Recipes By David Tanis
753 recipes found
Corn and Jalapeño Muffins
The flavor of these buttery, miniature muffins is amped up with sautéed corn kernels and jalapeño chiles. They are the perfect accompaniment to a pot of beans, but are tender and delicate enough to serve with an elegant chicken stew.
Ham-and-Cheese Brioche Pudding
Bread pudding, an old-fashioned frugal dessert, usually contains day-old bread, milk, eggs and a bit of fruit, fresh or dried, baked in a sweet custard. This savory version, made with ham and cheese, employs tender buttery brioche. It is easier to make than a quiche, but has a similar delicacy, perfect for lunch or a light supper.
Greens Frittata With Mozzarella and Prosciutto
This savory frittata will take about 15 minutes, including the cooking time, putting weeknight dinner on the fast track. Add ribbons of raw greens to beaten eggs, then proceed to make the frittata, flipping it like a big pancake. The greens are cooked in the process, and the flavor is phenomenal.
Baked Apples With Honey and Apricot
Baked apples are a humble dessert, but these have a certain elegance. Stuffed with dried apricots and raisins, glazed with honey and apricot jam, and served with crème fraîche, they are delicious warm or at room temperature.
Fried Eggs and Ramps
The ramp, a kind of wild leek that heralds spring, pairs here with eggs for a particularly satisfying meal. Sizzled in a little butter, ramps make stellar scrambled eggs, and for not much more effort, a spectacular cheese omelet. In this recipe, wilted ramps are a great accompaniment for a couple of eggs fried sunny side up, with a pinch of peperoncino.
Hot Italian Sausage and Broccoli Rabe Frittata
This is a substantial baked frittata that feeds a small crowd. Filled with spicy Italian sausage, flavorful greens and four kinds of cheese, it tastes best at room temperature, and it's perfect for a weekend late breakfast or any time of day.
Asparagus Frittata With Burrata and Herb Pesto
Frittata, the savory Italian egg dish, can be thick or thin, flipped in the pan or finished under the broiler. This one, slathered with creamy burrata and drizzled with herb-laden oil, is a rather deluxe version of the ideal, worthy of a weekend lunch or a late dinner.
Strawberries in Red Wine
This is a very simple, but quite wonderful dessert, best made with sweet, ripe, fragrant berries, which complements the tannins of red wine. Let the strawberries macerate in wine for up to 1 hour, but no more or they’ll be unpleasantly soggy. (It’s fine to prepare and sugar them in advance.)
Pecan Shortbread
This pecan shortbread — crumbly, salty and buttery, with a touch of cardamom — is delicate in flavor but sturdy enough in structure for a dessert on the go, ready for picnics or potlucks. Make this easy shortbread a day or two before you need it. After slicing, store the pieces in a tightly closed cookie tin. They’re lovely alone, just out of the tin, but you can augment them with a bowl of cherries, nectarines and peaches, or ice cream, if you wish.
Peach and Berry Macedonia With Sparkling Rosé
Fresh fruit compote always makes a perfect dessert, especially during the summer months, when stone fruits and berries are in season. This recipe relies on peaches, nectarines, blackberries and raspberries, but you could add apricots or cherries, too. Any dry white or rosé wine will work, but this Macedonia is especially good with sparkling wine, particularly sparkling rosé. Serve in wide glasses, so guests can sip the resulting juice. Top up with more bubbly, if you wish. Here, a bit of optional lavender perfumes the fruit, but lemon verbena or mint leaves would also be nice.
Raspberry Spuma
This luxurious raspberry dessert is quite easy to make — you simply fold fresh raspberry syrup into a glossy stiff meringue and garnish with fresh berries. Though it is frozen, it is lighter and airier than ice cream, as it doesn’t freeze solid. It tastes rich, but contains no dairy.
Not-So-Classic Peach Melba
A classic peach Melba is a dessert of poached peach halves and raspberry sauce with vanilla ice cream, invented by the French chef Auguste Escoffier, and named after the Australian soprano Nellie Melba. This not-so-classic version calls for sliced ripe peaches instead of cooked peach halves. Look for the best vanilla ice cream, with real vanilla, or make your own. Easy to assemble, it’s a lovely, refreshing and elegant dessert, perfect for when peaches and raspberries are in season.
Meringue Mess With Rhubarb and Strawberries
There is a traditional English dessert called Eton Mess, attributed to Eton College, in which broken meringues, strawberries and softly whipped cream are folded together. “Mess” in this context doesn’t mean “messy,” but rather “mixture.” This recipe is a springtime mess of rhubarb and strawberries. Feel free to substitute other berries or stone fruit as they come into season. It’s an easy dish to put together, especially if you use store-bought meringues. Instructions are given here for making meringues, but it is a bit of a project and one that should not be attempted in humid weather because the meringues will not set properly. If you prefer a more refined version, spread meringues with whipped cream, spoon the fruit on top, and call it Pavlova.
