Recipes By Ligaya Mishan
60 recipes found
Melon Salad With Nectarines, Tomatoes and Basil
The principle behind this summer salad is “take what is great from what is right around you and do very little to it,” Hannah Shizgal-Paris, the chef of Roman’s, in Brooklyn, says. The recipe showcases cantaloupe and nectarines, but any firm-fleshed melon and vivid stone fruit will do. Everything depends on the quality of the produce at hand and the stage it’s in: If the melon is crunchy, you cut it thin; if starting to soften, cut it thick. Contrast comes from capers, pecorino, chile (less for heat than punctuation), and a pucker of lemon to finish. Be sure to season each ingredient separately and build the salad in layers, rather than dumping everything in all at once. Taste as you go, and keep it all nice and cool. It’s a dish only for this sun-drunk time. Eat it while you can.
Tinolang Manok (Chicken Tinola)
You could call tinola a chicken soup, but that is just a literal description for a dish that, in the Philippines, is more like a form of medicine. The writer Jill Damatac remembers her lola (grandmother) putting a whole chicken in the pot; in her own version, she bronzes thighs and drumsticks then submerges them in chicken stock and sets to a simmer. The broth’s depth comes from ginger, peppery malunggay (moringa) leaves and patis (fish sauce), standing in for salt. Chayote, kin to squash but as bracing as an apple, yields a clean, juicy bite. Be patient: The soup’s subtle flavor “does not bloom, soft and gentle on the tongue, until the second mouthful,” Ms. Damatac writes in her memoir, “Dirty Kitchen” (Atria, 2025). As a luxurious topping, she buys extra chicken skin from the butcher, crisps it and adds it to the soup at the last moment, for a satisfying shatter.
Chawanmushi
This creamy yet delicate half-custard, half-flan is an elegant start to a meal. Zaiyu Hasegawa, the chef of Den in Tokyo, beats the eggs — just half an egg per person — with dashi, a stock of kombu (kelp) and katsuobushi (bonito flakes) that brings a mellow brine and a tinge of smoke. The eggs and dashi, now one, are run through a sieve for smoothness, and seasoned with usukuchi, a lighter-bodied and slightly saltier soy sauce with a tart finish. Pour the mixture into teacups or ramekins and let it steam on the stovetop. While some recipes call for a higher ratio of liquid to egg, here the egg, the richest ingredient, comes to the fore. As a grace note, Mr. Hasegawa suggests a purée of celery root melted down with butter, earthy-sweet. Spoon it on top once the custard has set. With the first bite, the faint chewiness of the celery root gives way to silk and surrender.
Seco de Pollo (Ecuadorian-Style Chicken Stew)
This lush, rich Ecuadorian stew belies its name, “seco,” which in Spanish means “dry.” In this recipe from the cookbook “My (Half) Latinx Kitchen: Half Recipes, Half Stories, All Latin American,” Kiera Wright-Ruiz boosts the flavor by first browning the chicken in a pot to a golden veneer, then gently sizzling a pulverized sofrito of onion, garlic and bell pepper in its rendered fat, scraping up the lovely dark bits. Traditionally, the chicken was simmered in chicha, a fermented alcoholic beverage often made with corn, yuca or quinoa, but a simple lager will do here, bringing a mellow, malty depth. The beer’s trace bitterness is offset by tomatoes and naranjilla, also known as lulo, a small indigenous fruit that’s lime-sour and oozily tart like a pineapple. (You may substitute freshly squeezed orange juice.) Submerged in broken-down tomatoes, naranjilla and beer, the chicken lounges, loosens, relents. At the very end, there’s a splash of vinegar to snap everything into focus, and cilantro by the fistful, clean and bright.
Porcini Ragù
As a child living in Tuscany, Ixta Belfrage fell for a pasta rich with dried porcini mushrooms, served at the lone restaurant in the tiny mountain village of Acone. In her cookbook, “Mezcla” (Ten Speed Press, 2022), she pays homage to the power of porcini mushrooms, which are typically gathered from the wild and taste of it, luscious and nutty. They offer a shortcut to glory in this ragù that almost defies the name, because it doesn’t demand hours on the stove and attains a velvety intensity in practically no time at all. Leave the porcini to soak and swell back to life; chop; gently fry with tomato paste, garlic, chile and parsley; rain down black pepper; melt in some Parmesan; swirl with pasta water and porcini broth and let it bubble. A dab of cream, then a slicking and coating of the pasta, and it’s on the table.
