Recipes By Kim Severson
156 recipes found
Potato Mousseline
Here is a riff on the classic side dish that calls for running the potatoes through a ricer (if you don't have one, a splatter screen over a bowl will work just as well), the addition of brown butter and a sprinkling of grated nutmeg. The result is something just as comforting, but a bit more complex and flavorful. (And for everything you need to know to make perfect potatoes, visit our potato guide.)
Oven-Steamed Salmon
This simple way to roast salmon brings spectacular results with hardly any worry on the cook's part. The Mediterranean cookbook author Paula Wolfert learned it from the French chef Michel Bras, and it rises and falls on the thinness of the sheet pan. A pan of water delivers enough moisture to steam the fish briefly at a low temperature, producing a final product that is soft and deliciously juicy. It adapts easily to almost any salmon fillet. Emily Kaiser Thelin, who includes it in her biography of Ms. Wolfert, "Unforgettable," says a center-cut of wild-caught Alaska king works best and suggests pairing it with a salad or cracked green olive relish.
Roasted Grape and Butternut Squash Bruschetta
Rob Beasley, the chef at the Chaumette Vineyard and Winery in Ste. Genevieve, Mo., created these bruschetta to show off the flavors of fall. He uses the coeur de clos cheese made a short drive away at Baetje Farms. It’s a Camembert-style cheese from goat and sheep milk. It works well in this recipe, but a fresh chévre is perfect, too.
All-Purpose California Beef Rub
A good rub makes grilling or roasting easy. This one combines the best of the salt-pepper-garlic notes of Santa Maria-style barbecue with the depth of coffee and clove. Diners will be hard-pressed to place its complex flavor until you tell them the components. The rub is easy to double and keeps for a long time in a jar or a zipper-lock bag. It should stay on the meat for at least two hours, but overnight is best.
Orange and Radish Salad
The marriage of radish and orange punches way above its weight as a salad. This version is based on one James Beard collected. Alice Waters, the founder of Chez Panisse, has a recipe, too. So does Paula Wolfert, who dedicated her nine cookbooks to Mediterranean cuisine. Their inspiration came from countless Moroccans who have this salad in regular rotation, often with orange flower water. This recipe leaves it out, opting for a simpler but still refreshing salad that requires careful, precise preparation of the oranges and the radishes to make it shine. If you like, add a pinch of cinnamon to the dressing or sprinkle a bit on top.
Sambhar Masala
Raghavan Iyer, the author of "The Turmeric Trail" and teacher who was born in Mumbai and came to the United States as a young man, says there as many sambhar masalas as there are kitchens in south India. The spice mix is used to flavor sambhar, the ubiquitous thin stew of Southern India. If you can’t find the curry leaves, you can leave them out, but it’s worth it to search out a South Asian or international grocery or order some online. Use it in curries, stir-fries or simple dishes of roasted or grilled vegetables. It can be rubbed onto meat before grilling or stirred into mashed potatoes enriched with melted butter. The recipe can easily be doubled and keeps well. Do not refrigerate as it will cake.
Arctic Char Burgers
The Food Network personality Alton Brown is deeply in love with arctic char because it is sustainable, affordable and delicious in several applications. He punches up these fish burgers with horseradish and furikake, a Japanese seasoning mix that usually contains ground fish, sesame seeds, seaweed, sugar and MSG. He discovered it on the set of "Iron Chef America," which he hosted for Food Network. Of all the recipes in his book "EveryDayCook," it is his favorite.
Smoky Pork Burgers With Fennel and Red Cabbage Slaw
Jennifer Hess, a food blogger from Providence, R.I., was an early Food52 member. Her smoky pork burger with fennel and red cabbage slaw won the “Your Best Grilled Pork Recipe” contest.
Meatloaf With Moroccan Spices
This recipe is from "A Meatloaf in Every Oven," by Frank Bruni and Jennifer Steinhauer, who say it was the invention of a friend, Anne Kornblut. The plethora of spices and large amounts of garlic may seem overwhelming, but ground meat has a deep tolerance for seasoning and is usually improved by it. The fresh herbs are a foil for all the rich seasonings, and the vegetables give the loaf an especially lovely texture.
