Recipes By Melissa Clark
1479 recipes found
Kasha Pilaf
Serve this pilaf with braised veal shanks.
Kabocha Squash Pie
Gluten-Free Banana Cream Pie
Coconut Poached Black Bass
Potato, Sage and Lemon Zest Focaccia
There are a lot of focaccia styles out there. There are thick and fluffy ones, loaded with toppings, and crispy, oily ones with a minimalist sprinkle of salt. Then there’s everything in between. I decided to stick to this middle ground and bake up something that had crisp edges while still being light and soft in the center. Baking the focaccia in a cake pan, a trick I learned from the Los Angeles chef Nancy Silverton, does just that. It encourages the exterior of the loaf to turn crunchy as it absorbs heat from the sides of the pan, while allowing the dough to rise nicely in the middle. A cake pan also made for a nice-looking, gently domed loaf, more evenly shaped than the flatter, hand-pressed focaccias I’ve made in the past.
White Bean and Fennel Dip
This velvety smooth white bean dip is made from whipped toasted fennel seeds and fragrant dark green fennel fronds. Use slivers of the fennel bulb to scoop it up, and serve it with a rye- and fennel-flavored cocktail called the Golden Bowl. One large, feathery fennel should suffice for both cocktails and dip.
Blood-Orange Curd
This citrus curd is a component of the pastry chef Claudia Fleming's meringue-topped blood-orange curd cake, but you could make it on its own for a festive spread for layer or pound cakes or scones. The curd will keep, refrigerated, for a few days.
Roasted Rabbit With Olives and Feta
Rabbit is mild and just a little earthy tasting, with silky meat that stays moist if you take care not to overcook it. Here it’s quickly roasted with olives, lemon and feta cheese, which melts into a creamy pan sauce to spoon on top. Try to find French feta, which is softer and mellower than its assertive Greek and Bulgarian cousins. While the recipe calls for white wine, you can also make this dish with a light-bodied red. Serve it with crusty bread for scooping up the good, savory sauce.And if you must, yes, you can substitute chicken for the rabbit. Just increase the roasting time, before you add the feta, by 10 minutes.
Soft-Shell Crab Crostini With Arugula Butter
For easy weeknight meals, I dry my cleaned crabs thoroughly so they don’t steam, then sauté them in plenty of butter or oil. You could use a breading like flour or cornmeal to augment the crunch factor, but it also impedes the sweetness of the meat. And good crabs don’t really need it. The trick is to know when to take them off the heat. As soon as they turn from gray-brown to rust and white, the texture goes from soft to taut and they are ready. Soft-shell crabs don’t need much adornment; a squirt of citrus and some freshly ground black pepper offset the funky sea flavor beautifully. But a little garlic and something green and sprightly (here, a combination of arugula and chives) can make them even better.
Soft-Shell Crab Toast
Broiling is perhaps the easiest way to cook soft shell crabs. All you do is oil up the crabs, lay them on a baking sheet and broil them until crisp and bronzed on both sides — under 10 minutes. It's also one of the tastiest ways to cook them: their edges crisp and char while their bellies swell with sweet, saline juices. Here, the broiled crabs are laid on toast and served as open-faced sandwiches. The toast absorbs the crab juices and also heightens the crunch. If you're pressed for time, or if you're a purist, you can skip the parsley jalapeño sauce. A lemon wedge is all you really need to bring out the sweetness of the crab.
Scaloppine With Any Meat
You can use any kind of meat to make these dead-simple scaloppine – veal, turkey, chicken, pork, even beef if you can find pieces thin enough. Cook them quickly in butter over high heat, then turn those buttery pan drippings into your sauce, seasoning it with garlic and a squeeze of lemon or lime. This needs no further embellishment. But a handful of capers, sliced olives, chopped fresh herbs or toasted sliced almonds warmed in the butter at the last minute wouldn’t do any harm, either.
