Recipes By Melissa Clark
1478 recipes found
Balsamic Panna Cotta
Lemon Pudding Cakes With Sugared Raspberries
Pudding cakes are magical sweets, baking up into two distinct layers from a single, straightforward batter. On top is an airy sponge cake that puffs in the oven’s heat. Right beneath it is the pudding, a creamy lemon curd that’s tangy and bracing thanks to a dash of buttermilk. Although these cakes are at their most tender when served within an hour of baking, they’ll still be delicious at room temperature. Or chill them overnight and serve them straight from the fridge. The cake won’t be as fluffy, but the lemon flavor will still shine bright. Feel free to use whatever ripe, juicy fruit you like here in place of the raspberries, or skip the fruit entirely.
Chile-Roasted Chicken With Honey, Lemon and Feta
A little sweet, a little spicy and very citrusy, this easy chicken recipe hits all the right notes, making it the kind of weeknight dinner you’ll put on repeat. The feta adds a creamy, salty bite that’s softened by the lemon and honey, while rosemary and red-pepper flakes round out the flavors. Serve this with a loaf of crusty bread or flatbread for scooping up all the tangy pan juices. You won’t want to leave a drop behind.
Blondies With a Strawberry-Balsamic Swirl
Most blond brownie recipes rely on copious amounts of brown sugar for flavor, without calling for any chocolate. These, from "Marbled, Swirled and Layered" by Irvin Lin, are an excellent exception. Using white chocolate that has been roasted and caramelized, they have a rich, buttery character with a peppery undertone from a bit of extra-virgin olive oil whisked into the batter. A swirl of homemade balsamic strawberry compote gives them a vein of jammy fruit amid all the sweet, gooey cake. Stored in an airtight container at room temperature, they keep for up to 3 days.
Fresh-Fig Cake With Honey Cream-Cheese Frosting
This dense and deeply figgy cake, adapted from Eli's Table in Manhattan, gets its complex flavor from a combination of fresh figs and fig jam, seasoned generously with cinnamon, cardamom and ginger. It’s then filled and topped with cream cheese frosting that is sweetened with a combination of confectioners’ sugar for lightness and honey for richness. Over all, it’s a bit like carrot cake, except softer and sweeter. You can make the cake two to three days ahead and store it, well wrapped or under a cake dome, in the refrigerator. It gets even moister as it sits. If you can’t get fresh figs, chopped peeled apple works nicely as a substitute.
Edamame Tofu Dip
Dairy-free, tahini-free, and rich in protein, this zesty, kid-pleasing dip is a lively, pale green alternative to hummus. Serve it with rice crackers, sliced daikon and/or carrot sticks as a dip, but it’s also thick enough to spread on bread or a pita as a sandwich filling. It will keep for three days in the fridge.
Cranberry Parker House Rolls
Here's a delightful, tangy twist on the fluffy breadbasket staple; cranberry butter is brushed between two layers of dough then baked until golden. They're fun, they're unexpected, they're delicious. (Bonus: they can be made ahead and frozen up to two weeks before.)
Brussels Sprouts With Paneer and Lime Dressing
One of my go-to side dish hacks is sprinkling crunchy, cracked whole spices onto a pan of vegetables before roasting. The spices toast in the oven, releasing their fragrance and flavor, which can be absorbed by the likes of the brussels sprouts, cherry tomatoes or sweet potatoes sharing the pan. Adding paneer to the pan in this recipe, adapted from “Dinner in One: Exceptional & Easy One-Pan Meals” (Clarkson Potter, 2022), turns a side dish into a light and tasty meal, one that’s easily filled in with a little yogurt and some flatbread served on the side.
Old-Fashioned Butterscotch Pudding
This creamy pudding, thickened with cornstarch and egg yolks and stirred together on the stove, is as homey as it gets. Spiking the mixture with a little bourbon or Scotch isn’t strictly traditional, but it does add a pop of flavor. Choose bourbon to underscore the caramelized notes of the brown sugar, or Scotch for a savory smokiness and a nod to the name. Here’s a tip: Make sure to bring the pudding to a full, vigorous boil to activate the cornstarch. Otherwise, it may not set. If you’ve ever ended up with thin, runny pudding, undercooking may have been the issue.
Roasted Salmon With Fennel and Lime
Fennel is used several ways to flavor these tender fillets of slow-roasted salmon. The seeds are mixed with lime zest and salt to rub all over the fish before cooking, which perfumes it through and through. Then a shaved fennel bulb is used two ways, both roasted in the pan beneath the fillets and tossed with lime juice into a crunchy, slawlike salad to serve on the side. Elegant yet supremely simple, this is fast enough for a weeknight but special enough to share with friends.
Condensed Milk Pound Cake
A dulce de leche swirl adds caramel sweetness to this light, moist pound cake, adapted from Margarita Manzke of République in Los Angeles. Although Ms. Manzke makes her own dulce de leche, the jarred kind works just as well here, especially after being marbled into the vanilla-scented, buttery batter. This cake is best served within 2 days of baking. Store it, well-wrapped, in the refrigerator, then bring it to room temperature before serving to best appreciate its gentle flavors.
Granny’s Chocolate Cake
This cake recipe was adapted from the chef Larry Forgione, who served his grandmother's cake recipe at his restaurant An American Place. The dessert proved so popular that every time he tried to take it off of the menu, he said his customers threatened to riot. It's a perfect proportion of crumb to buttercream, ideal for birthdays or other celebrations where layer cake is required.
