Recipes By Kim Severson
156 recipes found
Southern Cornbread Dressing
Cornbread dressing is an intensely personal thing. In the American South, at least, everybody’s grandmother had a recipe, and everyone knows just how it should be made. This is a base model with a few variations. It’s nice to let it chill overnight before baking so the flavors meld. But you don’t have to. The key is really good stock, though plenty of cooks over the years have made it with whatever was on hand — even water in a pinch. This is food for sustenance. But it pays to use the best ingredients possible. Be sure to leave enough time — the cornbread needs to sit out overnight to harden slightly before you make the dressing.
Alice Waters’s Seasonal Minestrone
Alice Waters often recommends that cooks master a good minestrone. It’s communal and seasonal, two pillars on which she has built her cooking career. This summer recipe came from the cookbook that is her top seller: "The Art of Simple Food." It uses the best of the season’s green beans, tomatoes and squash. In the spring, fresh peas, asparagus and spinach would make a good vegetable trio, with some fennel standing in for the carrot in the sofrito. In the fall, cubes of butternut squash, a small can of tomatoes and a bunch of kale would star, with rosemary and a little chopped sage instead of thyme for seasoning. Winter might bring a soup built from turnips, potatoes and cabbage. If the turnips have greens, add them, too. Start with a large pot that has a heavy bottom. Always cook the vegetables through, about 10 minutes. They should look good enough to eat on their own. Add the beans about 10 minutes before serving. A cup or two of cooked pasta can be stirred in at the last minute. Don’t overcook the pasta. The olive oil and cheese garnish should be added once the soup is in the bowls. Ms. Waters likes to pass those at the table, once everyone is served. Pesto makes a lovely garnish, too, and gives a garlicky, herbal punch to the soup.
Roman-Style Spring Lamb With Fresh Sugar Snap Pea Salad
The Romans make a classic dish in the spring with very young milk-fed lamb. Such meat is hard to find in American supermarkets, but the technique, which involves a short braise in vinegar and water with a boost of anchovy at the end, works fine with chunks of lamb cut from a leg or roast of any young lamb. This recipe is built on the precise technique for abbacchio alla cacciatora that Marcella Hazan offered in "The Classic Italian Cookbook," with some freshening up. The braised chunks of meat are topped with a crunchy sugar snap pea salad that carries the heat of Calabria peppers, a recipe from Whitney Otawka, who grew up in California and now cooks in Georgia. (The salad is a great stand-alone recipe, too, and one that would be terrific alongside a ham, if yours is an Easter ham family.)
Red Curry Paste
Raghavan Iyer created this version of Thai red curry paste for his 2023 book, “On the Curry Trail: Chasing the Flavor That Seduced The World” (Workman Publishing). Curry pastes make up the soul of Thailand’s regional curries. In his recipe for Pan-Fried Tofu With Red Curry Paste, Mr. Iyer uses coconut milk to mellow the heat. The red curry is part of a trilogy in his cookbook, which includes green curry paste (with cilantro leaves and fresh green Thai chiles) and yellow curry paste (which relies on fresh ginger and turmeric and yellow aji amarillo chiles). Red, green and yellow curry pastes are nice to have on hand to give complexity and depth to meat, vegetable and grain dishes.
Neck Bones (Pork Neck and Noodles)
This simple dish features pork neck bones simmered in seasoned water that slowly cooks into a broth. Elbow-shaped pasta is then added into the water to absorb all the meaty flavors. Erika Council, a software engineer who is also a professional cook and a food writer, shared the recipe, which she learned from her maternal grandmother, Geraldine Gavin Dortch. It shows up on the family Thanksgiving table as a subtle reminder of the food their enslaved ancestors cooked from the parts of the pig they had access to. It's a surprisingly rich, comforting and delicious dish coaxed from only a few ingredients.
Cracked Green Olive, Walnut and Pomegranate Relish
This classic recipe from Paula Wolfert, who picked it up from her friend, the Turkish food journalist Ayfer Unsal, is a versatile relish that can be spooned alongside pork skewers, simply cooked fish or sliced steak. Each ingredient is important to the final relish. Leave one out and it will seem out of balance. A note: Rinse the olives with cool water before you use them, then taste one. If they seem too salty, soak them in lukewarm water for 30 minutes. Drain and rinse again.
Pork Roast With Roasted Jalapeño Gravy
Eddie Hernandez, who runs Taqueria del Sol, a string of easygoing Mexican restaurants in Georgia and Tennessee, considers himself a born-again Southern boy whose food reflects a mash-up of the two cultures. He grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Monterrey, Mexico, where a pork roast like this would have never made it onto the table. But he came to love the roast’s role in a traditional Southern Sunday supper, and decided to give it his own Mexican twist. It has become one of the most popular specials at his restaurants. The granulated garlic and onion are essential to the flavor. The roast cooks fast in a hot oven that crisps the fat. The residual oven heat roasts the jalapeños while the meat rests. Once you make the roux, the rich gravy for the dish comes together quickly.