Avocado, Edamame and Yuzu Dip With Furikake
This voluptuous dip “couldn’t be simpler,” wrote Ravinder Bhogal, the chef of Jikoni in London, in her cookbook “Comfort and Joy” (Bloomsbury, 2023). Tumble avocado in a food processor with ginger, for a subtle sweetness and restorative sting; soy sauce, standing in for salt but rounder and deeper; toasted sesame oil, earthy and plush, making everything it touches more intensely itself; and edamame, for body (and protein). Then stir in yuzu, a citrus that’s sweeter and gentler than lemon, lending a sherbety tang, and light where avocado is luscious. (If you don’t have any on hand, try squeezing together lemon and clementine.) A dose of sambal brings a throb of heat, if you like, while a dusting of furikake adds crunch. Ms. Bhogal serves the dip on toast at her restaurant, but you can dispense with the formality of framing it as a meal and eat it straight, dunking the likes of carrots, radishes, tortilla chips and Thai prawn crackers.
Yamitsuki (Addictive Cabbage)
In Japanese, “yamitsuki” means addictive — a precise description of this seemingly humble side dish of cabbage, gently torn and simply anointed with sesame oil and seeds, garlic, black pepper and a fingerprint’s worth of salt. So few ingredients, so little time required, and you can’t stop eating it. Often served at izakayas, the Japanese equivalent of pubs, the cabbage is especially good for refreshing the palate and easing the stomach between bites of richer, fattier foods. Aiko Cascio, an instructor for the New York-based League of Kitchens cooking school, prefers tearing the leaves by hand rather than using a knife because the rougher edges absorb more of the sesame oil. This recipe, from “The League of Kitchens Cookbook” (Harvest, 2024) by Lisa Kyung Gross, Rachel Wharton and the women of the League of Kitchens cooking school, calls for flathead cabbage, also known as Taiwanese cabbage, which is soft and tender, with space between the ribs. If you can find only green, Ms. Cascio advises cutting it into smaller pieces and letting it rest a little longer in salt, for greater pliancy.
Ipo Pain Perdu (Coconut-Bread French Toast)
Pain perdu, which Americans know as French toast, traditionally calls for crusty French bread. Heimata Hall, who runs food tours on his native Mo‘orea in French Polynesia, uses ipo, a Tahitian bread rich with grated coconut and coconut milk. The dough should be as sticky as possible — so sticky, you think it must surely need more flour or liquid, but no. Some recipes call for baking or boiling, but Mr. Hall prefers steaming because it holds in moisture and gives the bread a smooth, clean finish. For pain perdu, he cuts the ipo into thick slabs and dunks them in coconut milk, just enough so they’re coated but not sopping, then in egg. The pan gets a brushing of butter (not too much), to crisp the outside of the bread and caramelize the coconut. The finish: fresh mint, nuts, whatever fruit is in season, and, for extra luxury, a spoonful of coconut cream complete the dish.
Mashed ‘Ulu With Passion Fruit Chutney
‘Ulu, breadfruit in Hawaiian, is hefty as a melon, starchy and vitamin-rich. It has been touted as the answer to world hunger — but it is also simply delicious and wonderfully easy to work with in the kitchen. In this warm, vital dish from the chef Robynne Maii of Fête in Honolulu, ‘ulu is steamed and mashed until smoother, fluffier and more buttery than even the best mashed potatoes. Taking inspiration from South India, where breadfruit is also a staple, Ms. Maii crushes ‘ulu with a spiced oil of cumin, mustard seeds and turmeric. Then she brings a local touch: lilikoi (passion fruit) in a tart, musky chutney. A heap of cilantro and mint, for brightness, and fried shallots finish it off. If you’re not so lucky as to live in the islands, you may find breadfruit in Caribbean or Southeast Asian groceries, or order it frozen from the Hawai‘i ‘Ulu Cooperative.
