Recipes By John Willoughby
44 recipes found
Grouper Fillets With Ginger and Coconut Curry
The chef Patrick Jamon applies French cooking techniques to tropical ingredients grown, caught or gathered near his restaurant, Villa Deevena in Los Pargos, Costa Rica. He is particularly fond of grouper, which is often caught by his son Dean and served at the restaurant, but you could substitute red snapper, cod or mahi-mahi. When reducing the coconut milk, be sure to keep it at a simmer rather than a boil, so it doesn’t curdle. Red curry paste can vary in its intensity by brand, so you'll want to adjust the amount to taste.
Homemade BBQ Sauce
Smoked paprika is the secret weapon in this simple barbecue sauce, which goes beautifully with pork and chicken. If you’re painting the sauce onto cooking meat, thin it out with water to about a one-to-one ratio, which will keep the sugars from burning too quickly over the fire. Serve the full-strength stuff alongside the finished meat.
Red Bell Pepper-Walnut Dip (Muhammara)
Chicken Breasts With Mustard-Verjuice Jus
Sweet Potato-Pecan Salad
Southern-style sweet potato salad with pecans makes an excellent companion for fried chicken.
Tagine-Style Lamb Stew
Traveling in Morocco 30-some years ago, I had eaten tagines — stews distinguished by being cooked in the pot of the same name — that I did not recall as involving any browning. This method is described as “starting the tagine cold.” It involves heating the lamb gently along with spices and other aromatics, allowing the flavors to fully penetrate the meat. At that point it is covered and cooked until tender. When I tried the “cold start” approach, substituting a low heating of the lamb with aromatics and a little butter for the usual hard sear in olive oil, it worked like (well, kind of like) magic. The overall flavor of the dish was less robust than one that began with browning, but it was equally flavorful, in a gentler way.
Turkish-Style Braised Green Beans
In this Turkish method, vegetables (and sometimes beans) are cooked in plenty of olive oil — usually with tomatoes, onions and one or two other ingredients — until they have almost lost their shape. Then they are cooled and served at room temperature, when their flavors are at their fullest. Very often an herb or citrus juice is added just before serving for a little spark; thick yogurt and lemon wedges are standard accompaniments. It’s probably obvious that these dishes are pretty much ideal for warm-weather meals. They not only can be made in advance, but also must be, so they can cool down. Even a day or two ahead is fine; just take them out of the refrigerator about 45 minutes before serving.
Pomegranate Molasses Butter Cake
Coat a tender butter cake with a pomegranate glaze and candied walnuts, and watch the whole thing disappear.
Quick Yogurt Sauce
Piperade
Green peppers are featured in many traditional Basque dishes. This piperade can be served as a main dish, usually with the addition of ham; a side dish, or a condiment.
Dried Lime Tea
Slightly funky, a little bit sour, and very aromatic, an infusion of dried limes is a good alternative to iced tea in the summer.
Outdoor Fried Chicken for a Crowd
Chicken thighs are cooked in two stages in this recipe, which was designed to be made outdoors on a propane burner. First, you fry the chicken to render the fat from the skin and get it beautifully browned. Then you put it in a low oven to finish cooking it all the way through. Not only does this result in more-tender chicken, but but it also makes for a much more relaxed and low-key approach.
Rice Pudding With Rose Water and Cardamom
Rice pudding is a common sight on buffets in Indian restaurants. If you’re looking for something sweet to wrap up your Indian meal at home, this could be the answer. This particular rice pudding is popular in north India, and is scented with super-aromatic cardamom as well a light splash of rose water.
Paella of the Sea
This recipe came to The Times from the chef Chris Schlesinger, who participates in a sort of paella contest on Cape Cod every year. His secret weapon, a deeply flavored slurry of sherry, saffron and other spices, is included here, and don’t leave it out. Like all paellas, this dish takes some preparation and time, but is wildly impressive once it reaches the table.
Turkish-Style Braised Leeks
Spanish-Style Lamb Stew
John Willoughby fell in love with pimentón, a smoky Spanish paprika, after a trip to La Vera, a region west of Madrid, first encountering it in a lamb stew. “The stew, rich with the slight gaminess of lamb, the tang of sherry and the smooth comfort of white beans, was brought to greatness by the subtle heat and almost mysterious smokiness of the pimentón,” he wrote. He drew inspiration from the stew, making his own version at home and bringing this recipe to The Times in 2010.
Spicy Red Beans with Chicken and Andouille Sausage
This recipe came to The Times in a 2012 article about cooking in a bean hole, a classic method of outdoor cooking popular in Maine. Here’s how it works: Dig a hole big enough for the pot you’re planning to cook in, then build a fire of hardwood logs in it. Drop a dozen or so rocks into the fire once it’s started. When the wood has burned down to embers, remove the rocks using barbecue gloves, put your pot of presoaked beans into the embers, drop the rocks around and on top of the pot, cover everything with dirt and walk away. Come back in about eight hours, and your beans should be ready. Not in the mood to dig a hole in your backyard? No worries. These spicy New Orleans-style red beans with chicken and andouille sausage can just as easily be made in your oven. The slightly sweet creaminess of the beans and the richness of the chicken temper the sharp heat of the andouille sausage and red pepper flakes. Serve over a pile of snowy white rice alongside an ice-cold beer.
Pork Stew With Pears and Sweet Potatoes
It's nice knowing that pears, which we think of almost exclusively for desserts in this country, are often used in savory ways in Eastern European cuisines. In this stew, caraway seeds, allspice and fennel reinforce that heritage, while sweet potatoes add rich, round flavors. Although bone-in ribs seem a bit more flavorful, boneless are also fine here. You can even use a combination of both if that’s what turns out to be in the package you buy at the store. Because the pears can turn mushy overnight, this is the rare stew that’s actually best served the day that it’s made.
Copper Country Pasties
Braised Country-Style Pork Ribs With Chipotle
Country-style ribs have enough rich porkiness to stand up to the strong flavors of Latin America, so, here, they are coated with an aromatic spice rub that gets some smoky heat from chipotle peppers, then braised in a combination of citrus juices and beer. To avoid burning the spices, the ribs are coated with spice rub only on the side that doesn't get browned. Though the pomegranate seeds are not essential, they do add a nice hit of tartness and texture.
Braised Chicken Thighs With Chile, Cinnamon, Cardamom and Coriander
If you’re looking to boost flavor, spices are a natural. There are perhaps no cuisines that use spices more deftly than those of India. Borrowing a technique commonly used there, I sweat a trio of aromatic spices before adding the liquid to a braised chicken-thigh dish. The final flavor of the dish, earthy but somehow still delicate, is wholly satisfying.
Grilled Duck Breasts With Nectarine- Green Grape Chutney
Lentil Salad With Dried Lime
Clementine Cake
This dessert, loosely based on a Sephardic orange cake, uses whole clementines, peels and all, for a flavor rich in citrus. The cooking time may seem long, but much of it doesn’t require much attention from the baker. And the first step, reducing the fruit, may be done ahead of time.