Sugar Snap Pea Salad With Calabrian Pepper and Fennel
Whitney Otawka, whom you may remember from "Top Chef" or Hugh Acheson’s Five & Ten restaurant in Athens, Ga., cooks at the Greyfield Inn. It’s the only place to stay on Cumberland Island, the largest barrier island off Georgia’s coast. The farmers who live there grow sugar snap peas, which she welcomes as one of the early tastes of spring. She is also a fan of Calabrian peppers packed in oil, which she started eating at Antico Pizza in Atlanta. She uses them to make a dressing base that enlivens the peas. The fennel, which needs to be sliced very finely, adds crunch and depth. Buy baby fennel, if you can find it. This is a great salad on its own, or use it as a kind of relish on grilled meat or braised lamb. There will be extra chile dressing, which is a fine condiment for grilled chicken. It will also add character to a pasta dish or even a slice of takeout pizza.
Stuffed Baby Pumpkins
Sarah Frey, who sells more pumpkins than anyone else in America, often entertains retailers and produce executives at her farmhouse in southern Illinois. She likes to serve white baby pumpkins stuffed with spinach and cheese. Along with their orange counterparts, mini-pumpkins are often considered more decorative than culinary. But they make a dramatic side dish that can be stuffed with any manner of fillings that complement the layer of soft, cooked pumpkin that clings to the skin. This recipe uses Gruyère and kale, with pine nuts for texture and red pepper flakes for heat. The hardest part is carving off the pumpkin tops and cleaning out the tiny seeds. Bake for an hour, then test; it is hard to predict how much time each pumpkin takes to become tender when pierced with a fork.
Lamb Chops Scottadito With Crispy Kale
The word scottadito means burned fingers in Italian; these lamb chops are best eaten with one's fingers soon after they come off the grill. The recipe comes from Rachael Ray, who serves these at her homes in upstate New York and Manhattan. The lamb chops are best if they marinate for several hours, but turn out just fine with an hour or two under the anchovy and garlic paste. Ms. Ray's method for preparing kale produces crispy leaves; key elements are the lightest spray of oil, and baking racks to get them really crisp. They need to be made in batches, but a hot oven makes the job quick, and they can also be done a little bit ahead of time and served at room temperature. Don’t skip grilling the lemon: the slightly charred, acidic flavor adds an essential layer.
Goose Barbacoa
The beefy nature of goose legs makes them a good choice for this rich, slightly spicy braise, but duck legs work fine, too. The timing here is very forgiving. This recipe cooks on a stovetop, but you could also braise the meat in a slow cooker or an oven set to about 325 degrees. The key is to simmer the legs until the meat pulls easily from the bone. The luscious secret comes at the end, when the warm meat is tossed in melted fat. The end result is highly adaptable: Wrap it in a warm tortilla, serve it alongside rice and beans with some good salsa, or spoon it atop a bed of sturdy greens and eat it as a salad.
Mall-Style Vegetable Stir-Fry
The vegan chef Jenné Claiborne grew up in suburban Atlanta, where she developed a love for the teriyaki chicken stir-fry at Panda Express. After she became vegan, she recreated the flavors of her teen-age craving, using dates and soy sauce to produce the flavor of teriyaki sauce. If you don’t have chickpeas on hand to add heft to the vegetables, replace them with tempeh, tofu, edamame, jackfruit or mushrooms. Also, feel free to swap out the broccoli in favor of another green vegetable like kale, cabbage or bok choy. To make a less salty, slightly less mall-like version, use low-sodium soy sauce or 1/4 cup soy sauce and 1/4 water or broth. You can also use low-sodium canned chickpeas (or soak and cook your own and salt to taste).
Breakfast Carbonara
Alton Brown developed this recipe for his book "EveryDayCook" because it hits all of the best notes of breakfast in a way that is much more appealing than just eggs, sausage and toast. If you eat pasta early in the day, he reasons, that leaves plenty of time to work it off. He’s a fan of cooking in cast iron, and calls for it here. But any good 12-inch sauté pan will do.
Regina’s Butter Biscuits
People travel long distances to eat Regina Charboneau’s biscuits. She built a blues club in San Francisco, called Biscuits and Blues, on their reputation. And in her hometown, Natchez, Miss., her biscuits are considered the best. She mixes traditional French culinary training with tricks passed on through generations of Southern bakers to create a layered, rich biscuit that has to be frozen to be at its flaky best. The dough will seem rough and the fat too chunky at first, but persevere. Using a tea towel as a base to move and manage the dough until it rolls out smoothly is a brilliant technique that makes the whole process easier and neater.
Ruth Reichl’s Giant Chocolate Cake
In her new book, "My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life," Ruth Reichl calls this the cake that cures everything. The recipe produces a large stacked rectangular layer cake with whipped cream cheese in the frosting to add lightness and stability. The cake is very tender, based on a technique she first started using when she was a cook at the Swallow, a restaurant collective in Berkeley, Calif.
Doris’s Salty Hot Fudge
This recipe came to The Times from Doris Muramatsu, a musician with the band Girlyman. It takes about 15 minutes to make and is particularly terrific over ice cream with some spicy pecans chopped on top. It is also an easily made token of true friendship and cheer: pour some into small jars and give it to friends.
