Recipes By Clare De Boer
27 recipes found
Simple Boiled Greens
Greens, boiled in properly salted water, make an ideal companion to almost any dish. Served with spiced duck, or a similar saucy braise, they provide soft, nourishing relief to every eater and gallantly soak up what’s on the plate. Dinosaur kale (also known as lacinato or Tuscan kale), Savoy cabbage and brussels sprouts are particularly suitable during winter. Let the greens drain and steam dry fully before drizzling with olive oil or topping with a knob of butter.
Big Crème Brûlée
The classic French dessert throws off its formality in favor of family-style fun. You can use the broiler or a torch to caramelize the sugar on top — just make sure the dish is fully chilled before this final step so you don’t scramble the voluptuous, vanilla-flecked custard.
Rice and Squash Bombe
This pita-crusted rice and squash bombe is a celebratory showstopper, capable of upstaging any roast or standing alone as the centerpiece of a vegetarian feast. The technique of encrusting pilaf in crisp bread is inspired by fruit-studded Azerbaijani shakh plov and Persian polo ba tahdig. It’s a bit fiddly, with three components to prepare — rice, cumin-roasted shallots and squash, and saffron butter — but none of them are complicated. Cook them in advance, but assemble the bombe when you’re ready to bake it off. Make sure to butter the baking bowl heavily and overlap your pitas without gaps. If in doubt, arm yourself with more pitas than the recipe calls for, in case yours are a bit dry when you take them out of the packet — you may need spares for patching.
Leafy Winter Salad
Bitter winter chicories are balanced with some endive and cress, and sweetened with a honey-spiked dressing. It makes a refreshing side to any rich wintry dish. As vinegar and honey can vary wildly in flavor, dip a leaf into your dressing jar to check it for seasoning and balance, adjusting as needed before tossing it through the salad.
Spiced Orange Duck
These braised duck legs — spiced with ginger, thyme, anise and orange — are festive and ideal to cook ahead. Unlike traditional orange duck, which is cooked pink and served in a syrupy sauce, this version is savory, fragrant and confit-tender. Make sure to top up the pot with stock if it looks like it’s drying up at any point (don’t be fooled into thinking your pot has enough stock just because you see plenty of the fat that will render during the braise). And do save the duck fat for something specialwhen you spoon it off at the end. If you’re making the dish ahead and reheating it, add the fresh orange juice right before you serve.
Spiced Roasted Eggplant
This simple eggplant recipe yields soft and deliciously spiced rounds. Eat them as a side with meat or fish, or as a vegetable main, with seasoned yogurt and chopped herbs. Don’t be afraid to use your broiler for extra crispness at the end of roasting, and consider leftovers an excellent start for your favorite eggplant dishes, like moussaka or ratatouille.
Grilled Chicken Thighs With Tomatoes
In this elegant, easy summer meal, grilled chicken is marinated in a vinaigrette, infused with herbes de Provence, that tenderizes and seasons the thighs. Another simple mustard vinaigrette dresses the tomatoes after they come off the grill, as do the flavorful juices from the chicken. Slashing the thighs through to the bone encourages heat to penetrate the meat, so your chicken will be cooked through before the skin burns. Have fun developing a crust: once the chicken releases from the grill, rotate it repeatedly for an even, chestnut char.
Grilled Chicken Thighs and Corn With Lime-Basil Butter
These summery grilled chicken thighs with sweet corn are scented with basil and lime. Warm your lime-basil butter on the side of the grill while you cook your corn and chicken, so it melts willingly on the charred thighs and corn kernels. Finishing with extra lime wedges and flaky salt isn’t a recommendation, but an essential final kick.
Blueberry Spoon Cake
This recipe for a simple summer spoon cake draws the juices out of blueberries then pours them on top of a gluten-free cornmeal batter. As the cake bakes, some blueberries sink and form a stewy bottom, others bubble into chewy jam. The result looks like an upside down cobbler, or a muffin without its middle. It isn’t too sweet, and what it lacks in slice-ability and portability, it makes up for with tenderness and juiciness. Make sure to bake it on a tray to catch any batter or berries that rise over the rim — these are the cook’s midbake treat.
