Recipes By Amanda Hesser
346 recipes found
Chicken With Mixed Mushrooms and Cream
This succulent chicken recipe came to The Times from Amanda Hesser in 2003, but it’s as timeless as they come. Here, riesling lifts a rich cream sauce, while mushrooms add a distinct earthiness. Make it on a weeknight when you have a little more time to spend in the kitchen, and want something special on the table. Your loved ones will thank you.
Orange Coconut Truffles
Crispy Orange Coconut Balls
In the world of Sandra Lee, a cookbook author and self-proclaimed “lifestylist,” life is hectic and people are busy, so she cooks semi-homemade food. “The Semi-Homemade cooking approach is easily done by combining several prepackaged foods, a few fresh ingredients, and a ‘pinch of this with a hint of that’ to make new, easy, gourmet-tasting, inexpensive meals in minutes,” she said. The Duncan Hines Creamy Home-Style chocolate icings that Ms. Lee calls for in her Crispy Orange Coconut Balls (truffles, really) do not allow you to have control over the quality of the chocolate — the main flavor of the dessert. If you would like more control of that flavor, try this riff, developed by Amanda Hesser.
Salted Butter Caramels
Candy can be made by cooks of all skill levels, as long as they don't mind standing and stirring for what can seem like an eternity (but is really only 20 to 30 minutes).
Brownie Ice Cream Sundaes
The ice cream sundae has shed its youthful, frivolous shell. This is a balanced, thoughtfully constructed dessert, something that nourishes the intellect and the palate, not just the pangs of the stomach.
Le Bernardin's Salmon-Caviar Croque-Monsieur
When the stock market is doing well, people with money to spend go out to spend it — thereby serving as unwitting patrons of the culinary arts. In the late '90s, the chef Eric Ripert said, “Everybody was a bit, I think, crazy and inclined to indulge in excess because of the end of the millennium." His contribution to the madness was this croque-monsieur layered not with ham and béchamel but with something even more indulgent: smoked salmon, Gruyère and caviar on brioche. Make it home, and don't look at the grocery bill. It is in service of luxurious flavor.
Jennifer's Moroccan Tea
Fudge Sauce
Really Good Brownies
Lemon Gumdrops
Candy can be made by cooks of all skill levels, as long as they don't mind standing and stirring for what can seem like an eternity (but is really only 20 to 30 minutes).
Chocolate-Rum Mousse
Chocolate-rum mousse, which ran in The Times in 1966, was a remarkably efficient recipe in two distinct ways. First, it invoked nearly every food trend of its moment: chocolate desserts were an exotic new fix; any respectable grown-up dessert contained rum; mousse suggested that you understood French cooking, or at least pretended to; two cups of cream was de rigueur; and the recipe assumed you owned one of the kitchen’s latest appliances, the home blender. Second, the newfangled blender actually did make the recipe a wonder of efficiency: all you had to do was layer the ingredients and blend, and a dinner-party mousse was yours.
Candied Ginger And Brandied Plum Sundaes
Smoked Salmon, Fromage Blanc and Caper Spread
One selling point of smoked salmon is that you don't need to do much to it to get it on the table — but take it a step further and break out of the canape cliché. Here, you’ll whip it up in the food processor with fennel and cream cheese for a light spread. Serve it with baguette slices. It’s a quarter-hour of work for a savory, guest-friendly appetizer. (The New York Times)
Lamb Tagine With Green Olives
If you can get your hands on ras el hanout, you can use it instead of making the spice mixture. And no worries if you don’t have a tagine — a covered Dutch oven will work just fine.
Grilled Lamb Sausages With Bean, Tomato And Scallion Salad
Lamb Curry
Braised Pork Chops With Five-Spice And Orange Peel
Roasted Parsnips With Orange Zest
Layered Salad Of Sliced Tomatoes, Arugula And Tapenade Toast
Chinese BBQ Spareribs
This recipe appeared in The Times in an article by June Owen. In an earlier version of this recipe, Owen recommended first roasting the ribs for 55 minutes in an oven set at 350 degrees. This way, when you finish them on the grill, they will be less likely to char and spoil the lacquered look. The choice is yours. David Myers noted that the ribs would also go well with the cucumber salad and preserved ginger from the salmon recipe that follows. But their best accompaniment is probably just a good cold beer.
Heavenly Necci
Huguenot Torte
This recipe from “The First Ladies Cook Book” appeared in The Times in an article by Craig Claiborne. The original recipe said that the torte could be served warm or chilled.I like it best warm and cut into squares. The torte has so much sticky sugar in it that when it’s cold you have to do battle to cut it. Either way, I suggest adding little or no sugar to the accompanying whipped cream.In fact, I’d fold in some crème fraîche.
Epigram of Lamb
This recipe is an adaptation of one that ran in The Times in 1879 and came from a publication called Young Ladies’ Magazine. And although it takes two days to make the actual work involved is brief. The recipe instructs you to serve it with peas, although I’ve seen other versions insisting on asparagus; both are great choices. I made two small changes to the Times recipe. Rather than frying the cutlets in lard (feel free to do so if you like), I used a combination of butter and olive oil. And I included lemon wedges for squeezing over the cutlets at the table, an Italian touch. After making epigram of lamb, Eric Korsh, the chef at Restaurant Eloise in Sebastopol, Calif., called it a “perfect simple recipe.” The braising makes for tender, fragrant cutlets, and there’s something in the sautéing that makes the fat in the lamb seem extra succulent. “It’s like lamb Wiener schnitzel, but beautiful,” Korsh said.