Sam Beall's Carrot Soufflé
This is more of a casserole than a traditional soufflé. It comes from Sam Beall, the proprietor of Blackberry Farm in Tennessee, who died at age 39 in a ski accident. The dish makes its seasonal debut on the Beall family table at Thanksgiving, but paired with a salad, it becomes lunch or a light dinner any time of year. Use the sweetest carrot you can find, and grate the onions on the same grater you use for the cheese to save a little prep and clean-up time. Many of the steps are easy enough for children, making it a great dish for teaching cooking skills. It will become part of your winter rotation, and travels well.
Southern-Fried Sweet Onion Rings
Thin enough to flash-fry but thick enough to let the sweet onion flavor shine through, these onion rings work well as a side dish but also are great as a stand-alone snack. Less is more when dipping the rings in the buttermilk mixture and then the flour mixture. Be delicate in the coating process, and make sure to let as much liquid and then as much flour fall off as possible. Less breading means less grease absorption and a crisper finished product. The flour should be as fine as possible, so reserve half of the flour mixture. When the first batch starts to get wet and gummy, replace it with the remaining half. The oil temperature matters, too. Heat the oil to at least 360 degrees, and fry the rings in batches. They cook so quickly it is easy to get through the frying in 10 minutes. Keep them warm in a 200 degree oven until all the frying is done.
Coconut Cream Pie
Coconut cream pie can assume all kinds of variations, with coconut extracts or coconut cream added to enhance the flavor. My mother’s version, which I grew up eating, is a more subtle, custardy version, with a balance of coconut and vanilla. It uses an old-fashioned technique called scalding, popular in the days before milk was pasteurized. Here it is used to change the texture of the milk and enhance its flavor. You can use the same sweetened, untoasted coconut to top the pie that you use in the filling, but the unsweetened, toasted coconut lends some nutty depth.
Award-Winning Maple Blueberry Pie
Paul Arguin, an epidemiologist, relaxes by making pie. This one, with its generous amount of fruit and sweetness from maple syrup, won the blueberry-division prize in the 2017 National Pie Championships. A few tricks raise it above other blueberry pies. One is the crust, which has a touch of cinnamon and maple sugar, and uses cider vinegar and just a little shortening for structure. Dr. Arguin cooks the filling in a sous-vide machine, which keeps the berries whole but tender. For the top crust, he borrows an idea from cake makers who work with fondant. Four planks of dough are pressed into an inexpensive silicone mat molded to look like wood grain, then peeled off and set on top of the pie. Home cooks without fancy equipment, take heart. The berries can be cooked slowly on the stove, and four strips of plain dough for the top crust work just as well.
Sweet Spiced Pecans
The spicing level is fairly forgiving on these pecans, which make a wonderful gift for the holidays or party snack. You can add more cayenne for heat or a little more sugar if you want them sweeter. The key points, though, are making sure they toast well but don't burn and using really good pecans, like Elliots from Georgia, which are stubbier and sweeter than the bigger, skinnier pecans that come from Texas and other Southwestern states (though they are delicious, too.) Ordering bulk pecans online helps keep the cost down.
Summer Squash Fritters With Garlic Dipping Sauce
David Venable, the most popular host on QVC, has a reputation for comfort food in its most cheesy, porky forms. But he is also a son of the South, and loves his summer vegetables. This recipe shows off his appreciation of both and is a delicious way to use up summer squash. It might seem daunting to peel 20 cloves of garlic, but you can make quick work of it by smashing the unpeeled cloves lightly with the side of a knife. The papery part will be easy to remove, and the cloves will still roast up mellow and soft. The resulting sauce is also excellent on sandwiches.
Shrimp-Stuffed Mirlitons
The mirliton is a pale green squash with an end puckered up like a toothless granny. They are native to Louisiana, but if you grew up eating from certain Latin American culinary canons, you might know them as chayote. In New Orleans, mirliton stuffed with shrimp is a dish both common and fancy. The chef David Guas, who grew up in Louisiana and now runs the Bayou Bakery in Washington, D.C., ate this version at his Granny Lilly’s holiday table in Amite, La. His recipe is a version of her original, but with a touch of heat from cayenne pepper as influenced by Justin Wilson, a relative who had a long-running cooking show on New Orleans public television that he punctuated with the tagline “I guaranteeeeee!” Use the freshest shrimp you can find. Something from the Gulf of Mexico would lend authenticity. And be careful scooping the flesh from the mirlitons. The skin is thin and can break easily.
Sweet Potatoes With Cranberry Chutney
This is an easy and surprisingly delicious way to get a dramatic-looking sweet-potato dish on the table with little fuss. The heat of the jalapeños in the chutney, mixed with aromatic vegetables and the sweetness of the dried fruit, gives the cranberries depth. A dollop of sour cream goes on the halved sweet potato, followed by a generous spoonful of chutney. Make the chutney up to two weeks ahead and keep it in the refrigerator. It also freezes well. Assembly on Thanksgiving is an easy last-minute task.