Lemon Meringue Pots de Crème
Caprese Antipasto
If you have ever eaten a caprese salad and wished that you could linger with it longer, that there were more tomatoes to spear with your fork, or more milky slices of cheese on the plate, then this is the dish for you. Best at the height of tomato season, it embellishes on the classic caprese, taking its five simple elements — mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, salt and olive oil — and adding roasted peppers, caperberries (or capers), olive and prosciutto. The result is a luscious lunch or light dinner that will make your dining companions swoon. You will wonder why you didn’t think of it sooner. Serve with a crusty loaf of bread on the side.
Spicy Meatballs With Chickpeas
Meatballs are the ultimate comfort food, and these are especially nice, perfumed with cumin, coriander and cinnamon. (Feel free to use ground beef, pork or turkey if ground lamb isn’t available.) They may be prepared several hours or up to 2 days in advance — they reheat beautifully. Make the tomato gravy as piquant as you like, adding a good pinch of cayenne if you wish. The optional saffron adds a floral note. If you have the time, cook your chickpeas from scratch (it’s best to soak them for at least a few hours or overnight). They’ll cook in less than an hour. One pound dried chickpeas will yield about 6 cups cooked.
Spicy Corn Pakoras With Mango-Tamarind Chutney
Crisp and deeply seasoned, pakoras are Indian fritters that can be made from almost any vegetable. To emphasize the corn flavor here, fine cornmeal joins the more traditional chickpea flour — along with fresh corn. A ridiculously flavorful chutney, which is sweet, hot and a little sour, accompanies the dish. But a jarred version from the supermarket would certainly work in a pinch.
Tomatoes Niçoise
In the height of summer, a stellar but simple tomato salad is essential dinner party fare. This one has the distinct profile of a niçoise: Thick slices are arranged on a platter, then topped with a garlicky chopped olive vinaigrette and colorful halved cherry tomatoes. A flourish of anchovy plays against the sweet ripeness, and scattered basil leaves are both decorative and a delicious complement.
Glazed Carrots With Miso and Sesame
Miso and sesame add nutty warmth to a buttery dish of glazed carrots that’s delicious warm or at room temperature. Bunched carrots with their tops intact are always fresher than the type packed in cellophane, so look for those, or young, slender carrots. You can choose a rainbow bunch, if you wish, but orange or yellow carrots are also just fine.
Tomato-Green Bean Salad With Chickpeas, Feta and Dill
This is a perfect salad for summer, when the market is chockablock with great produce. Use whatever tomatoes are sweetest, and feel free to add yellow wax beans or romano beans in addition to green beans. If your market has fresh shelling beans, use those instead of chickpeas. Plan ahead to soak dried chickpeas overnight. With a soak, they only take an hour to cook, and taste better than canned ones.
Warm Kale Salad With Walnuts and Pomegranate
Pomegranate molasses makes a sweet-tart contribution to this salad of cooked, not raw, kale. It’s really more of a vegetable side dish, but could very well be a salad course on its own. In every bite there’s a morsel of warm kale, walnut and pomegranate. Truth be told, it is just as tasty served at room temperature. It’s also great to make ahead of time: You can cook the kale, toast the nuts and make the vinaigrette early. Then toss everything and garnish five minutes before serving.
Potato Salad With Capers and Anchovies
Serve this zesty room-temperature salad on its own with crisp lettuce or arugula leaves on the side, or to accompany meats from the grill, a roast chicken or any type of fish. The dressing is essentially a well-seasoned vinaigrette, enhanced with Dijon mustard, capers, a little garlic and a few chopped anchovies. Red onion, thyme leaves and chopped parsley complete the picture — in all, a very simple dish. Most important is to dress the potato slices very carefully with your hands, in order to coat them well and to keep them from breaking. It is a potato salad you’ll grow to love, best eaten within hours of assembling (but perfectly serviceable the next day).
Clementine-Pomegranate Jello Salad
A gelatin salad, or Jell-O mold, may seem retro, but when you make one from scratch, substituting fresh juice and fruit in place of artificial flavoring and color, it can be spectacular, making a great showpiece for a dinner party or buffet. This particular combination of tart clementine and sweet pomegranate is quite refreshing for a very light dessert, but it may also be served as a fruit salad.
Creamy Chard With Ricotta, Parmesan and Bread Crumbs
A substantial vegetable casserole, this recipe can be a green vegetable side dish or a vegetarian main course. Though a bit of a job to put together, it is a crowd-pleaser.