier eating.
Cauliflower With Anchovies and Crushed Olives
In this versatile side dish, cauliflower is both sautéed (for flavor and tenderness) and left raw (for crunch), then dressed with warm, crushed olives and melted anchovies. The preserved lemon, which is optional, may seem like a bit much given all the other salty, briny ingredients, but its punch does a lot to bring everything together.