Recipes By Melissa Clark
1479 recipes found
Potato, Ham and Piquillo Pepper Croquetas
Pasta With Artichokes and Pancetta
Sautéed artichokes with leeks and pancetta make a hearty, earthy sauce for pasta, brightened by a squeeze of lemon and some herbal dry vermouth. Take care to remove all the tough outer petals of the artichokes; you only want the thinnest, most tender petals to end up in the pan. Bacon avoiders can skip the pancetta. Just use extra olive oil and Parmesan at the end to make up for the missing richness.
Winter Vegetable Stew
Chicken Butter
In this unusual recipe, seasoned, rendered chicken fat and creamy butter are whipped with a little maple syrup for an earthy, rich and lightly sweet spread for bread. Make sure to cook the chicken skin until it turns nut brown — that’s what gives the fat its fried chicken flavor. While you could use schmaltz in place of rendering the fat yourself, the flavor won’t be quite the same because schmaltz usually includes onions in the rendering. If you haven’t been saving your chicken skin and trimmings in your freezer to render, you can usually order the skin from a butcher if you give them enough advance notice. And make sure to save the fried chicken skin as a cook’s snack. It’s the crunchy, salty byproduct of this excellent spread.
Pickled Sea Beans
Spicy Spaghetti With Caramelized Onions and Herbs
Except perhaps for the fresh herbs, you probably have all the necessary ingredients to make this incredibly flavorful, easy pasta. The caramelized onions add sweetness to the salty olives and Parmesan, while red chile and garlic make the dish's flavors pungent and deep. A squeeze of fresh lemon right at the end brightens everything, adding a mild tang. Feel free to play around with the basic formula, swapping capers or even a small tin of sardines or tuna for olives, vinegar for the lemon, arugula or spinach for the parsley, and other cheeses (feta or pecorino) for the Parmesan.
Spiced Potted Shrimp
In the history of British cuisine, potting perishable foods — that is, sealing ingredients in a crock under a thin layer of clarified butter — was a way to preserve them. Thanks to modern refrigeration, preservation is no longer the point, but luscious, buttery potted dishes are still popular throughout Britain. Here, diced shrimp are aggressively seasoned with anchovy, celery seed, lemon zest and garlic before being sealed into ramekins. Potted shrimp is a very rich dish, best served in small quantities with hot toast on the side to melt the solidified butter back into a creamy sauce. Or, scoop out the shrimp and butter and mix it with hot pasta to create an instant scampi-like dish.
Maureen Abood’s Eggplant With Lamb, Tomato and Pine Nuts
With its layers of golden eggplant, cinnamon-scented lamb, and sweet tomato sauce topped with melted cheese, this traditional Lebanese dish is made for celebratory meals and gatherings. Even better, it’s just as good served warm or room temperature as it is hot from the oven. It also reheats well, meaning that you can bake it the day before, and reheat it before serving if you like. Pull it out of the refrigerator, let it come to room temperature for an hour, then reheat it covered for about 40 minutes at 350 degrees.
Cherry Lemonade
Four-Cheese Macaroni and Cheese
Mascarpone, Brie, cream cheese and Parmesan yield the most velvety macaroni and cheese imaginable. This is perfect for a wintry dinner, with a green salad on the side, or as a partner to a golden roast chicken.
Leek and Spring Onion Gratin
Lighter than a potato gratin, but still luscious from heavy cream and cheese, this allium-rich dish has a crunchy bread crumb and anchovy topping to take it over the top. If you can’t find spring onions — newly harvested onions often sold with the green stems still attached — use regular onions or shallots. Or try red onions for a shot of bright color among the soft greens and golds in the pan. Serve this as a side dish with grilled or roasted meats or fish.
Seared Herb-Marinated Chicken
Pungent from the fish sauce and garlic, sweet and sour from the honey and lime, and spicy from the jalapeño, the Houston chef Chris Shepherd likes to serve these golden-skinned chicken thighs with a green papaya salad. But anything crunchy and coleslaw-like will fare just as well. The longer you marinate the thighs, the more complex they become; four hours is a bare minimum. If you’d like to use white meat, choose bone-in, skin-on breasts for the juiciest result.
Cherry Sherry Cobbler
Sesame Braised Chicken With Scallions, Daikon and Mushrooms
On a search for a nontraditional take on chicken in a pot in 2012, Melissa Clark was hoping for something that avoided the flavors and “seasonings inherent in Continental cuisine” — white wine, leeks, bacon. She found an answer in this recipe, which relies on dry sherry, soy sauce and star-anise-infused sesame oil as its braising liquid. Daikon and shiitake mushrooms soak up the liquid and soften under its weight. Be sure to brown the bird, too. It won't crisp the skin, but it does add depth of flavor.
