Recipes By Melissa Clark
1468 recipes found
Chocolate-Caramel Matzo Toffee
Matzo toffee is the Passover-friendly take on saltine toffee. A layered confection of matzo crackers, brown sugar caramel and melted chocolate, you can top it with practically anything you like, from the most elegantly minimal sprinkle of sea salt to a surfeit of nuts, dried fruit, potato chips, or a combination. This recipe, adapted from Marcy Goldman’s cookbook “A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking,” keeps well when stored airtight at room temperature — up to one week, if you haven’t finished it by then.
Matzo Toffee With Candied Ginger
Traditional matzo toffee — a Passover-friendly spin on saltine toffee — is an addictive three-layer confection of crackers, brown sugar toffee and melted chocolate. In this version, the chocolate gets a spicy boost from the addition of both fresh ginger juice and chewy candied ginger. Or substitute a topping of cacao nibs, sea salt and/or toasted, chopped nuts. Matzo toffee will keep for at least eight days, stored airtight at room temperature, which will take you through the holidays in the sweetest way possible.
Crispy Fried Rice With Bacon and Cabbage
This easy, hearty weeknight meal gets a lot of its brawny richness from just a small amount of bacon. The soft, wilted cabbage lends sweetness, while the kimchi (a nod toward bokkeumbap) zips things up. The secret to getting a crackling, crunchy texture is letting the rice sit in the hot oil without touching it until it browns, but using leftover rice also helps. (As the rice dries out, it crisps more easily.) If you’re starting from scratch, just cook 2 cups of dry rice to yield the 6 cups of cooked rice called for here. Then spread the rice out on a baking sheet and let it cool and dehydrate a bit before frying. Be sure to have everything ready and near the stove when before you start. The cooking goes fast, and there won’t be any time to prepare ingredients once you get going.
Tomato, Fresh Fig and Blue Cheese Salad
Whether you get them from your backyard garden or the local farmers' market, tomatoes are one of summer’s sweetest staples. In the kitchen, one of the best things a cook can do with a surfeit of ripe summer tomatoes is not to cook them. With such tasty beauties available (and given the tomato-pleasing heat), salads make more sense. Start simply by slicing big tomatoes into rounds and cutting smaller ones into wedges and the cherry and grape varieties in half. Very gently toss them with fresh herbs, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and good salt. Use whatever you’ve got to hand to dress up the pile. Here, we’ve used some crumbled blue cheese for tang, fresh figs for sweetness and a sprinkle of toasted pine nuts for crunch.
Squid Salad with Cucumbers, Almonds and Pickled Plum Dressing
Roasted Mixed Vegetables
Make this your go-to recipe any time roasted vegetables are on the menu. The technique will work for any high-moisture vegetable, and the process of cutting your selected vegetables into 1-inch pieces allows them all to cook at the same rate. The optional garlicky yogurt sauce turns a pan of roasted veggies into a light meal, especially when paired with some crusty bread or a bowl of rice or other grains, or you can serve these as a colorful side dish.
Vegan Ice Cream
The combination of high-fat hemp and coconut milks gives this nondairy ice cream base an ultra-creamy texture, with a taste mild enough not to obscure any flavorings. The liquid sugar (corn syrup or agave syrup) along with a little vodka help to keep ice crystals from forming, giving the smoothest texture. If you can't find hemp milk, substitute cashew milk. It has a similar fat content, though the flavor is slightly less neutral. Nondairy ice cream is best eaten within a week of freezing.
Classic Cocktail Sauce
A combination of pungent horseradish and sweet ketchup make up the foundation of this classic cocktail sauce, which is seasoned with lemon juice, hot sauce and a dash of Worcestershire. Drizzle it on a shrimp cocktail or dab it sparingly on raw seafood. A little of this assertive mixture goes a long way.
Pasta With Anchovies, Garlic, Chiles and Kale
If you don’t have an after-work, go-to pasta dish, this may fill the void. The backbone of flavor comes from pantry staples — a pungent mix of anchovies, garlic, red pepper flakes and capers, which gives pasta more than enough character for a satisfying dinner. But kale (or chard, spinach or other greens) adds a fresh, earthy flavor and enough vegetable content to turn it into a one-dish meal.
Spaghetti With Garlicky Bread Crumbs and Anchovies
This is a take on a classic dish from Southern Italy that tosses pasta with toasted, seasoned bread crumbs called pangrattatto. In this version, the bread crumbs are sautéed in olive oil with garlic and anchovies until golden and crisp, and the pasta is coated with egg yolks, hot sauce and Asian fish sauce for creaminess and depth. You can make the bread crumbs up to 3 hours ahead; longer than that and you risk letting them go soggy. Use good-quality bread crumbs here, either homemade or purchased from a bakery. The next best choice is panko, Japanese bread crumbs that you can find in large supermarkets. If you have any of the pangrattatto mixture left over, store it in the refrigerator and give it a brief sauté to revive it before using.
Clarified Butter
Clarified butter can withstand heat without burning for a longer period and at a higher temperature than whole, nonclarified butter, making it ideal for pan-frying. Clarifying is a relatively simple process that takes just a few extra minutes. Essentially, you’re removing the water content and white milk solids from the butter. Expect to end up with about 25 percent less butter than you started with. Clarified butter keeps up to 1 month in the fridge. This recipe is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, a guide to definitive dishes every modern cook should master.
Green Beans, Corn and Carrot Salad
This is a sturdy, appealing picnic recipe made from haricots verts, corn and carrots. Haricots verts, by the way, are skinny green beans, but you can use regular ones instead. Like the sandwich, this salad gets even better the longer it sits, and is relatively indestructible. With all the contrasting colors, it’s pretty, too.