Lowcountry Pickled Coleslaw
Ben Moïse, a retired game warden in South Carolina, has been serving a version of this coleslaw at his Frogmore stew parties for years. The hot, boiled dressing softens the cabbage and pickles it slightly. The result is a salad that stays delicious even when it sits outside on a picnic table for a few hours. The amount of vegetables can vary, and a finely chopped jalapeño can be added for a little extra heat.
Key Lime Poundcake
Susan Levin Turner has taught many Southerners, both professional chefs and home cooks, how to bake a proper cake. She has made cakes for politicians and celebrities, and turned out five when the chef Edna Lewis turned 76. “Cakes bring people together for celebrations and funerals and everything in between,” she said. Ms. Turner, who owns Food Glorious Food in Tallahassee, Fla., developed this recipe to combine Key limes, a flavor associated with South Florida, with poundcake, a staple in the more rural, agricultural parts of North Florida. She bakes hers in an old-fashioned large square poundcake pan, but the recipe has been adapted here for a loaf pan, which is a little easier to find and work with. She likes to coat the inside of the greased cake pan with sugar, which helps the cake slide from the pan and offers a little more crispness to the crust. This recipe uses flour instead for tenderness, but the sugar method offers a homey Southern touch. Or use a combination of both.
Azo Family Chocolate Cake
The cake takes about 25 minutes to cook and even less time to put together. After the batter bakes in a very hot oven, the pan is cooled a bit, then wrapped in foil and placed in the refrigerator. The tactic results in a cake with a delightfully fudgy center.
Zappa Family Spaghetti Sauce
I have spent a lifetime trying to duplicate the red sauce and meatball recipe my mother, Anne Marie Zappa, cooked every week when I was growing up. I’ll never do it, but this is close. This is a forgiving recipe. Maybe you want to add a couple of chicken thighs, or mix in a few browned hot sausages. Just keep a good ration of pork to beef.
Pulled Turkey With Jus
This stripped-down, built-for-flavor recipe, adapted from “Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling” by Meathead Goldwyn, is for people who don’t brine, forgot to brine or didn’t leave enough time to salt a bird and leave it in the refrigerator for 24 hours. It keeps the white meat moist and boosts its flavor with a rich, simple jus of stock fortified with soy sauce and deglazed pan drippings. The idea comes from Southern barbecue pit masters who shred or chop the meat from a pork shoulder and wet it with vinegar, black pepper and maybe a little tomato. The turkey is roasted slowly to keep the meat fibers from seizing up, and the breast meat is shredded or sliced so thin it falls apart. The meat is then dunked in the jus and served in a dish deep enough to hold both meat and liquid. The thigh meat and legs can be served alongside on a separate platter. The next day, the jus-soaked meat and a little cup of extra jus make for a perfect turkey French dip.
Chocolate Sugar Cookies
These are almost brownie-like in flavor, and remain slightly softer than many traditional sugar cookies. The recipe was developed by Georganne Bell, a professional cookie-decorating teacher in Salt Lake City who doesn’t like traditional vanilla sugar cookies. Unlike many sugar cookies, these don’t need to chill, and can be rolled out immediately after they are mixed. Avoid the temptation to add more flour (unless the dough is really sticky), or to use too much flour while rolling and cutting them, or the cookies will be dry. They don’t spread in the oven, so you can bake them close together. They are sturdy enough to decorate wildly with colored royal icing, but also taste good with just buttercream or a simple glaze of powdered sugar and water flavored with a little lemon juice or vanilla.
