Recipes By Melissa Clark
1479 recipes found
Dosas With Mustard Greens and Pumpkin-Seed Chutney
Making dosas — those gloriously thin, pleasingly sour South Indian flatbreads — at home requires some advance planning. You may need to hunt down the ingredients (online or at an Indian market), and you’ll definitely have to soak the lentils and then let the batter ferment for at least 8 hours or overnight. But the crisp and flavorful crepes are well worth the effort. Note that the first dosas you fry might not turn out well — spreading the batter thin enough takes practice. This recipe, adapted from the chef Anita Jaisinghani of Pondicheri, calls for filtered water because fluoride can interfere with fermentation.
Puffy Corn Pancake With Blackberry Sauce
This pancake is similar to a recipe that ran in The Times in 1966 called David Eyre’s pancake, named for a man whose fame seems to rest mainly on this tasty invention. Here, in addition to the corn kernels I wanted to use up, I stirred in some cornmeal to highlight the corn factor. Because cornmeal can make things heavy and I feared the pancake might become too dense, I increased the number of eggs in the batter to help it rise and puff. I mixed in a little black pepper to contrast with the sweetness of the corn, and then simmered together a speedy blackberry syrup to drizzle on top. The recipe is versatile enough to make over and over, and I’m sure it will take me through the end of corn season.
Crumb Cake With Coconut-Pistachio Topping
Called the "new deli" crumb cake at Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, Mich., this incredibly moist sour cream cake has a traditionally nubby topping speckled with coconut. It's also gently warmed with the Indian spices that make a cup of chai so irresistible: ginger, cardamom and cloves. The recipe comes from the deli's long-awaited cookbook, "Zingerman's Bakehouse," by head bakers Amy Emberling and Frank Carollo.
Crispy Parmesan Roast Chicken With Lemon
Sprinkling grated Parmesan over a whole chicken as it roasts yields extra-crisp, extra-savory skin in this recipe, while chopped fresh rosemary and lemon zest perfume the meat through and through. Be sure to serve this with the lemony pan drippings, which make a bright, rich sauce for the tender meat. Heat lovers should feel free to add plenty of red-pepper flakes to the drippings — or serve red pepper on the side for individual spicing.
Rhubarb Oat Shortcakes
Roasting rhubarb with Demarara sugar until the stalks caramelize and soften enough to collapse gives you a heady and intense jamlike compote with a molasses edge. Here, it’s paired with tender, biscuitlike shortcakes made with a little oat flour for complexity and plenty of whipped cream. It’s important to let the rhubarb juices truly caramelize at the edges of the pan; they should turn deep mahogany brown before you pull it from the oven. Then mix those syrupy juices with the rest of the rhubarb for the deepest flavor. You can make the biscuits and rhubarb up to eight hours in advance. Store them at room temperature until ready to serve.
Portuguese Egg Custard Tarts
These diminutive egg tarts — pasteis de nata — a specialty all over Portugal, have a cinnamon flavored custard nestled in a flaky puff pastry crust. The trick here is to bake them in a very hot oven, which causes the custard to puff and the pastry to turn brown and crunchy. You can make the crust and filling ahead, but don’t bake them more than an hour or two before serving. They’re at their best still warm.
Any Vegetable Tart
Perfect for casual entertaining, this rustic tart can be tailored to whatever vegetables you have on hand. The key here is to use either precooked vegetables, or quick-cooking raw vegetables that won’t release too much liquid as they bake, making the pastry soggy. (See Tips below, for more.) So the crust tastes like a buttery cheese straw, an optional layer of grated Gruyère or Cheddar is scattered onto the bottom of the baking pan before the dough is placed on top. The whole tart bakes up golden brown, savory and wonderfully crunchy. Serve this on the same day it’s baked for maximum flakiness.
Pork and Fennel Sausage Rolls
In this Australian lunchtime staple, fennel- and herb-spiked ground meat makes a heady filling for crisp and buttery puff pastry. The original recipe, created by Paul Allam from Bourke Street Bakery, calls for ground pork. But ground chicken, turkey or plant-based meat will also work. These are best served while still warm from the oven, but they’re nearly as delicious at room temperature. Store any leftovers in the refrigerator and reheat before serving.
Berry Summer Pudding
Got soft white bread? Berries? Good: you’re all set to make this dessert, which can brighten even the warmest summer night. The making of this dish takes almost no time, but the pudding has to be refrigerated at least 6 hours or overnight. So make it up in the morning, have some fun in the sun and it will be ready for after dinner. Serve with heavy cream or ice cream.
Vanilla Bean Poundcake With Muscat-Macerated Fruit
Muscat-Macerated Fruit
Sonia’s Phyllo and Feta Torte With Dill and Nutmeg
Here is a recipe for a torte, appropriate for a springtime lunch, that looks daunting, but really is not. The only challenge is finding the right Greek feta, by which we mean something not too salty but not too mild. Think of the layering of the phyllo sheets as a meditative exercise, clearing the clutter of the week and preparing you for something delicious. Gild it with Greek honey for a welcome touch of sweetness.