Roasted Vegan Sausages With Cauliflower and Olives
Tangy-sweet raisins and salty olives make a zesty topping for this simple sheet-pan meal starring vegan sausages. As everything cooks, the cauliflower caramelizes and turns very tender, while the sausages sizzle and brown. If you’d rather make this with meat sausages, go right ahead; pork, turkey or lamb work especially well.
Maureen Abood’s Lavender and Orange Blossom Cookies
These buttery, shortbread-like cookies, called graybeh, have a particularly crunchy texture that comes from clarified butter. If you’ve never clarified butter, this recipe is a good place to start, and the process is extremely simple (though you do have to plan it several hours ahead). If you’re not a lavender fan, feel free to leave it out. And for a more familiar flavor, substitute vanilla extract for the orange blossom water. These cookies keep well, so you can make them up to a week in advance.
Apple-Potato Latkes With Cinnamon Sour Cream
These latkes are golden, crunchy, salty-sweet and very satisfying, with applesauce and without. The secret here is squeezing the liquid out of the grated apple and potato mixture before frying; otherwise the latkes end up on the soft side rather than truly crisp. This is because apples are juicier than potatoes, so a firm squeeze in a clean dish towel brings down the moisture content considerably.
Cabbage, Potato and Leek Soup
Here's a warming, economical soup that combines cabbage with leeks, potatoes and plenty of black pepper. The potatoes melt slightly into the broth, making the texture silky, lush and even a bit sexy (at least as far as cabbage goes).
Spicy Thai Pork Tenderloin Salad
There are a lot of ingredients in this bright and bold-tasting pork salad recipe; they add up to a vibrant dish you can serve warm or at room temperature to a spice-loving crowd. Lean pork tenderloin is marinated with chiles, ginger root and cilantro, grilled or broiled, then combined with cabbage, fresh herbs and nuts and coconut for richness. A bit of reserved marinade serves as the dressing. The recipe makes a large batch; you can halve it or make the whole thing and enjoy the leftovers.
Herby Three-Bean Salad
Ready for picnics and potlucks, this zippy take on a classically American three-bean salad features crunchy green beans, creamy chickpeas and cannellini beans (and is vegan, too). The marinated vegetables (fennel, celery and onions) add texture and a vinegary kick, while a mix of herbs lend complexity and freshness. Feel free to use whatever combination of canned beans you like; kidney beans are classic, black beans velvety, black-eyed peas earthy. You can prepare this salad up to four hours ahead and keep it at room temperature, or you can make it the day before and refrigerate it. Toss well and add more salt and vinegar, if needed, just before serving.
Avocado Salad With Herbs and Capers
This salad is both dead simple to make and highly luscious. It gets a velvety richness from the avocados. The salad is enlivened by a splash of red wine vinegar in the dressing and a handful of briny capers sprinkled on top. The herbs here are used in two ways, both chopped into a garlicky salsa verde-like dressing, and strewn in whole leaves across the plate. Choose your avocados carefully for this; look for firm but not rock-hard fruit, without any mushy spots. If you’d like to substitute another variety of avocado for the Haas you can, but the salad may not have the same texture. Then serve it either as a side dish or an appetizer with a meal of roasted or grilled meats, chicken or fish. Or make it the foundation of a light lunch, with some crusty bread and tangy cheese on the side.
Eggplant Salad With Peppers, Mint and Caper-Feta Vinaigrette
Tuna With Capers, Olives and Lemon
This is not your mother's mayonnaise-laden tuna salad, but it's just as easy to prepare. Here's what you do: stir together some canned tuna, garlic, lemon juice, red onion, black olives, capers and fresh parsley, then spread it on buttered toast. Top it off with a round of ripe tomato or slivers of avocado and another slice of toast. That's it. If you want to make it into a dip, toss the mixture into a food processor with a few tablespoons of softened butter and a bit more olive oil. Purée until smooth and creamy and serve with carrots, fennel, bell pepper and seeded crackers. If you have a tin of sardines taunting you from inside your cabinet, we bet this recipe would work equally well with those.
Lemony Egg Soup With Escarole
This lemon-scented soup, based on a Greek avgolemono, is a warming meal in the depths of winter. Made with good chicken broth, it’s familiar and comforting. But fresh lemon adds a sunny brightness while the egg and rice thicken things up, making the broth richer and heartier. To add vegetable matter, I stir some escarole into the soup, letting it wilt until silky and soft. If you like you can substitute spinach or baby kale for the escarole, adding an extra few minutes to the cooking time if using the kale.
Ande ki Kari (Eggs in Spicy Tomato Sauce)
In this classic Indian dish, adapted from the cookbook author Julie Sahni, hard-cooked eggs are swathed in a spicy tomato gravy fragrant with cardamom, cumin and cinnamon. Since garam masala spice blends vary in their chile content, sample yours before adding it to the sauce, then stir it in to taste. You can make the sauce and hard-cook the eggs a day ahead (store them in the refrigerator), but the eggs are best introduced to the pot just before serving; simply reheat them in the simmering sauce. You can serve the eggs over rice, or with flatbread on the side.
Baked Steel-Cut Oats With Nut Butter
For a simple, filling breakfast, baked steel-cut oatmeal, enriched with almond butter and cinnamon, is a go-to recipe. This version is particularly adaptable: Use peanut butter or almond butter, steel-cut or cracked oats, or any number of warming spices that might be in your cupboard. Then, garnish as you wish.