Recipes By Ligaya Mishan
60 recipes found
Pastillas de Leche (Milk Candies)
Pastillas de leche are Filipino candies traditionally made by cooking down carabao (water buffalo) milk for hours. (Although the recipe is native to the Philippines, the name comes from Spanish: Pastilla describes the lozenge shape and leche is milk.) Abi Balingit, the author of the dessert cookbook “Mayumu” (Harvest 2023), offers a beautifully simple, no-cook shortcut: You sift whole milk powder and salt, then mix in condensed milk until a dough forms. Roll into snowy white logs, then dust the soft, creamy treats in sugar. That’s it — there’s no waiting; you can eat them right away.
Sopapilla Cheesecake Bars
In this simple cheesecake, the luscious filling is held together between two layers of flaky pastry, generously dusted with cinnamon sugar. The recipe is a Southwestern tradition, taking inspiration from sopapillas, pieces of dough dropped in hot oil until they puff into little pillows with origins that go back to Latin America and regions of the United States that were once part of Mexico. Maria Kitsopoulos, a cellist with The New York Philharmonic, created her recipe for the cheesecake with extra cinnamon (and less sugar) based on a version by the blogger Deborah Harroun.
Vegan Sopa de Maní (Bolivian Peanut Soup)
This vegan version of a traditional Bolivian soup is made with a base of puréed peanuts but has none of the heaviness of peanut butter. Instead, it’s creamy yet delicate, hearty without heft. Patrick Oropeza, the chef of Bolivian Llama Party in Sunnyside, Queens, primes the stock with a powder of locoto chiles, gutsier than jalapeños, and quilquiña, an herb that delivers the sunny grassiness of cilantro, with a sly kick. (Both may be found at Latin markets and specialty grocers online.) Then he drops in potatoes, and tubes of penne that are toasted first in a dry pan to draw out their nuttiness and change their texture just enough that they hold firm in the soup. In Bolivia, a bowl of sopa de maní typically comes topped with thick wedges of fried potato, like steak fries. Mr. Oropeza uses matchsticks instead, which fry faster and stay crispy.
Mini Bibingka
Bibingka is a Filipino cake traditionally made with rice flour and coconut milk and baked to supreme fluffiness over banana leaves in a terra-cotta oven. These versions are built to fit in the palm of the hand. Ray Luna, who ran the much loved coffee shop Mountain Province in Brooklyn, adapted the recipe from his lola (grandmother), using self-rising flour instead of rice flour and coconut cream for extra richness. The cakes are delicious when made with just the requisite five ingredients, but for a touch of refinement, follow Luna’s lead and bake in banana leaves, to infuse a green-tea scent. The final touch: macapuno, opalescent strands from rare, prized coconuts with jellylike flesh.
Rohan Kamicheril’s Country Captain
The American South has long laid claim to Country Captain, but the dish’s origins can be traced back to the British Raj. It’s an Anglo-Indian legacy of colonials with palates newly awakened to the possibilities of spice. In this version from Rohan Kamicheril, who grew up in Bangalore, only a few seasonings are called for: turmeric, ginger-garlic paste — easy to mash up quickly or buy premade — and Kashmiri chile powder, which has a gentle heat that can be approximated with a mix of paprika and cayenne. Vinegar is the last, vital touch, its sourness twangs the nerve and startles the other flavors into focus. The recipe is simple, but it takes skill to make, and should be eaten immediately.
Pork Sinigang
This recipe, adapted from the chef Tom Cunanan of Bad Saint in Washington, D.C., really needs fresh white rice when you serve it. It serves as the plain, blank canvas for all the tartness of the tamarind and the richness of the ribs. At Filipino meals, it’s quite common to have a variety of sawsawan, or sauces and condiments, on the table at mealtime. The idea is for everyone at the table to customize their dishes exactly to their liking.