Potato Pete’s Potato Scones
These scones are surprisingly decadent for a recipe devised in wartime Britain as a way to stretch rations of flour and butter. As adapted by the historian Eleanor Barnett from a 1940s pamphlet produced and published by the Ministry of Food, it uses up leftover mashed potatoes and lets you get by with about half the amounts of flour and butter that a typical scone recipe might require. There’s less of a rise, since potatoes lack gluten and thus can’t create the long, elastic strands of protein that trap air and bring buoyancy. But the extra starch gives the scones softness and a delightfully tender crumb. Out of a limited batch of ingredients, you 12 scones, enough to create 6 scone sandwiches with your choice of filling: a sweet slather of cocoa powder, sugar, butter and a dash of milk, evoking cake frosting, or a quick savory slaw of shredded cabbage and carrots, livened up by onion chutney.
Honey Salabat Tea Cake
In the Philippines, ginger is both spice and medicine, often administered as salabat, a simple tea of fresh ginger root. Here, tea is transformed into tea cake. Arlyn Osborne, in a recipe from “Sugarcane: Sweet Recipes From My Half-Filipino Kitchen,” begins by brewing a much stronger tea than you would ever drink. The goal is to distill enough ginger to perfume and possess the cake’s every crumb. When straining the tea, press forcefully and patiently, to extract as much of the ginger’s life force as you can. (If you don’t get half a cup’s worth, add water.) More ginger follows, in powdered form, whisked into flour, and crystallized, to stud the top of the cake, after the glaze has run down the sides. Other ingredients play important roles — lemon with its streak of sun, honey mellow and deep, sour cream delivering reliable richness — but the soul of the cake is ginger.
Lazi Ji (Chongqing Chicken With Chiles)
Lazi ji, a specialty of the sweltering city of Chongqing in southwestern China, might appear at first glance to be all chiles, spilling rim to rim in reckless abundance. But you’re not meant to eat them. They’re fried briefly, just long enough to give off their fragrance and lend a little sting to the cooking oil. Part of the fun of the dish is hunting for the small, crispy nubs of chicken, which in Chongqing are served with the bones left in, for happy grappling. (If you prefer to use boneless chicken thighs, cut them into pieces no bigger than popcorn.) You’ll want your ingredients premeasured at the start, since everything comes together quickly at the end: garlic and ginger turned golden and toasty, Sichuan pepper with its tickling buzz. The culinary scholar Fuchsia Dunlop advises staying away from the most powerful chiles; instead, seek out the long, slender, medium-hot variety sold by the bag at Chinese groceries. Be careful they don’t blacken in the wok. You want that red, untainted, unextinguished, blazing on the plate.
Mouhalabieh (Milk Pudding)
Mastic “tears,” as they’re called, are translucent fragments of tree resin that give off the scent of high, sweet pine. The fragrance is the flavor, suffusing this version of mouhalabieh, a delicate Arab milk pudding, from the French Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan's cookbook, "Bethlehem." Requirements are few: a pot of milk over flame; a whisking-in of sugar; mastic pounded down to a shimmery powder; cornstarch, for firming; and vigilance. As an early recipe in the 10th-century Baghdadi cookbook “Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens” warns: “You should never stop stirring.” Mr. Kattan suggests repeatedly tracing the number “8” with a spoon over the bottom of the pot, so the milk won’t scorch. When the mixture is near custard, pour it, still hot, into individual bowls. “It goes from liquid to quite solid in a few seconds,” he says. Let rest an hour at room temperature, then another two or more in the refrigerator, until it wobbles.
Salvadoran Quesadilla
A Salvadoran quesadilla, unlike the Mexican dish of the same name, is a sweet bread verging on cake, just savory enough for breakfast or a midafternoon pick-me-up. There are variations based on rice flour, yuca flour or masa harina; Karla Tatiana Vasquez, in “The SalviSoul Cookbook” (Ten Speed Press, 2024), suggests all-purpose flour as an accessible starting point. Traditionally, the quesadilla’s salty kiss comes from queso duro blando, an aged Salvadoran cheese, but Parmesan, equally funky, makes a good substitute. Crema Salvadoreña, the thick top skimmed off fresh cream and left to turn gently sour, brings a touch of tang. It’s akin to crème fraîche, which may be used instead. (In a pinch, Ms. Vasquez has improvised with diluted yogurt.) Ideally, she says, you whip up the quesadilla after lunch, bake it until there’s browning at the edges, let cool, and by 3 o’clock it’s yours for the taking, between sips of hot, dark coffee.
