Recipes By Julia Moskin
392 recipes found
Hashed Brussels Sprouts With Lemon
A shower of lemon zest and black mustard seeds on a fast sauté of hashed brussels sprouts makes a traditional side dish with unexpected, bright flavors. Slice the sprouts a day or so before (a food processor makes it easy) and refrigerate until it's time to prepare them.
Chocolate Cheesecake With Graham Cracker Crunch
It’s worth tasting a few brands of graham crackers to find one you particularly like — preferably one with whole-wheat flour and a good dash of salt and honey or molasses. Try a health-food store or Whole Foods for organic and low-sugar brands. (Graham flour was devised in the 19th century as a healthful alternative to white flour.) Fresh, fluffy cream cheese with a minimum of fillers and stabilizers is also worth seeking out for this recipe. This recipe works fine with supermarket cream cheese and graham cracker crumbs (or dark chocolate cookie crumbs) in the crust, but the filling must be made with top-quality chocolate to get the full effect: milky cream cheese, tangy sour cream and the slight bitterness of chocolate playing against the sweet crunch of the crust. That’s how it’s been made since 1984 at the Saltry restaurant in Halibut Cove, off the southern Alaska coast. All of the ingredients (as well as the equipment, furniture, staff and customers) arrive by boat — except for the magnificent salmon, oysters, halibut, cod and mussels that are caught or harvested nearby.
Vegan Devil’s Food Cupcakes
“Punk taught me to question everything,” the vegan chef Isa Chandra Moskowitz told Julia Moskin in 2007. “Of course, in my case that means questioning how to make a Hostess cupcake without eggs, butter or cream.” Ms. Moskowitz's vegan cupcake calls for cider vinegar instead of buttermilk. Nonhydrogenated margarine and shortening and soy milk are used in place of eggs and butter.
Shrimp and Avocado Salad With Citrus Vinaigrette (Camarones a la Vinagreta)
Versions of seafood “coctel” are found around the Caribbean, usually with ketchup as a base for the sauce. In this recipe adapted from Von Diaz's “Coconuts and Collards” cookbook, the tomato and onion are part of the salad, and the dressing is based on citrus and olive oil, plus a bit of mustard to make it creamy. It’s a refreshing and satisfying dish for hot weather, perfect with a cold beer at the end of a long summer day. Diced avocado makes the dish more filling, but it is optional.
Zucchini Carpaccio
Raw zucchini has a fresh, green flavor that is lost when the vegetable is cooked. Excellent olive oil and fresh lemon juice make the perfect dressing to bathe the slices in; the acid softens and flavors the zucchini. After the nuts and/or herbs, the garnishes are all optional. Try them in any combination, or play around with others: cracked black pepper, crushed pink peppercorns or crumbled dried chiles.
Fiery Sweet Potatoes
Coconut milk and Thai red curry paste turn up the heat, but brown sugar and butter are part of the mix too in this side dish — an amazing combination of flavors. It would be a fine addition to any table from Thanksgiving through May.
Pan-Roasted Eggplant With Peanut-Chile Sauce
The chef Cal Peternell, who ran the Chez Panisse kitchen for many years, has a knack for inventing vegetable dishes that are infused with complex flavors. In this recipe, he weighs the eggplant slices down while they roast (like chicken under a brick), which presses out extra liquid and forms a magnificent crust. Finished with a rich, spicy ginger-peanut sauce and sparked with cool, crunchy fresh herbs, it's equally satisfying room temperature as a salad or warm as a vegetarian entrée, served with rice.
Crunchy Eggplant Parmesan
In most eggplant Parmesan recipes, crusty slices of fried eggplant go into a casserole with sauce and cheese -- where they quickly turn to sludge. This recipe holds on to the crunch by transforming each whole eggplant into a crisp cutlet. You can make one eggplant per person to serve this as an appetizer, or add a bed of pasta to make it more substantial. There's no Parmesan cheese in this recipe, but that's not a mistake: in Italian the phrase "alla Parmigiana" refers to a style of dish. It doesn't refer to Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
Spiced Seared Eggplant With Pearl Couscous
This is a great weeknight one-dish dinner, and vegetarian (or vegan if you like) to boot. It is from the cook Adeena Sussman, who divides her time between New York and Tel Aviv, where pearl (or Israeli) couscous is called “p’titim,” meaning flakes.
Braised Short Ribs With Peanuts and Anchovies
This is an adaptation of the tangy, rich Filipino meat stew kare-kare, which itself is adapted from the Indian-influenced massaman curries of Southeast Asia. The Indian American chef Floyd Cardoz brought it full circle when he recreated it for American home cooks in his 2016 book “Floyd Cardoz: Flavorwalla” (Artisan). It’s an excellent illustration of how a great stew can fuse flavors that might seem incompatible, like peanuts, cabbage and anchovies.
Longevity Noodles With Chicken, Ginger and Mushrooms
During Chinese New Year, long noodles are eaten in all corners of China. “Longevity noodles,” also presented at birthday celebrations, are never cut or broken by the cook, and if they can be eaten without biting through the strands, it’s considered even more auspicious. Longevity noodles are usually stir fried, presenting challenges to the home cook. Noodles should be stir-fried alone and lightly oiled so that they don’t clump together in the wok, and all ingredients must be completely dry so they sear properly.