Grilled Peaches With Dukkah and Blueberries
Dukkah? It’s an Egyptian blend of nuts, seeds and spices, which you can either buy or make yourself. Combine it with a grilled ripe peach for a superlative summer experience, especially with freshly whipped cream and a scattering of blueberries. Simply dab the cut fruit with some olive oil and place on a hot grill until lightly toasted and soft. The result is reminiscent of peach pie without the crust, warm and yielding, with just a hint of char.
Chickpeas Escabeche With Plantain Strips
In the Spanish-speaking world, the technique of cooking ingredients and then immersing them in vinegar is called escabeche. Anything can be made escabeche; it brings a lovely little shiver of sourness to the table. The writer and cultural critic Alicia Kennedy, who lives in Puerto Rico, likes to use chickpeas, simmering them in vinegar, olive oil and sofrito, a potent blend of garlic, onions, sweet peppers, grassy-bright cilantro and its swaggering cousin culantro. Just before serving, she adds Spanish stuffed olives, for extra richness. The beans are meaty enough to sate and small enough to scoop up with a chip — or, as Ms. Kennedy prefers, to be spooned, almost daintily (‘‘like caviar,’’ she says), onto a delicate strip of crisped plantain, hot from the skillet.
Hawaii-Style Garlic Shrimp
Three decades ago, the first shrimp truck rolled out on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii. It served jumbo shrimp, a dozen to a plate with two scoops of rice, crackly shelled and dark with paprika and a rubble of garlic and butter — so much butter that the sheen stayed on your fingers all day. Rivals soon appeared and today, at least a dozen trucks vie for customers, both locals and tourists who drive an hour from Honolulu. When Kathy YL Chan, the writer behind the Onolicious Hawai‘i blog, reverse-engineered the recipe, she dredged the shrimp in mochiko (sweet rice flour) for extra crispness, although all-purpose flour works, too. She calls for one head of garlic here but uses two heads herself; feel free to adjust according to your taste.
Mango Royale
For the chef Isa Fabro of IsaMADE in Los Angeles, the use of super-ripe Manila mangoes (native to the Philippines) is central to this no-bake dessert, as the fruit has a unique deep honey taste, a creamy texture with virtually no fibers, and a heavy aroma. If using Kent or Haden mangoes, remove any excess fiber and add lime; the extra acid complements their flavor, but will compete with the Manila mangoes. As long as the mangoes are super-ripe, even over-ripe, the dish will be fine. If not, the mango flavor will become dulled and lost in the cold of the freezer. If ripe mangoes aren’t available, frozen ones can be used once defrosted.
Yotam Ottolenghi’s Pasta and Zucchini Salad
This salad, which was featured in a Times article about Yotam Ottolenghi, was adapted from “Plenty,” his first cookbook. It is rich with vegetables and fresh herbs, and is dead simple to make. The salad comes together in under an hour, and is substantial enough for a warm evening’s supper.
Rqaq w Adas (Lentils With Pasta)
In Arabic, adas are lentils, and rqaq is a flatbread as thin and nearly as sheer as paper. The two come together in this stew, which was traditionally a way to use dough left over from baking bread, as the Palestinian artist and chef Mirna Bamieh explains. The lentils are simmered with cumin, bringing its stealthy warmth, along with bronzed onions, tamarind and sweet-sour pomegranate molasses. Meanwhile, scraps of dough are rolled out, then up into cylinders and slashed into long, skinny strands that look like tagliatelle. But you don’t have to wait for baking day: Instead, just knead together the quick dough below or swap in dried pasta. The noodles are dropped right in the pot, to cook among the lentils, leaching starch and making the stew even richer.
Norinj Pilau (Rice With Candied Orange Peel, Saffron and Lamb)
The sour orange, unlike the sweet orange, is too tart to eat straight. But the peels, when cooked, lend a bright tang and profound fragrance. To make norinj pilau, a celebratory Afghan dish of lamb and rice, Shazia Saif Naimi recruits her husband, Asadullah Naimi, to harvest sour oranges from their backyard. He cuts the peels into skinny strips using a razor blade and brings them to a boil three times, to make sure that most (but, crucially, not all) of the peels’ bitterness is leached out. Then he stirs in sugar, saffron and cardamom, and the scent of honey and white flowers expands through the house. Ms. Naimi braises the lamb and soaks the rice, massaging the grains to release the starch. At the end, lamb and rice are mounded together in a platter of abundance, with one cup of rice — simmered separately with the orange-peel syrup — spread over the top like spilled sun.