Pea and Ricotta Frittata
This frittata is a celebration of spring: Its color, flavor and tenderness capture the spirit of beginnings. A purée of mint and peas, as well as a sprinkling of both, give it its pastel green freshness. Heavy cream and a long cook time in a low oven give it a quivering, custardy texture that may remind you more of steamed eggs than most frittatas. To get this gentle wobble, undercook the frittata ever so slightly, and let the residual heat finish the job. Be brave and take it out of the oven right after you feel the middle go from swampy to jiggly, and allow it to cool slightly before slicing. As is always the case with frittatas, they are best at or right above room temperature, so do not refrigerate before serving.
Greens and Peas Salad With Bacon
This salad has all the snappy sweetness of spring, offset by the smoky saltiness of bacon and a bacon fat vinaigrette. Black pepper is a key ingredient, not an accent, so grind on. Bacon fat sets as it cools, so make the dressing when the bacon pan is still warm, and if you’re making it in advance, make sure it's just warmer than room temperature. If you store it in a jar, sit the jar in a hot water bath to melt the fat before dressing the salad. Also make sure that your salad ingredients are room temperature, rather than cold, when you dress. To make this salad vegetarian, leave out the bacon and replace the bacon fat in the dressing with olive oil.
Chewy Lemon Cookies
These cookies have an Italian-inspired taste and an American texture. The flavors of lemon, polenta and rosemary may remind you of biscotti, or a lemon-polenta cake, but the cookies are as crisp-edged and chewy-centered as they come. The recipe uses Sarah Kieffer’s pan-banging technique, which requires quite a specific dough-ball size and wide spacing on the sheet pan to work. Make sure each round of dough is 3 ounces, and don’t bake more than four balls on one pan. These giant cookies are even better when they’ve cooled slightly — they become chewier and the rosemary emerges.
Brown Bread
This simple whole-wheat loaf requires no kneading, shaping or baking experience to get it right. You can begin the recipe when you wake up, and enjoy a warm loaf for breakfast a few hours later. Make sure that your yeast foams in the molasses-water before you stir it into the flour. If it does nothing, the yeast is probably dead — discard it and save this recipe for another day. If you like seedy bread, include some (sunflower, poppy, sesame or a combination) in the dough, and sprinkle some on top of the loaf before letting it rise. No adjustments are needed if you decide to include them. While most bread recipes advise you to wait until the loaf cools completely before slicing, this one is best still warm, with butter — Irish, preferably!
One-Pot Creamy Chicken and Noodles
Think of this warming dish as a relay race, each ingredient handing its flavor to the next. During the (almost!) hands-off cooking, a head of garlic and a whole chicken stuffed with a Parmesan rind roast, then give themselves to salted water, which in turn flavors the egg noodles that soften around the bird. Salt and water are your best tools here: Season the chicken, season the water and season both again. Don’t hesitate to add more water as the noodles are cooking to make sure they’re submerged. Every brand will absorb a slightly different amount of liquid, and you want a result that’s splashy enough to take on all the Parmesan you will grate at the table. Use your largest pot so everything fits. A 7- to 9-quart Dutch oven has ideal proportions with its wide base and chicken-height sides. You can substitute any short, quick-cooking pasta for egg noodles, and introduce sautéed mushrooms, spinach or herbs at the end, if that’s your mood.
Grilled Spatchcocked Chicken With Honey, Chile and Lemon
This recipe fulfills the fantasy of grilled chicken that is both juicy and charred. Spatchcocking and slashing the bird allow it to cook evenly and remain succulent as the spiced honey and lemon marinade caramelizes into a golden crust. A low-temperature grill and attentive flipping are essential to cooking the bird through without singeing the outside. Pay close attention to the skin during the first few minutes of cooking to make sure the grill isn’t too hot, then turn and baste regularly to cultivate bronzed, savory-sweet skin.
Sweet Corn and Ricotta Sformato
Think of a sformato as a soufflé that requires no technique. This one is fluffy and rich at the same time. A cheesy base of ricotta, Parmesan and crème fraîche is combined with a double dose of corn: whole kernels and a purée. Lightness and rise comes from egg whites, whipped to stiff peaks and folded through right before cooking. Make sure your eaters are assembled at the table when you pull this out of the oven. It’s best eaten immediately, still puffed up and drizzled with crushed basil oil.