Breton Tuna and White Bean Gratin
Like a tuna casserole given a makeover, this pantry dinner is modern, sleek and a whole lot more elegant than anything your grandmother used to serve. The key is using really good-quality tuna, preferably the kind packed in extra-virgin olive oil and imported from Italy or Spain. If you can find a large 7-ounce can, use that. But the more typical size (5 3/4 ounces) will work perfectly well if you can’t. Serve this over toasted slices of crusty bread that you’ve drizzled with oil. A crisp green salad or platter of sliced, salted cucumber is all you need to make a satisfying meal.
Broccolini and Edamame Salad With Coconut
Sprouting broccoli (or broccolini) mixed with edamame and coconut is typical of the inventive combinations favored by the British chef Yotam Ottolenghi. After blanching, the vegetables are seasoned with black mustard seeds and curry leaves, which makes for an extremely aromatic and compelling dish that’s good warm or at room temperature. As for the fresh coconut, you can buy frozen freshly grated coconut at many international grocery stores. Otherwise, to use a fresh coconut, use a screwdriver to poke two or three holes, preferably in the eyes of the coconut. Drain any water, then use a hammer to bang along the equator of coconut until it splits open, and scoop out the flesh. Place flesh in a food processor fitted with a grating disc and grate. One coconut yields more flesh than you’ll need for this recipe; freeze the extra for up to three months.
Ricotta and Peach Crostini With Pistachios
Reversed Impossible Chocolate Flan
In this magical recipe by Ben Mims from his cookbook "Sweet & Southern," vanilla cake and chocolate custard are layered into a Bundt pan before baking. In the oven, the two switch places, with the heavier custard sinking while the cake rises to the surface. Once unmolded, you end up with a tender band of cake on the bottom and creamy, wobbly flan on top. Inspired by chocoflan, it’s rich, soft, deeply fudgy and a hit at dinner parties.
Polenta With Parmesan and Olive Oil-Fried Eggs
If you’ve ever decided that cold cereal is a good dinner, here’s another, far better option. Soft and steaming, with plenty of salt and pepper mixed in and perhaps some grated cheese applied at the end, a bowl of polenta or grits is deeply satisfying and requires not much more than a pot and a spoon to prepare. And topping the buttery, cheesy polenta with eggs fried in olive oil makes for a dish that is far more elegant and luxurious than its simple ingredients would imply.
Sous-Vide Salmon With Caper-Parsley Vinaigrette
Cooking salmon using a sous-vide machine produces the most buttery, flavorful fish imaginable. In this recipe, the fish is slathered with herbs before cooking, then topped with a caper-studded vinaigrette. You have two choices for preparing the salmon: One is to slightly undercook the fish, then sear it on a grill or under the broiler to crisp up the skin. The second is to cook it in the sous-vide machine until it’s perfectly done, and serve it while soft and satiny all the way through.
Halvah
Wheels of halvah — a soft, fudgelike candy made out of sesame paste — is an iconic sight in Middle Eastern markets. But it’s also extremely easy to make at home, as long as you have access to a good brand of tahini (the only ingredient should be sesame seeds) and a candy thermometer. This recipe is adapted from the cookbook “Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking,” by the chef Michael Solomonov. Eat it on its own cut into little pieces with a cup of tea, or dip cubes of it in chocolate and top with sesame seeds to serve as an elegant confection at the end of a fancy dinner party.
Gruyère Puff
Like a giant, eggy gougère, this cheese-filled puffy pancake makes an unexpected side dish to roasted meat or fish. You could also pair it with a green salad for a simple and elegant first course or light lunch. Serve it straight out of the oven, when it's at its puffiest.
Telepan's Beet and Bulgur Salad
Most bulgur salads I’ve met follow the tabbouleh model. They are either predominantly tan in color, or predominantly green, depending upon whether the grain or the parsley is emphasized in the recipe. This bulgur salad, a recipe from the chef Bill Telepan at Telepan restaurant on the Upper West Side, is exuberantly different. Instead of softening the bulgur in boiling water, his recipe calls for homemade beet broth. And instead of parsley, scallions and tomatoes, puréed beets add vegetable matter to the mix. It’s an earthy, bright and dazzlingly fuchsia take on the familiar salad, as palate-pleasing as it is eye-catching.
Mini Almond Cakes With Chocolate or Cherry
These moist, rich almond cakes are miniature versions of a classic flourless almond torte, embellished here with either chocolate ganache or cherry jam. The bittersweet chocolate filling is a bit more sophisticated, while the cherry jam is sweetly crowd-pleasing. Or you can split the difference and make six of each. These gluten-free treats are best eaten within eight hours of baking so plan to make them the same day as serving. You can use either natural or blanched almond flour; the blanched will give you a slightly more delicate texture.
Whole Fish With Lime Salsa Verde
Think of roasting a whole fish the same way you might think of roasting a whole chicken: an easy and delicious preparation that all cooks should have in their arsenal, and one that takes well to whatever ingredients you want to introduce. Here, those extra flavors are electric. The fish is stuffed with slices of lime and jalapeño, cilantro and scallion bottoms. An accompanying salsa is composed of more jalapeño, scallion tops, cilantro, lime juice and zest, as well as a dose of capers and garlic. The fish itself is simply oiled and seasoned, then roasted at 450 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes, until it is opaque and flakes when pressed gently with a fork. (Each person you’re feeding should get his or her own fish, weighing about one or one and a half pounds apiece.) Spoon the salsa on top, a streak of bright, spicy flavor for the delicate, moist fish.
Maraschino Cherries
The liquid and cherries glow Kool-Aid red, but they are seductively crisp-textured and steeped with an exotic, piney, floral flavor that is just sweet enough but balanced by a tart tang. Sublime in a manhattan, they are even better over coconut sorbet, and just imagine them on top of an ice cream sundae.