Recipes By Melissa Clark
1468 recipes found
How to Make Ice Cream
Every ice cream starts with a base, a canvas ready to be customized. Melissa Clark presents four foundation recipes, and endless variations.
How to Make Gravy
You can make great gravy ahead of time, or you can make it at the last minute. Melissa Clark talks you through both methods.
Chorizo With Sweet Pepper And Onion Stew And Fried Croutons
How to Make Stuffing
Melissa Clark tells you how make the best stuffing.
How to Make an Omelet
How to Make Steak
A perfectly done steak can be one of the most impressive meals in a cook's repertoire. Melissa Clark will teach you how to master it.
How to Make Sole Meunière
Master the dish that made Julia Child fall in love with French cuisine. Melissa Clark will show you how.
Coconut Layer Cake
This impressive and wonderfully moist layer cake is less sweet than the usual coconut affair, thanks to a tangy cream cheese frosting on top and dose of orange juice in the batter. This is a great dessert to make in advance. You can bake the cake layers up to 3 days ahead and store them, well-wrapped in plastic, in the refrigerator. The frosted cake will keep for 2 days in the fridge as well, either under a cake dome or overturned bowl, or loosely tented with foil. Just make sure to bring the cake to room temperature before serving. Here are more layer cake recipes.
How to Make Cassoulet
Melissa Clark’s Thanksgiving
Let our columnist, a Thanksgiving veteran, introduce you to the dishes she loves and makes for her family.
Bread-and-Butter Pickles
For these pickles, I spiced up classic, sweet bread-and-butter slices with allspice and coriander. Generally, the smaller the cucumbers, the more crisp the pickles will be. I used very small Kirby cucumbers, and a month later mine still crunch with each bite.
Big Pot of Beans
Chances are good you have some dried beans on hand, and that is a great thing. Especially since one basic recipe works for so many kinds, from red beans to white cannellini to black turtle beans. Choose whichever you like, but bear in mind: Sometimes, the best bean is the one already in your pantry.
Buttermilk Biscuits
These soft and tender biscuits are made with cultured butter, which is made with cream that is cultured, or fermented, before it is churned. Cultured butter can be made at home, but it is becoming easier to find in supermarkets. It’s worth seeking out. Any true butter fanatic should try it at least once.
Garam Masala
In India, just about every home has its own recipe for garam masala, which is the most common spice blend in the country and a cornerstone of the cuisines of South Asia. This recipe, which is sweeter and more minimalist than many other versions, is adapted from Floyd Cardoz, the pioneering Indian chef who opened Tabla and Bombay Bread Bar in New York. Versatile and aromatic, this blend can be used in everything from curries and dal to pumpkin pie and gingerbread.
Sweet-and-Spicy Grilled Vegetables With Burrata
A colorful platter of soft, grilled vegetables in a sweet-and-spicy sauce can be the centerpiece of a light summery meal; just add some creamy cheese for richness and crusty bread to round things out. This recipe is extremely adaptable. You mix and match the vegetables, increasing the amounts of your favorites (or the ones you can get your hands on), and skipping anything you don’t have. And if your grill is large enough, you can make several different kinds of vegetables at the same time. Just don’t crowd them so they cook evenly.
Halloumi With Corn, Cherry Tomatoes and Basil
Seared cubes of halloumi get melty and soft on their insides and dark brown and a little crisp on the surface, making it almost impossible not to devour them all as they come out of the pan. But try to resist, because they’re even better tossed with a quick sauté of summer corn and tomatoes, seasoned with basil. Slivers of red onions, folded in raw at the end, add crunch and sweetness, while a squeeze of fresh lime makes everything tangy and fresh. Although this dish is at its most sublime made with fresh summer corn and ripe tomatoes, it’s nearly as good in winter made with frozen corn. Serve it for a light, meatless dinner or a substantial side dish with roasted or grilled chicken or fish.
Baked Fish
Cooking fish for 10 minutes per inch of thickness is an old rule of thumb that works perfectly when roasting fillets or steaks. It’s just enough time to cook the flesh through so that it’s opaque, but not so much that it flakes. The only hitch comes with fillets that are uneven. Use your judgment but err on the side of less is more. You can always put any undercooked parts back in the oven, but you can’t undo overdone. Serve these as is in their purist form, or add your favorite sauce on the side. A pesto, aioli or vinaigrette would work well.
Eggs in Purgatory
It’s unclear whether "purgatory" refers to the bubbling red tomato sauce used to poach the eggs in this easy skillet meal or the fire of the red-pepper flakes that the sauce is spiked with. In either case, this speedy Southern Italian dish, whipped up from pantry staples, makes for a heavenly brunch, lunch or light supper. Note that the anchovies are not traditional, but they add a subtle fishy richness to the tomatoes. However, feel free to leave them out.
Roasted Chickpeas and Peppers With Goat Cheese
In this quick, colorful sheet-pan dinner, sweet bell peppers and spicy chiles caramelize as they roast, becoming even more intense under the oven’s high heat. Crunchy chickpeas and soft bits of goat cheese add flavor, texture and protein, rounding out the dish. Most of the work here takes place in the oven, leaving you free to make a salad if you want a cool and crisp accompaniment. Note that this recipe serves two or three; if you want to double it, be sure to use two sheet pans and add a few minutes to the cooking time so everything has a chance to turn golden brown.
Cheesy Baked Pasta With Sausage and Ricotta
Like a cross between baked ziti and sausage lasagna, this mozzarella-topped pasta is rich with ricotta and crushed tomatoes — and cooks entirely in one pan, including the pasta. The Italian sausage adds meaty depth to the sauce, but vegetarians can leave it out or use their favorite plant-based sausage instead.
Skillet Meatballs With Peaches, Basil and Lime
You can make these gingery meatballs with any kind of ground meat (or vegan meat), but rich, brawny pork goes especially well with juicy peaches and the fresh basil. Make sure to use ripe or even overripe peaches (or nectarines). They should be very soft so they cook quickly, and very sweet so they contrast with the savory meatballs and tangy lime juice. Rice or rice noodles would fill this meal out perfectly and substantially, as would a crisp-leafed salad for a lighter, more summery supper.
Chocolate Shortbread Hearts
Fragile and supremely buttery, these cocoa-flavored shortbread cookies are dunked partway in melted chocolate and sprinkled with an optional topping of crushed freeze-dried raspberries. If you use them, the berries add verve both from their scarlet color and their bright acidity, which is nice against the richness of the chocolate. But other garnishes — flaky sea salt, chopped pistachios, crushed candy canes, toasted coconut — can be substituted. Be sure not to roll the dough thinner than 1/2 inch. Otherwise, the cookies are apt to break and crumble after baking. Their thickness helps keep them intact.
Cherries Jubilee
Although this classic recipe was named in honor of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the method of sautéing cherries with butter, sugar and a splash of Cognac or kirsch probably predates those festivities. Flambéing the mixture helps cook off some of the alcohol and singes the cherries, adding a gentle caramelized note. But you can skip that step and just add an extra 2 minutes to the simmering in Step 5 after adding the Cognac. Serve this warm over ice cream, pound cake or both.
Fresh Ricotta
Why make homemade ricotta? Because you can. And because the results are so much better than most of the packaged stuff you can buy, especially at the supermarket. Making it yourself is also less expensive than buying fresh ricotta at a fancy gourmet market.