Recipes By Julia Moskin
392 recipes found
Egg Cream
For a truly classic egg cream, the chocolate syrup should be Fox’s U-Bet, and the fizz should be very strong, like the bubbles in seltzer from a siphon. But however you prepare it — and feel free to adjust the proportions to your liking — it makes for a sweet, quick refresher or even dessert on a summer day.
Chantilly Lili
This dessert, named for Meghan’s daughter, Princess Lilibet, is based on a banana pudding recipe of Meghan’s grandmother. In the Southern classic, vanilla pudding is layered with cookies and sliced banana; Meghan’s version adds the sweet-tart sting of strawberries macerated with lemon. She happens to have a passion fruit vine in her garden, and its yellow seeds make a nice, juicy garnish. This layered pudding can be made in individual glasses for a party, or a big bowl for a family night in.
Spring Garden Pasta Salad
A perfectly quick spring or summer dinner, this recipe draws on Meghan’s kitchen garden in Montecito, Calif., and her fondness for meals filled with vegetables. “Use a healthy dose of garlic, mint and whatever fresh green vegetables you have on hand,” she said.
Ballerina Farm’s Beef Stroganoff
This is a typical family dinner for Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm, who is raising eight children, tending sheep and chickens, and making almost everything her family eats from scratch on her dairy farm in Utah. In many ways, she’s a traditional Mormon farm wife; untraditionally, she broadcasts her daily life to 22 million followers on social media. This recipe uses lean beef and yogurt, both of which are in constant supply on the farm. The tangy sauce is great with any kind of fresh or egg noodles; of course, Ms. Neeleman makes her own.
Sourdough Herb Noodles
If you are the kind of cook who has more sourdough starter than you know what to do with, using it in fresh pasta produces a springy texture and deep flavor. Hannah Neeleman bakes bread most days for her family of 10 at Ballerina Farm, the name of both her 328-acre ranch in Utah and her wildly popular social media accounts. She makes this recipe to serve with stews like beef stroganoff. It can also be made without the herbs.
Coq au Vin Blanc Meatballs
Coq au vin blanc, a creamy, delicate French dish, is very different from the classic coq au vin made with red wine. Turning it into an easy skillet dinner of chicken meatballs in mushroom sauce is the kind of trick that has made Half Baked Harvest a wildly popular recipe site in the last decade. Tieghan Gerard, its creator, is a home cook from a big family who has sold millions of cookbooks. The meatballs are seasoned just with salt and pepper, making them superquick, but the sauce is spiked with enough herbs, white wine and Dijon mustard to give the dish depth. You can easily substitute ground turkey.
Pumpkin Spice Latte Cake With Coffee Frosting
Tieghan Gerard, who runs the wildly popular Half Baked Harvest blog, posts a new recipe nearly every day, all year round, but her favorite season is (of course) fall, when she brings out the pumpkin-shaped pots, pumpkin-scented candles and toasted pumpkin seeds. Even if you don’t identify with the P.S.L. set, separating the pumpkin spice (cake) from the latte (frosting) makes this a delicious snack cake. Pumpkin purée makes it very moist, so test to be sure the batter is baked all the way through.
Roscioli Roman Cacio e Pepe
The Roscioli family has built its own culinary empire in Rome since the 1960s, including bread bakeries, a pastry shop, a wine bar and a salumeria that moonlights as a restaurant. It’s a straight-from-the-airport destination for many American chefs, who go to taste the best food and wine from all over Italy, plus perfected Roman classics like cacio e pepe. The Roscioli method involves making a “crema” of cheese, pepper and water in advance. (It can also be refrigerated for later use.) The cheese needs to be grated until fine and feathery, so that it will melt quickly, and the hot pasta water must be added slowly. Unlike many recipes, the pasta here should be fully cooked, not al dente; it won’t cook any further once it’s added to the cheese.
Jewish American Pot Roast
Brisket is now a luxurious, festive dish for Hanukkah and Passover, but it was originally an inexpensive cut considered too tough for roasting. This brisket recipe came from Mimi Sheraton, the New York Times’s first restaurant critic and author of a memoir-cookbook, “From My Mother's Kitchen: Recipes and Reminiscences” (HarperCollins, 1979), about growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930s. It demands minimal preparation and limited ingredients — little more than onions and garlic — but the low-and-slow cooking make it extraordinarily complex and delicious. Although the brisket (breast) is traditional, the same recipe works beautifully with any stew cut, such as chuck, oxtail or short ribs. Serve over mashed potatoes or egg noodles, or with boiled potatoes, sprinkled with parsley.