Jackfruit Tacos
When ripe, jackfruit is sweet and golden. But unripe, it’s almost a blank canvas, game to take on whatever seasonings you throw its way. Sturdy enough to hold up in the heat of a pan, it has a satisfying chew that makes it an excellent filling for tacos. In this recipe from the poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil, skinny strips of young jackfruit soak up an earthy marinade before a turn in the skillet — keep a close eye on the stove, to be sure it doesn’t dry out; you want it saucy — then get folded, still dripping, into warm tortillas. A heaping of raw carrots and cucumber gives you a little crunch, and a spoonful of sour cream brings a rich finish. (If using fresh unripe jackfruit instead of canned, wear gloves and rub your knife with oil before chopping, because the sap is very sticky, and boil the flesh until tender. Note that the sap contains latex, so those allergic to it would do best to avoid eating the fruit.)
Smoked Mackerel Rundown
Rundown is only one of many names for this earthy Jamaican stew of fish and vegetables simmered in coconut milk. It's “an easy dish with big rewards,” says Melissa Thompson, a British writer and the author of the “Motherland” cookbook (Interlink Books, 2022). She begins by slackening onions in a pan, followed by garlic, yellow yam, tomatoes and red bell peppers. Spices are half the transformation: ginger, allspice and cumin, built to warm; thyme, with its kiss of camphor; bay leaves for a piney depth. Coconut milk is poured over, and the heat is left to do its work. When the yam turns tender, the fish goes in — in Ms. Thompson’s version, adapted for life in England, smoked mackerel takes the place of more classic salted mackerel — and then the coconut milk gets another 10 minutes to “run down” and thicken to near cream. This dish is also known as dip-dip, because diners traditionally scoop up the stew with the likes of boiled dumplings and, here, green bananas, not yet sweet.
Ricotta Toast With Roasted Grapes
In this sophisticated take on ricotta toast, Raquel Villanueva Dang, the chef of Baby’s Kusina and Market in Philadelphia, roasts grapes with fresh thyme and salt until the skins pucker and the flesh grows slouchy, verging on collapse. Taste and texture become almost one: jammy and louche, with a tinge of dark wine. She tumbles the grapes over velvety whipped ricotta, with hunks of sourdough on the side. Deepening the contrast of flavors is a salty-sweet glaze of balsamic vinegar cooked down with honey and fish sauce, a nod to her Filipino heritage. If you like, add 1/4 teaspoon mushroom seasoning (an umami-rich blend of pulverized dried mushrooms and salt) to the grapes before roasting, to lend earthiness, and finish the ricotta with a flourish of flaky sea salt and scattered torn mint for a touch of freshness and color.
Chocolate Fondue
Chocolate fondue is not a traditional dessert but a creation of the 1960s, first conjured up at Chalet Suisse, an alpine-themed restaurant in New York, by Konrad Egli, a Swiss chef and restaurateur far from home. This version is a simple equation of chocolate and heavy cream — essentially ganache, but in different proportions. Warm the cream, pour it over the chocolate and stir. A touch of salt brings the flavor into focus. You don’t need a fondue pot or even a double boiler: Just jury-rig a heatproof rack over a candle, or fill a pot or bowl with boiling water and tuck a smaller bowl inside it. (The key is not to melt the chocolate directly over flame, as this may result in scorching or a grainy, broken mixture.) Serve with whatever you think a little gilding with chocolate makes better: maybe bright crescents of clementines, candied yuzu peel, chewy stubs of mochi, butter-heavy pound cake or whole strawberries like fat little hearts.
Hamachi Sashimi With Ginger Ponzu
At Tiffany’s in the small town of Wailuku in central Maui, hamachi sashimi comes with a sauce so good, diners keep spooning it up long after the fish is gone. Bright and briny at once, it draws from the cuisines of island nations across the Pacific, combining elements of Japanese ponzu and fina’denne’, a CHamoru condiment from Guam that is a blend of shoyu (soy sauce), vinegar or citrus, onions and chiles. The chef Sheldon Simeon adds sweet local onions and ginger in lieu of chiles, for a gentler kick, plus shiso for “effervescence,” he says. To finish, he simmers lemon peel and olive oil over low heat, then strains out the peel so just the olive oil is left, only now sun-possessed. Drizzled at the very end, it gives the fish the vividness of lemon without curing it.