Oxtail Stew in Peanut Sauce (Kare-Kare)
Kare-kare is a nutty-sweet stew, traditionally made in the Philippines with oxtail, bok choy, string beans and eggplants, simmered with ground peanuts and achuete oil; peanut butter, a modern substitute, lends voluptuousness. This recipe is adapted from Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad’s forthcoming cookbook “I Am a Filipino” and their restaurant Maharlika in New York, where the dish is always served with rice and bagoong, a fermented seafood paste that brings a depth of flavor akin to aged cheese or steak.
Roasted Turkey Ramen
On Thanksgiving night, with dinner pillaged and in ruins, Joshua Mangerson picks off the remaining meat from the turkey carcass, submerges it in chicken stock and lets it simmer. The next day, turkey leftovers are transformed into turkey ramen, with mushrooms, scallions and a six-minute egg in each bowl. The rich, cloudy broth is an ode to the Strongbow Inn, the turkey restaurant that Mr. Mangerson’s great-grandmother opened in 1940 on the family turkey farm in Valparaiso, Ind. Mr. Mangerson, who worked summers at Strongbow as a teenager, makes his own chicken stock first, with chicken backs and necks collected over a summer of grilling, but you can use store-bought stock and still get a strong boost of flavor. The recipe may look labor-intensive, but “I wouldn’t want anyone to be scared away,” he says. “It’s not difficult to do. It just takes time, and you have to care.”
Rotkraut
This recipe for rotkraut, a tart dish of pickled red cabbage simmered with warm spices in a dry red wine, came to The Times from Debbie Himmler of Cincinnati. The dish, a nod to her grandparents’ German heritage, makes regular appearances on her family’s Thanksgiving table, but can be served year round. It’s best prepared a day or two ahead, and also freezes well — a real boon if you’re planning a big meal. Just reheat it in a covered saucepan on the stove the day you plan to serve it.
Country Captain
The American South has long laid claim to Country Captain, but the dish’s origins can be traced back to the British Raj. It’s an Anglo-Indian legacy of colonials with palates newly awakened to the possibilities of spice. In this version from Rohan Kamicheril, who grew up in Bangalore, only a few seasonings are called for: turmeric, ginger-garlic paste — easy to mash up quickly or buy premade — and Kashmiri chile powder, which has a gentle heat that can be approximated with a mix of paprika and cayenne. Vinegar is the last, vital touch, its sourness twangs the nerve and startles the other flavors into focus. The recipe is simple, but it takes skill to make, and should be eaten immediately.
Puritan Pudding
A mass of cornmeal, milk and molasses, baked for hours, this dessert was born of the Puritans’ nostalgia for British hasty pudding and their adaptation to the ground-corn porridges of their Native American neighbors. (Early settlers called it Indian pudding.) Originally served as a first course, it grew sweeter (but not too sweet; Puritanism runs deep) and migrated to the end of supper. For a proper historical re-enactment of the dish, you need meal stone-ground from Rhode Island whitecap flint corn, a hard, tough-to-crack corn, less sweet but more buttery than hybrid strains. One of the oldest incarnations of the plant, it was cultivated by the local Narragansett and saved from extinction by a few equally flinty Rhode Island farmers. This recipe comes from George Crowther, owner and chef of the Yankee diner Commons Lunch, which has stood on the town square of Little Compton, R.I., since 1966.