Chebureki
Chebureki are the southern Ukrainian branch of the global family of empanadas, potstickers, pasties and salteñas — dough pockets filled with meat and deep-fried until golden and juicy. A blistered, chewy crust is the sign of a really good cheburek according to Olga Koutseridi, who grew up in Mariupol, Ukraine, and adapted this recipe for her home kitchen in Austin, Texas. The dough for this recipe is relatively stiff, which means it will take a bit of time to mix it by hand. You could also use a stand mixer, but your mixer may struggle. After the first few, these pies become much easier to assemble, and you can roll and fill the next one while one is frying. It is best to fry one or two at a time, which helps control the oil temperature and ensures the freshest chebureki. They should be eaten within just a few minutes of their emergence from the fryer.
Borsch With Fish
Every Ukrainian family has its own style of borsch. Olga Koutseridi, who grew up in Mariupol, is a historian and collector of Ukrainian recipes; she’s documented more than 70 recipes, including her mother’s “tomato-centric and cabbage-centric” borsch, as well as this version often eaten in Mariupol. Borsch with fish is traditional in southern Ukraine, where Black Sea ports like Mariupol and Odessa have relied on fishing since ancient times. Modern cooks often use canned versions of local species like anchovies, gobies and sprats. With bell peppers and carrots along with the usual beets and cabbage, this soup is hearty and chunky, but also very light.
Pad Thai
Pad Thai is Thailand’s national dish, but not because it is traditional. The government codified it in the 1930s as a way of encouraging national pride in the unique ingredients of Thailand. It has been adopted and adapted all over the country, but one constant is that the dish is made almost entirely of long-lasting ingredients like rice noodles and tamarind, making it easy on the home cook. The savory, tart sauce is very simple to assemble, and it lasts well in the fridge. Watcharee Limanon, a cooking teacher in Yarmouth, Maine, who shared this recipe, said that although salty dried shrimp are used in the original recipe, many Thai cooks (and most of her students) now prefer fresh shrimp.
Spiced Olive Oil Cake With Orange Glaze
This golden cake makes a persuasive case for baking with olive oil; it is fragrant, peppery and not overly sweet, with an orange glaze that brings all the flavors together. The recipe is from Lior Lev Sercarz, a high-end spice vendor in New York City who says that oil is even better than butter, the favorite of American bakers, at amplifying flavors like citrus and spice. See Tip for his instructions on using whole spices.
Spiced Chickpea Salad With Tahini and Pita Chips
This main-course salad has all the fresh flavors of a great falafel sandwich — tahini, mint, paprika, cucumber, cumin, garlic — plus the crunch of pita and the satisfying heft of chickpeas. The vegetarian cookbook writer Hetty McKinnon created this recipe, and the amount of olive oil she calls for might seem excessive. Don’t hold back: After cooking the chickpeas, the oil becomes part of the garlicky, paprika-warmed dressing for the finished dish. You could make her recipe even easier by using salad greens instead of cooked greens as the base.
Classic Ranch Dressing
The original dressing served in the 1950s at Hidden Valley Ranch, a guest ranch near Santa Barbara, Calif., was made mostly from dry herbs and aromatics. To recreate that taste, this recipe, from the “Ranch” cookbook (Dovetail, 2018) by Abby Reisner, with recipes by Eleanore Park, is made with garlic powder instead of garlic, dried parsley instead of fresh, and so on. It makes enough seasoning mix for about 4 cups dressing; you can mix it, store it, then add dairy as needed. If you don’t like the zip of mustard, try hot sauce or Worcestershire sauce instead — or simply omit for a milder taste. To make a thick dip instead of a pourable dressing, reduce the amount of buttermilk to 1/4 cup.
Slow-Cooked Red Wine Beef Stew
Red wine and beef are such an elemental combination that it's worth mastering the technique for a great stew: Sauté the ingredients quickly to caramelize and reduce, then cook through very slowly (preferably in a low oven, but see our Notes on how to cook in the slow cooker or pressure cooker). You can use any wine you like, since it will be cooked for a long time: the alcohol, acidity and fruitiness that make wine lovely in the glass are not so nice in the bowl; they have to be tamed by simmering. But the tangy, syrupy taste they leave behind is an ideal counterpoint to red meat. Celery is optional because some don't like it, but note that it's not eaten: It just provides a green flavor note alongside the sweet carrots and earthy potatoes.