Thai Tea Tres Leches Cake
The marquee dessert at Golden Diner, in Manhattan’s Chinatown, is a take on tres leches, a Latin American cake soaked in three kinds of milk, as the Spanish name attests: whole milk, condensed milk and evaporated milk, its unsweetened cousin. Sam Yoo, the chef and owner, infuses the milk with Thai tea powder, a blend of black tea and vanilla that yields a signature tiger-orange hue. The longer the cake soaks, the better it is. (Mr. Yoo lets it rest for as long as two nights, with a flip in between so the liquid that’s pooled at the bottom has another chance to run through.) The cake is finished with whipped cream, coconut flakes toasted near gold and lime zest lending a bright sting. Keep the cake in the refrigerator until the last moment, so it’s as cold as possible and melts in the mouth, almost like ice cream. The faint bitterness of the tea checks the sweetness of the cake, so it’s just enough.
Miyar Taushe (Lamb and Squash Stew)
Stew is a luxury because it demands what we seem to have the least of these days: time. When making miyar taushe (also known as miyan taushe), this earthy-sweet stew from northern Nigeria, you stand vigil while lamb simmers on the stove, slowly coming undone, and butternut squash softens in the oven, its skin ready to cave in. The squash is rendered velvety in a blender, with a dusting of calabash nutmeg — woodsier and mustier than regular nutmeg — then united with the lush lamb stock. Yemisi Aribisala, a Nigerian writer and the author of “Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds” (Cassava Republic Press, 2016), notes that the pot should be big enough so the stew reaches only halfway up, because it splatters. At the end, you deliver to your guests bowls of tamed sun, hot, creamy, melty, thick and earthy-sweet.
Green Salad With Warm Goat Cheese (Salade de Chèvre Chaud)
Some dishes are showstoppers, while others are ordinary, unfussy and exactly what you want on a slow evening when nothing need be achieved or sought after. This is a simple salad, with the smallest exalting touch: rounds of goat cheese coated in beaten egg and the sheerest veil of bread crumbs, then gently pressed in a hot pan until dark gold. They come served over a careless toss of greens — you can add fresh herbs like dill or parsley for featheriness and a bright lift — in a dressing that requires no more than oil, vinegar, mustard and a single shallot. Eat immediately, when the greens are fresh and cool, and the cheese is still warm, faintly crackly on the outside and oozy within.
Medieval Hummus
The roots of this recipe, an ancestor of modern hummus, date back at least as far as the 13th century, as the Iraqi food historian Nawal Nasrallah writes on her blog, My Iraqi Kitchen. As adapted by Lucien Zayan, a Frenchman of Egyptian and Syrian descent who runs the Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn, you boil chickpeas until their skins loosen and they reveal themselves, tender little hulks with souls of butter. Then you mash them in a swirl of tahini, olive oil, vinegar, spices and herbs, and fold in a crush of nuts, seeds and preserved lemon, sour-bright and tasting of aged sun. Notably absent from the recipe is garlic. Here, instead, the nuts — Mr. Zayan uses hazelnuts, for more butteriness, and pistachios, with their hint of camphor — fortify the chickpeas in their earthy heft, so close to the richness of meat.
Hawaii-Style Sherbet
Sherbet is lusher than sorbet, more ethereal than ice cream. This recipe — a creamy, frozen concoction of soda and condensed milk, no ice-cream maker required — comes from Neale Asato, who runs the Asato Family Shop, a cult favorite in Honolulu. For people in Hawaii, Mr. Asato’s sherbet is a nostalgic callback to guri-guri (goodie-goodie), the nearly century-old specialty at Tasaka Guri Guri on Maui. Mr. Asato’s version for home cooks is easy and fun to make: Bring strawberry soda to a boil (you can do it in the microwave), add a packet of gelatin as a stabilizer, stir in condensed milk and spike with vanilla extract. Freeze to a slush, then whip on high speed, letting in the air until it expands, a pink cloud rising. Mix in more strawberry soda (and evaporated milk, if you have it on hand, to temper some of the sweetness), then freeze again. Break out an ice-cream scoop. Shiver.