Japanese Milk Bread
When panko, Japanese bread crumbs, first appeared here, American cooks leaped to embrace their spiky crunch. (The first article about it in the New York Times appeared in 1998.) But how could breadcrumbs arrive from Japan, a land without bread? The answer is here, in the lofty, feathery white bread that is a staple at bakeries in Asia — and in Asian bakery chains like Fay Da and Paris Baguette. (Panko is often made from the heels of the loaf, called the “ears” in Japanese.) Milk bread was developed in Japan in the 20th century, using tangzhong, a warm flour-and-water paste traditionally used in China to make buns with a soft, springy texture and tiny air bubbles. Surprisingly, milk bread with an incomparable crumb and buttery taste is a snap to make at home, using supermarket ingredients. Once the tanzhong is cooked and cooled — a matter of 10 minutes at the stove — you have an easy and immensely rewarding dough. It can be shaped into coils or round rolls, like pull-aparts, instead of loaves, or you can paint it with cinnamon sugar or dulce de leche or strawberry jam when you roll it out.
Quinoa With Thai Flavors
This recipe for quinoa seasoned with mango, lime juice and red onion, was brought to us from Susie Fishbein by way of Julia Moskin. Ms. Fishbein is the author of the popular Kosher by Design cookbooks, which have sold more than 300,000 copies. Quinoa is popular among kosher cooks because although it tastes and chews like grains, which are forbidden during Passover, many religious and botanical authorities consider it a berry.
Nordic Whole-Grain Rye Bread
Scandinavian rye breads look nothing like the slices that clamp together the sandwiches at your neighborhood deli in New York. Made from whole grains and naturally risen, they are chewy, fragrant and deliciously dark. With butter and cheese, or as the base for avocado toast, they are amazingly satisfying. The taste and texture are addictive, and many enthusiasts also appreciate that rye bread contains more fiber and less gluten than wheat. This recipe, with a small amount of yeast, is quicker than the truly ancient version, which takes at least three days. Don't worry if the dough seems runny and sticky: That is typical of rye bread, which needs lots of water to soften the grain.
New York Deli-Style Rye Bread
American "deli rye" is descended from traditional breads in Middle and Eastern Europe, where rye and wheat grow together and "bread spice" (a combination of caraway, coriander, anise and fennel seeds) is common. This kind of rye bread spread across the United States in the 20th century along with Jewish delicatessens, where it served as the perfect foil for rich fillings like pastrami and chopped liver -- not to mention tuna melts. The sour tang and chewy texture of the original breads have largely been lost over time, because rye bread today is made mostly from wheat flour and just a scant amount of rye. This recipe restores some of the original charm, but is still quick and easy for home baking.
Yvonne Maffei’s Roast Chicken With Couscous, Dates and Buttered Almonds
Deglet Noors dates shine when they are cooked in chutneys, desserts or North African dishes like this whole roast chicken. The chicken is cooked with fluffy couscous that absorbs the sweetness of dates and the butteriness of toasted almonds. Supermarket Deglet Noors are often dark brown and hard, because they have been kept well past their natural point of ripeness; seek out soft, light-colored ones for the best flavor.
Texas-Style Chili
Calling a dish "Texas Chili,” especially if you’re not a native of that state, is clearly asking for trouble. But this recipe, refined over years of potlucks and Super Bowl parties, is too good to keep under wraps. Its depth of flavor, from different chile types, makes this recipe stand out. It also has whole spices, unsweetened chocolate and dark beer that meld seamlessly into a brick-red sauce that naps the succulent meat. The meat can be cut into large chunks, or, more traditionally, thin slices, especially if you are using a tougher cut than chuck. Sirloin also makes good chili. If you have masa harina, the corn flour used to make tortillas, that will make the gravy even thicker, but it is not necessary. Like many vigorously spiced dishes, this one tastes even better a day or two after it is made and will hold its flavor well for at least a week.
How to Make a Gingerbread House
A perfect project for the holidays, a gingerbread house can be easier than you think. Julia Moskin will show you how.
How to Make Salad
Salad may be easy, but that doesn't mean it doesn't require any effort. Julia Moskin shows you how to make it the brightest part of a meal.
Cacio e Pepe Cheese Puffs
Ina Garten’s 12th cookbook, “Modern Comfort Food,” was published in October 2020. As always, she seemed to have her finger on the culinary zeitgeist: Comfort was the order of the day. These puffs, which she adapted from the Brooklyn chef Missy Robbins, combine the richness of classic gougères with the bite of black pepper and Parmesan.
How to Cook Eggs
There’s a reason “put an egg on it” is a culinary mantra. Julia Moskin talks you through basic cooking methods.
Hummus from ‘Jerusalem’
There’s a lot of unattended prep time in this recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi for hummus, which was featured in The Times in 2013. The unusual yet helpful addition of baking soda speeds the process. Cooking the chickpeas with baking soda softens them, allowing for less time on the stove as well as a smoother, creamier finished product. (If you find that your hummus is too stiff, loosen it with a little water.) A plate of this hummus served with fresh pita, chopped olives and pine nuts makes for a perfect lunch.
How to Cook Potatoes
Julia Moskin shows you how to master the potato in all forms.
Buttermilk-Brown Sugar Waffles
This recipe first appeared in The Times in a 2006 article Julia Moskin wrote about wedding registries and what items couples should (and shouldn't) include on theirs. A cookware set? No. Better to buy pieces individually according to a couple's needs. A waffle iron? Why yes, if there's any chance of children. These waffles are light, crisp and easy to throw together, like traditional waffles, but the buttermilk lends tang and the brown sugar an earthy sweetness. The secret ingredient here is wheat germ. It provides a lovely toothsome texture and crunch.