Shrimp With Creamed Corn and Feta
Fresh summer corn kernels, simmered with feta cheese and a little cream, make a buttery bed for shrimp sautéed in a tomato and bell pepper sauce. Think of it as a lighter, sweeter and wholly inauthentic take on shrimp and grits. If you crave this out of corn season, feel free to use frozen kernels instead.
Sweet Potatoes With Mustard Sauce
Perfumed with fresh thyme sprigs and served with a piquant mustard-sour cream dressing, these baked sweet potatoes hit all the right notes – sweet and velvet fleshed, pleasantly tangy, and herbal. You can stir the sauce together several hours or even the day before, and leftovers will keep in the fridge for up to 3 days. Other herbs – rosemary, tarragon, sage – can fill in for thyme. (To make this recipe vegan, try substituting coconut yogurt or 1/4 cup olive oil for the sour cream.)
Dziriate
Butterscotch Scotch Eggnog
In this recipe, the smoky Scotch makes the eggnog more complex and gives it a savory taste, which goes nicely with the caramelized flavor of the brown sugar. If you’re wary of using raw eggs, here’s a version with a cooked custard base.
Brown Butter Cornbread With Farmer Cheese and Thyme
This skillet cornbread is one of the richest-tasting breads you’ll encounter, thanks to the addition of fragrant brown butter and farmer cheese.
Banana Pudding With Pistachio Crumble
This banana pudding is not the usual vanilla-wafer-topped affair, and it doesn’t come from the South. It came to The Times in 2013 from Fedora, a restaurant in Manhattan, and it is divine: a rich, creamy custard fragrant with puréed ripe banana, topped with lightly salted, crisp crumbles of pistachio butter cookie. It is also irresistible — sweet, creamy, salty, crunchy — and all too easy to lap up. The pudding and crumble can be made entirely in advance (up to three days), though don’t sprinkle the crumbs over the top until you're ready to serve. You want to maintain the crunch for as long as possible, and once the cookie meets the pudding, the countdown begins.
Turkey Ragù
Here, ground turkey is simmered with chopped tomatoes, red wine and pancetta into a rich and hearty meat sauce. Use dark meat if you can find it. It's more flavorful and richer than ground breast.
Pasta With Caramelized Onion, Swiss Chard and Garlicky Bread Crumbs
The warm, nutty flavor of good varieties of whole wheat pasta is robust enough to stand up to intense, complicated sauces, yet satisfying with just a little butter and Parmesan shaved over the top.
Chicken Curry With Sweet Potatoes and Coconut Milk
I used to think the only reason to buy a whole chicken was to actually cook it whole. Why buy one for a recipe calling for parts when the supermarket will cut up the bird for you? Then one day my mother set me straight. It’s one thing to buy a package of thighs or drumsticks when you need a specific part, but you might as well cut up your own bird if you need a variety. You can use your cut-up chicken to make this ginger-and-lime-scented curry with coconut milk, sweet potatoes and chiles. Or substitute your favorite part, be it wings or legs or bone-in breasts. The bright, spicy and gently sweet flavors work well with any pieces of fowl in the pot. When the chicken in this recipe is nearly done braising, you can fry up the liver, then coat it in some of the luscious sauce. If your mother is anything like mine, she’d be proud.
St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake
Legend has it that the St. Louis gooey butter cake originated by accident in the 1930s, when a baker mixed up the proportion of butter in one of his coffee cakes. Rather than throw it out, he sold it by the square, and the sugary, sticky confection was a hit. Naturally, a slice of gooey cake ends up next to — or in place of — the pumpkin pie at many a Missourian’s Thanksgiving table. Some bakers like to add pumpkin and spices to the gooey filling. Not so in this yeast-risen version from Molly Killeen, the St. Louis native behind Made by Molly, a dessert company in Brooklyn. Her recipe is soft-centered, crisp-edged and not too sweet. The leftovers are excellent for breakfast the next morning.
Mango-Rose Water Lassi
Cooked Butterscotch Scotch Eggnog
Swiss Chard
How to cook Swiss chard.