Roasted Delicata Squash with Peanut, Sesame and Squash Seed Dukkah
Steven Satterfield, an Atlanta chef with a deep love for green peanut oil, developed this recipe for a coming book on goobers from Short Stack Editions. Green peanuts are nothing more than raw peanuts. They have a fresh, vegetal flavor, and retain their greenness when cold-pressed into oil. Mr. Satterfield's spin on the Egyptian condiment called dukkah centers on peanuts and benne seeds (the preferred term in the South for sesame seeds), two regulars in many Southern kitchens. The spice and nut mixture brings life to delicata squash, whose tender skin doesn’t need peeling. You can substitute olive oil for the green oil when roasting the squash, and the dukkah will keep in an airtight container in the pantry for a month. Pull it out to sprinkle over greens, meat, fish or grilled bread.
Purple Hull Peas and Mustard Greens in Smoky Potlikker
Southern field peas come in seemingly endless varieties, the most well known of which are black-eyed peas. For this dish, it’s worth seeking out their sister, the pink-eyed purple hull pea that April McGreger, who makes Farmer’s Daughter brand pickles and preserves Hillsborough, N.C., knew growing up. They are sold fresh in late spring through the early fall in the South, but can be found frozen. Black-eyed peas will do just fine, though. This is a bold and brothy soup with plenty of what Southerners call potlikker, flavored with ham hocks for traditionalists or smoked turkey parts for a lighter version. It is essential to serve this dish with sturdy cornbread to soak up the potlikker. Ms. McGreger likes thin and crispy cornbread.
Chicken and Pumpkin with Dumplings
Asha Gomez moved to the American South from Kerala, a region of southern India. This recipe, from her book "My Two Souths: Blending the Flavors of India into a Southern Kitchen," marries Southern-style dumplings made with rice flour and Indian flavors. The dish relies on stewing the chicken, a technique common to both cultures. Although smaller, dense pie pumpkins work here, they can be stringy and have less flavor than other forms of pumpkins and hard squash. Ms. Gomez likes calabaza squash, also known as West Indian pumpkin, which has a mottled skin that can range from dark green to light orange mottled with amber. The dusty blue-gray Jarrahdale pumpkin works well, too. In both cases, you will have a lot of pumpkin meat left over to cook, purée and freeze for baking or soup. The kabocha squash, or Japanese pumpkin, which has a dull, deep-green skin with some celadon or white stripes and averages about two to three pounds, is another option.
Braised Cube Steak
Through good times and bad, the cube steak has remained a wallflower among meat cuts. Old-fashioned and a little mysterious, it’s a steak without pretension, or maybe a hamburger with humble aspirations.
Seared Scallops With Hot Sauce Beurre Blanc
This dish mixes a lot of things I love, including butter and the taste of New Orleans's Crystal hot sauce. The scallops need to be dry, a term that refers to how they are processed. It's best to sear with a very hot, heavy nonstick pan, though you can sear a scallop in stainless or cast iron. Patience and a smoking hot pan are key. Really get a good sear on the scallop before you flip it. The salsa provides a way to use the feathery tops of a fennel bulb, but tarragon or other herbs can be substituted.
Ale-Braised Collards With Ham
This recipe came to The Times from Hayden Hall, the chef and an owner of Oxbow Restaurant in Clarksdale, Miss. Red pepper flakes and apple cider vinegar give the greens a sharp edge, and ham hock gives them even more succulence.
Rice Cakes
Crispy rice has a revered place in many cultures. These rice cakes, which work well as a side dish to a piece of grilled meat or fish, offer the delicious crunch of Korean nurunji or Middle eastern hkaka, with some of the herbed cheesy goodness of Italian arancini. The basic recipe can be used to accommodate vegetables other than zucchini and herbs other than mint, or can be made without either for a more simple backdrop for a fried egg or a simple snack for a child.
Dark Molasses Gingerbread With Whipped Cream
This gingerbread, from the chefs Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock, is just wonderful: a little spicy, a little sweet, very simple to make, and absolutely delicious. Whipped cream is an easy topping, although dulce de leche or another warm, caramel-y sauce takes it to a special place. But it’s also kind of nice plain, wrapped in waxed paper and tucked inside someone’s lunch.