Shrimp, Sugar-Snap Pea and Potato Salad With Mint and Pecorino
This recipe breaks the taboo of combining seafood and cheese. This salad of blanched shrimp, new potatoes and crisp disks of sugar-snap peas is perfectly adequate. It is vibrant from fresh mint, tangy from red-wine vinegar and mustard in the vinaigrette, sweet from the shrimp and earthy from the potatoes, but a few shards of young pecorino add the saline funk that brings this dish together. The cheese will practically melt into the salad, adding a glossy complexity. (Another young, semifirm sheep’s milk cheese would work. So would aged pecorino, but use less since it’s saltier. )
Pea Soup With Crisp Prosciutto
Pomegranate-Glazed Lamb Meatballs
Back in 2012, for her Good Appetite column, Melissa Clark took inspiration from the kinds of seasonal cocktails usually found at exclusive bars and restaurants and experimented with them at home. She created a selection of drinks, and let them inspire a group of snacks. Among them was this dish, lamb meatballs with a pomegranate glaze, which paired elegantly with the grenadine of an El Presidente cocktail. But they’re just as nice without the cocktail. Have them alone, as a light snack or part of an evening of tapas, or pair them with some couscous and goat cheese for a larger meal.
Stir-Fried Beef and Sugar Snap Peas
Here's a stir-fry far better than most take-out Chinese, and you can make it with any lean cut of meat — flank steak, London broil, tenderloin, sirloin or skirt steak — so long as it is cut thin against the grain. Most takeout joints use snow peas, but sugar snaps are juicier and more succulent, and just as crunchy. (Their downside is that they are slightly more work: they need to be thinly sliced.) As for the sauce, it's simple: thick dark soy sauce (tamari works well), sesame oil, chicken broth and Madeira.
Herring-and-Potato Salad With Brown Butter
Heirloom Pea Pancakes
Grilled Steak Salad With Chile and Brown Sugar
In this summery beef salad, pieces of grilled, marinated flank steak and charred red onions are tossed with a mound of spicy greens, avocado and a tangy lime-spiked dressing. Keep the flank steak on the rare side — this lean cut is best when still very juicy — then slice it thinly against the grain for the most tender meat.
Broccoli Rabe, Olive and Parmesan Calzone
A calzone has many of the perks of pizza. Easy and crowd pleasing, it’s a good vehicle for using up odds and ends in the fridge. It also has some happy benefits of its own. For one, you can get away with adding a lot more cheese. In fact, it’s practically mandatory. You need to stuff enough ricotta and mozzarella into the dough so that it ripples attractively, rising as it bakes. Unlike an apple turnover, which wants to stay flat, a calzone should peak and singe at the top. (True, you could cram the dough full of vegetables and the like, but if you love cheese, calzones are the place to indulge.) Another calzone advantage is the element of surprise. Pizza gives it all up as soon as it lands on the table; serve a calzone to a group and let them anticipate the moment when they find out what’s inside.
Skillet Chicken With Rhubarb
In this savory skillet dinner, rhubarb, onions and garlic are simmered with white wine and butter into a rich sauce for browned chicken parts. I call for a whole, cut-up chicken here, so you’ll have the different parts to choose from at the table. (Just be sure to watch the breasts carefully; they might finish cooking before the dark meat.) But you can use your favorite chicken part instead. Thighs and drumsticks work particularly well. This dish goes nicely with polenta, which also helps brighten the rather drab color of the brightly flavored sauce.
Black Bean Chorizo Casserole with Pickled Onions
You’ve probably made some kind of Mexican casserole layered with tortillas, beans, and plenty of melted cheese before (and if you haven’t, now is the time). But this one is bolder, brighter and more deeply flavored, thanks to pasilla chiles in the sauce, lime zest in the luscious crema topping, and chorizo in the beans. If you’d prefer a vegetarian version, leave out the chorizo. But do seek out the pasilla chiles (also called negra chiles), which add their inimitable smoky, fruity spice. This casserole reheats perfectly and will keep for at least five days in the fridge.
Spinach Salad With Roasted Vegetables and Spiced Chickpeas
The best main-course salads are precariously balanced things, requiring planning and forethought to come out well. You need to make sure that your mix of vegetables, proteins and starches hits all the requisite flavor and textural notes — sweet, salty, tangy, fresh, crisp, soft and rich. In the end, a main-course salad should feel virtuous and a little decadent, and eminently satisfying. This recipe works on all those levels. It has crunchy, salty chickpeas imbued with spice. There are sweet potatoes and carrots roasted until exquisitely tender. The creamy Greek yogurt dressing spiked with garlic is creamy and rich. And finally, there’s the spinach, which is earthy and fresh.
Red Bean Stew With Fried Onions and Cilantro
Based on lobio, a Georgian stew, this is a warming, thick mix of simmered beans seasoned with both raw and fried onions, garlic and plenty of cilantro. In Georgia, the stew is sometimes spiked with a sour plum sauce called tkemali, which you can find at specialty markets or online. But if you can’t get it, pomegranate molasses (or even a good balsamic vinegar) will give the dish a similarly fruity tang. Note that the bean mixture will thicken as it cools, so be prepared to add a bit of water or broth upon reheating.