Roasted Fish With Spice Butter and Tomatoes
You can use any savory spice blend in this easy dinner — anything from garam masala to za’atar, baharat or Chinese five spice. If you have a very fresh blend with loads of flavor, use just 1 teaspoon. But if your blend has been sitting in the cabinet since, well, you can’t quite remember, feel free to use a bit more. Serve this with rice or crusty bread to catch all the spicy, buttery juices.
Pan-Roasted Cauliflower With Kale Pesto and Feta
Searing cauliflower in a skillet instead of roasting it in the oven gives it a deeply caramelized exterior, but allows the interior to remain firm and a little crisp. Here, the cauliflower is served on a lemony slick of kale pesto and topped with plenty of herbs and feta. A sprinkle of chile flakes adds heat, while a dash of colatura (an Italian version of fish sauce) or Asian fish sauce gives everything a salty, funky depth. It makes for a particularly complex and sophisticated appetizer or side dish, or even a light main course if you add some crusty bread or grains. The recipe is adapted from the chef Omar Koreitem, who owns the Paris restaurant and cafe Mokonuts with his wife, the pastry chef Moko Hirayama.
Charred Shallots With Labneh and Pita
The flavor of roasted caramelized onions is a universal favorite that add sweetness and depth to countless recipes. When grilled, the onions — and in this case shallots — take on a smoky char as well. Here, they are served on top of thick labneh (strained Middle Eastern yogurt) to be eaten as a side or an unusual dip with grilled pita. This recipe calls for grilling the shallots slowly over indirect heat, giving them plenty of time to soften, brown and absorb the smoke. Or you can use the oven instead if need be, but you won't get that smoky flavor.
Pouring Ribbons’ Sidecar
In the hands of a great mixologist, simple syrup can add a lot more than just sweetness to the mix, and it is the secret to this delicious sidecar. Joaquín Simó of Pouring Ribbons, an East Village bar, uses a concentrated concoction made from two parts Demerara sugar to one part water, which add a compelling toffee-like taste and silky texture to the amber booze. Brown-sugar simple syrups are also wonderful in nonalcoholic drinks, particularly lemonade and ice tea, and they will last for months in the fridge.
Pear and Sour Cherry Brown Betty With Brandy Hard Sauce
Most brown betties are made with sweetened apple slices. To mix things up a bit, I made mine with pears, and threw in some brandy-soaked dried cherries to accentuate the brandy I’d used to season the hard sauce. As soon as the pear betty emerges from the oven, spooned out a portion and cover it with lumps of hard sauce. The sauce melts on contact, dripping goodness into the fruit and soaking into the crevices of the toasted bread topping.
Grilled Shrimp and Eggplant With Fish Sauce and Mint
The nuoc mam brings out the saline character of the shrimp and seems to heighten the sweetness of the eggplant, while the garlic adds its sharp bite, and the mint a cool freshness.
Green Beans With Mustard Seeds, Cashews and Coconut
This fragrant, deeply flavored green bean dish works as an intense side dish for a simple meal or as a meatless main course in its own right. Take care when adding the mustard seeds to the skillet — they can pop and jump out of the pan as they heat, so stand back. If you can’t find large flakes of dried coconut (also sometimes called chips), you can substitute shredded coconut, as long as it’s unsweetened. But ground coconut will be too fine to add the necessary texture.
Pork Tenderloin Stuffed With Herbs and Capers
Pork tenderloin is a lean cut that can easily dry out. But stuffing it with herbs, shallots and capers helps keep it nice and juicy as it roasts in a hot oven, and tying up the meat so it’s the same thickness all over helps it cook evenly. After the pork is roasted, the drippings are simmered with orange juice, garlic and a little wine to make a quick, gently sweet pan sauce that goes wonderfully well with the meat. Serve with polenta, crusty bread or rice to soak up the sauce.
Schmaltz Latkes
Frying latkes in schmaltz — rendered poultry fat — is the traditional Ashkenazi method, what Central and Eastern European Jews typically did before assimilating in America. It makes for an exceptional latke: crisp-edged and deeply flavored, with a nutty, rich flavor that’s much more complex than if you fry them in flavorless vegetable oil. For the best results, make the batter for these just before frying and serve immediately. Also keep in mind that serving these with the optional sour cream or yogurt makes them unsuitable to anyone keeping kosher. If you’re making schmaltz from scratch for this recipe, do use the onion; it adds a lovely caramelized sweetness to the mix. The gribenes, which are the crispy bits of chicken skin that fry in the rendered fat, make an excellent garnish. (They are usually strained out of store-bought schmaltz; if you don’t have them, just omit them here.)