A Perfect Hard-Boiled Egg
Master this simple technique and every hard-boiled egg you make from here on out will have a perfectly-cooked, creamy sunshine center. Here are loads of recipes to make with them.
Best Black Bean Soup
This American classic can be a perfect dish: big-tasting, filling, nutritious, easy and very possibly vegetarian. With their rich natural broth, turtle beans do not need bacon, ham or any meat ingredient to make a satisfying soup. Black bean soup recipes have a tendency to turn out sludgy or bland, but the trick here is to season generously, and purée sparingly. The beans should be swimming in liquid, not sitting in sludge: The more beans are puréed, the more starch is released into the soup. For flavor, this recipe deploys marinated chipotle chiles, but a tablespoon each of ground cumin and ground coriander make a good heat-free substitute. (A note: Since there is acid from the wine here, if your tap water is hard there might be a reaction that will prevent the beans from softening. To be safe, add the wine later, along with the stock. And if there is any question about the hardness of your water, use distilled.)
Best Lemon Bars
Lemon bars are all about contrast: sour lemon and sweet sugar, crumbly base and creamy topping, buttery crust and tart filling. Two common ingredients lift this recipe above the pack: baking powder for a fluffy filling and shredded coconut for a rich, round-tasting crust. (Once baked, the coconut flavor almost disappears.) Bakers who avoid preservatives will find an easy version of homemade sweetened coconut in the tip below the recipe.) For thicker lemon squares, use the square baking pan; for thinner ones, the large rectangle. For an easy lemon tart, simply cut the recipe in half and bake it in an 8-inch round tart pan, pressing the crust up the sides.
Thrice-Roasted Chicken With Rosemary, Lemon and Pepper
This recipe from Justin Smillie, the chef at Upland in New York, is all about layering extra flavors, textures and fragrances onto a basic herb-roasted chicken. It’s perfect for a dinner party: crowd-pleasing, but not at all boring. First you brine the chicken for juicy flesh; then air it out to get crispy skin; then rub it with an herb paste to give it flavor. This takes time — you'll need two days for the brining and drying — but the actual cooking is minimal. Don’t be alarmed by the idea of “thrice” roasting — it’s a basic restaurant technique of searing a protein on top of the stove, cooking it through in the oven, then bringing it back onto the stove for a final basting (with butter, of course). A large, heavy skillet is all you need to pull this off.
Chicken Soup From Scratch
Chicken soup is one of the most painless and pleasing recipes a home cook can master. This soup has all the classic flavors (celery, carrot, parsley) but has been updated for today's cooks, who can't easily buy the stewing hen and packet of soup vegetables that old-fashioned recipes used to call for. A whole bird provides the right combination of fat, salt and flavor. Don't be tempted to use all white meat, as the flavor won't be as round. Because making soup involves the bones and deep tissues of the bird, it is particularly reassuring here to use the highest-quality poultry you can find. This method produces a fragrant, golden, savory soup you want to eat all winter long; it's a perfect backdrop for noodles, rice or matzo balls.
Summer Vegetable Gratin
Cooking some of the ingredients beforehand is the key to a rich-tasting, nonsoggy gratin of summer vegetables: It pulls out water and concentrates flavors. The recipe has three layers — aromatics, vegetables and topping — but you can omit the topping to make it just two. Be sure to use fresh bread, nothing hard and stale, in that topping. Fluffy bits, not sandy shards, make the best crust.
Salted Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies
When the chef Danielle Oron was growing up in the New Jersey suburbs, she knew that her Israeli family’s habits of dousing vanilla ice cream with tahini and spreading halvah on toast would be considered odd. Sesame has long been shunned in American desserts, but its addition to a confection can add a nutty, salty undertone, and sesame desserts are now popping up all over the place. These chocolate chip cookies, developed by Ms. Oron, are a great place to start for the home baker seeking more sesame. Rich, savory and sweet, they are one of the rare variations that are just as good as the original.
Kale-Romaine Caesar Salad
Caesar salad, done right, is a bowl full of contrasts: cool, watery leaves against dry, crunchy croutons; sharp lemon against rich cheese, and biting garlic against soothing egg. Most recipes focus on flavor; this one also unlocks the Caesar's secrets of temperature, texture, heat and umami. Kale and romaine make an ideal combination of greens, but all romaine or all kale is fine: just stay away from tender, wilting leaves like mesclun and Bibb lettuce. Using strong greens also means that the salad can be tossed up to two hours before serving, as long as it is kept cold. We use an easy microwave method to poach the egg, but the more traditional saucepan will work, too.