Fruit Sandwich
The origins of the fruit sandwich are believed to go back to Japan’s luxury fruit stores and the fruit parlors attached to them. This version comes from Yudai Kanayama, a native of Hokkaido who runs the restaurants the Izakaya NYC and Dr Clark in New York. Fresh fruit — fat strawberries, golden mango, kiwi with black ellipses of seeds, or whatever you like — is engulfed in whipped cream mixed with mascarpone, which makes it implausibly airy yet dense. (In Japanese, the texture is called fuwa-fuwa: fluffy like a cloud.) Pressed on either side are crustless slices of shokupan, milk bread that agreeably springs back. The sandwich looks like dessert but isn’t, or not exactly; it makes for a lovely little meal that feels slightly illicit, as if for a moment there are no rules.
Du Jour Doughnuts
This classic yeast doughnut is a specialty of T. J. and Vera Obias, the husband-and-wife team of pastry chefs at Du Jour Bakery, in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The dough is light and airy, and the sugar crystals add crunch. After cutting out the doughnuts, test whether they have risen enough by touching them with a fingertip; if they spring back slowly, they are sufficiently proofed. Springing back fast means they need more time, and not springing back means they are overproofed.
Mac Salad
Hawaii’s mac salad is not the summer standard of cookouts on the mainland (what locals call the rest of the United States). The pasta is cooked past al dente, until swoony and soft all the way through. In this version from the chef Mark Noguchi, Gooch to friends, there’s a little punch-up of Tabasco and trace sweetness, like a sidelong glance, from grated carrots and a grace note of sugar. The marquee ingredient, of course, is mayonnaise. ‘‘Just so you know, you’ll be using a lot of mayo,’’ Gooch warns. ‘‘Obscene, guarantee-going-to-make-you-raise-your-eyebrow kine of lot.” Yet somehow what you end up with is richness without weight, leavened by tang and salt. In Hawaii, a scoop would be served with a plate lunch, alongside rice and a main dish, like chicken katsu.
Uncle Glenn’s Onaga (Steamed Red Snapper With Somen)
In Hawaii, onaga is the most prized kind of snapper and the centerpiece of festive meals. Glenn Yamashita steams the whole fish, Chinese-style, with a sour-salty stuffing, a topping of preserved vegetables and a tumble of aromatics. Two of the ingredients are readily available in Hawaii but may require more of a search elsewhere: chung choi, salted turnip wrapped in its own leaves — pickled mustard greens are a fine substitute — and scallop powder, which can be approximated with fish sauce. Skeins of Japanese somen noodles are tucked beneath the fish and hot oil poured over at the end. Done right, it crackles.
Spaghettini With Bottarga and Colatura
In the Middle Ages, monks on Italy’s Amalfi Coast were tasked with preserving anchovies, the local catch. They discovered that the amber liquid exuded by the aging fish — colatura di alici, literally “anchovy drippings” — could be used as a briny seasoning. Nodding to this tradition, the chef Diego Rossi, at the acclaimed trattoria Trippa in Milan, unites colatura and bottarga di muggine (cured gray mullet roe) in a pasta that is powerfully marine. The sauce isn’t cooked: Instead, he lets the ingredients — bottarga, yellow tomato sauce, colatura, basil, garlic, lemon and chile — melt among the strands of hot spaghettini. The sweetness of the tomato tempers the bitterness of the bottarga. (It’s best to make the pasta in single servings, to control that bitterness, and to eat it immediately.) The umami is everywhere, in the bottarga, the tomato, and, delicate yet insistent, the colatura, calling back to a remembered sea.
Jamaican-Spiced Turkey
When Francine Turone hosted her first Thanksgiving dinner in New York City, she declared turkey “bland and boring.” But after friends protested, she came up with this recipe inspired by her upbringing in Kingston, Jamaica. This turkey, a showstopping centerpiece for any big family event, roasts on a bed of whole vegetables, which absorb its fat. A deeply spiced brine and rub packed with cinnamon, allspice berries, thyme and chile pepper imparts huge flavors, rounded out by an herb-infused brown butter. If things are looking to be busy, the butter and rub can be prepared a day ahead.