Bakewell Tart With Cranberry Sauce
A layer of cranberry sauce below orange-scented almond frangipane is the perfect balance of tart and sweet. It’s a holiday play on Britain’s beloved Cherry Bakewell tart that gives you a reason to make extra sauce — or a good excuse to use up leftovers. Temperatures are key to the result: The cranberry sauce needs to be slightly warm to spread over the prebaked pie crust, and the frangipane must be fridge-cold to prevent it from splitting in the oven.
Juicy BLT
The success of a BLT hangs in its balance of salt, acid, lusciousness and crunch. This version is perfect, with a generous swipe of mayonnaise on each slice of toast, followed by a drizzle of olive oil, tomatoes marinated in red wine vinegar and salt, butter lettuce leaves and thick-cut bacon. Squash this closed and eat while the bacon is still warm. BLTs are often associated with summer, but the vinegar here coaxes flavor and brings brightness to hothouse tomatoes, turning it into a sandwich for all seasons.
Hazelnut, Pear and Cardamom Tart
This is an elegant alternative to the holiday parade of sugary pies. Cardamom adds a grown-up twist to the classic combination of hazelnut and pear. (Don’t overdo the spice, however, or your dessert will taste more like a cold remedy than a treat.) Cut corners by pressing out the crust, but don’t skip making your own roasted hazelnut meal: The deep, caramel flavor of toasted nuts is worth the labor. Use ripe pears, or poach harder fruit until tender before adding to the tart.
Stone Fruit and Frangipane Toast
Juicy, late-summer fruits and rich almond frangipane do the hard work here. Consider making these toasts an exercise in generosity rather than technique: Spread frangipane thickly and all the way to the edges of the toast and err on the side of too much fruit, torn roughly and tossed with a pinch of salt, and some sugar to encourage caramelization. If serving this for an after-dinner dessert, add a splash of red wine to the fruit and serve with a dollop of mascarpone. If this is breakfast, you might prefer Greek yogurt as an accompaniment, or a glug of heavy cream.
Roast Chicken With Peppers, Focaccia and Basil Aioli
Surrounded by caramelized peppers, focaccia croutons — some crisp, some soaked with vinegar and chicken jus — and a bright basil aioli, this roast chicken dish is filled with delights that can only be earned through home-cooking and family-style eating. The deliciousness of this recipe relies on layering flavor and encouraging pan juices. Marinate the chicken and peppers generously, seasoning at various stages. Next, place some focaccia underneath the chicken to roast in schmaltz, and tuck smaller shards of the bread like a wreath around the edge of the dish, where they will crisp. If your dish runs dry during cooking, add a splash more vinegar. The basil aioli is crucial, though it doesn’t need to be homemade: Use the best store-bought version you can find and spruce it up with the basil, lemon and garlic paste.
Shortcut Pie Crust
This recipe and method make a distinctly tender, crisp crust. Unlike rolling, which can toughen pastry by developing the gluten in the dough, grating breaks — or shortens — the protein chains, which leads to extra tenderness. Pressing the grated pastry directly into the pie plate makes patisserie-thin crusts achievable, without much practice. It’s key to thoroughly chill the dough before grating and to pull it up higher than the rim of the dish to allow for shrinkage. Swap this recipe in as the base of any sweet pie, adjusting the thickness accordingly. Deeper pies made in dishes without removable bases benefit from slightly thicker crusts, whereas fluted tart crusts are best whisper thin. Make double the dough and freeze half, so you have an excuse to make pie another day.
Strawberry and Sesame Swirl Soft Serve
Strawberries and cream get a double dose of sesame from tahini and halvah. The tahini adds richness, and the slightly salty halvah has a cookie-dough effect: Everyone will mine for it. Eat it quickly before it melts, ideally with extra halvah on standby.
Grilled Chicken Skewers With Tarragon and Yogurt
These grilled chicken skewers are gently spiced with a ginger-and-cumin yogurt marinade, which makes the meat exceedingly tender and cooks to fragrant curds. As they grill, the skewers are gilded with a tarragon-mint baste that tastes distinctly Persian. Restraint and a very hot grill are both key to getting a good char: Don’t move the skewers until the yogurt is burnished and the meat releases from the grates. Color is flavor. Catch any juices that run out of the cooked skewers with warm pita bread. Leftovers make excellent chicken salad.