Recipes By Sam Sifton
385 recipes found
Glazed Lamb Ribs
This is a recipe loosely based on one for a snack that used to be served at DBGB, Daniel Boulud’s giddy sausage-and-beer restaurant on the Bowery in Manhattan: crunchy little nuggets of small-boned lamb breast served with a pale yogurt sauce with a mild pepper kick under a zing of lemon zest. You can divide the cooking in two if you like, roasting the meat on one day, then finishing it on a grill or under a broiler a day or so later. And you can bail on the sprinkle if it's too much work. But not the glaze and not the yogurt! (Here's the recipe.)
Lucky Peach Lamb Burgers
Peter Meehan developed this dish for Lucky Peach's cookbook, "101 Easy Asian Recipes." I make it on a flat-top griddle set over a grill, but the method works equally well on your kitchen stove. The burgers are a take on a dish served in Xi’an, the capital city of Shaanxi province in northwestern China, at the easternmost terminus of the Silk Road. Cumin and chile, along with some Sichuan peppercorns if you can find them, bring a bright funkiness to ground lamb, which crisps up beautifully on top of a bed of sautéed red onion and jalapeño pepper. Put the patties into potato buns, and serve under a spray of cilantro leaves. It's a meal you could cook twice a month for the better part of a year.
Cheater’s Brisket
Urban life makes true barbecue difficult, so grill this brisket over wood chips for the better part of an hour at home, then wrap the meat tightly in foil for an overnight run in the oven.
Grilled Pork and Peaches
Here is a simple dinner you could cook on a pancake griddle set on the grate above a fire pit or grill in someone’s backyard, as if performing a magic trick. The result is a plate of thick, luscious pork with a deep, burnished crust, redolent of garlic and rosemary, and a sunset of soft, smoky peaches nutty with brown butter. The technique is what Francis Mallmann, the Latin American chef who developed the recipe and is its most refined and stylish practitioner, calls “the uncertain edge of burnt.” It requires patience and keen observation. What you are looking for on the edges of the meat and fruit is color: a deep, dark brown that is almost black — a black without bitter, a burn that is not burned.
Savory Burmese Slaw
Fermented tea leaves are one of Myanmar’s favorite national ingredients, and for a 2015 article in The Times, the San Antonio chef Quealy Watson used them to provide a jolt of big flavor to a crunchy slaw that goes well with barbecued or grilled meats. You can find fermented tea leaves in some Asian markets and online, occasionally sold as Burmese tea salad dressing.
Simple Grilled Lamb Chops
Daniel Boulud’s Chicken Tagine
This recipe for an elegant North African stew comes out of the kitchen of Boulud Sud, Daniel Boulud’s sophisticated Mediterranean French restaurant in New York. It is a dish steeped in the flavors of North Africa, but also of France. Chicken serves as the protein, bathed in a blend of North African spices — cinnamon and coriander, turmeric, ginger powder and cardamom — combined with tomatoes, saffron and a little stock. Preserved lemons and olives added at the end provide bite. Tagines are often cooked with root vegetables and dried fruits. Boulud, who famously grew up on a farm, in Lyon, uses cauliflower. ‘‘It is maybe a little more French approach to the tagine,’’ he said. Blanching the cauliflower and tomatoes before cooking them may cause some cooks to blanch themselves. But the effort is worth it.
Rishia Zimmern’s Chicken With Shallots
Here is a simple, excellent one-pot recipe for a midweek feast, full of rich flavor, with a sauce that you won't want to waste. It came to The Times in 2014 via the Twitter account of Andrew Zimmern, the chef and globe-trotting television personality who thrills to home cooking when he's not at work, which is not often. His then wife, Rishia Zimmern, adapted it from Martha Stewart, and he put it on the social network: “Brown 8 thighs, 3 C shallots. Add wine, tarragon, Dijon, sim 30 min covered. Remove lid, reduce. Add 2C cut cherry toms.” We’ve been messing around with that ever since, and thrill to its flavor. Lay in bread to accompany it, and sop up the sauce.
Butter Chicken
Butter chicken is a great, ever-evolving, cross-continental dish found in Delhi, London, New York, Perth and most points in between. In its purest form, it is yogurt-and-spice-marinated chicken dressed in a velvety red bath comprising butter, onions, ginger and tomatoes scented with garam masala, cumin and turmeric, with a cinnamon tang. This version was adapted from Amandeep Sharma, a young kitchen hand at the restaurant Attica, in Melbourne, Australia, who used to make it for staff meal. It is wildly luxurious. Serve with basmati rice and mango chutney, with papadums or naan if you can find them, with extra rice if you cannot.
Slab-Bacon Tacos With Burned-Scallion Crema
This is candied bacon, essentially, on corn tortillas with a creamy, smoke-flecked sauce that tastes of scallion and lime. I like it with pineapple salsa as well, and a salad of cilantro, mint and soft lettuce. You could make it with your standard sliced bacon from the market, but it’s far superior with the thick-cut variety or, best of all, with a chunk of uncut bacon that you can slice as thick as you like.
Tomato and Watermelon Salad
Summer in a bowl: salty and sweet, with a hint of acidity. Make it with the best tomatoes you can find, a cold watermelon, less dressing than you would think and, if you can find it, Bulgarian feta.
Chicken-Fried Steak With Queso Gravy
Here’s an Americanized taste of the schnitzel brought to Texas by German immigrants in the 19th century, with a Tex-Mexified twist. Instead of serving the fried steaks with a peppery cream gravy, I’ve followed the teachings of Lisa Fain, who writes the "Homesick Texan" blog and is the author of "Queso! Regional Recipes for the World's Favorite Chile-Cheese Dip," and applied a queso gravy instead – the cheese cut with milk, infused with onion, jalapeño and cumin, and stabilized with a little cornstarch. It’s rich eating, to be sure, but as a result I’ve cut the portion size of the meat down to a mere quarter-pound per person. I like some pico de gallo on top, so there are some raw vegetables above the cheese, and mashed potatoes on the side because that’s how chicken-fried steak is served in Texas, whatever’s on top of the meat.
Lobster Risotto
So you cooked some lobster and that was great. You sautéed the empty shells in oil and cooked them off in a lot of water with an onion, a couple bay leaves and a few peppercorns, and made stock. This is as it should be, always. Lobster is expensive. Make its flavors last. And when you are ready, make this risotto. Heat the stock in a pot. Melt butter in a heavy saucepan next to it, add onions and cook them translucent, salt the whole and add Arborio rice, then stir to combine. Now start adding hot broth to the rice, a cup at a time, stirring endlessly all the while, never adding more stock until everything you have added has been absorbed. When everything is tender and creamy, add Parmesan and any leftover lobster meat you happen to have. If the answer is none, do not worry in the least. This is a rich risotto without meat, luxury eating on the cheap.
Steak Mock Frites
There is no better, more reliable restaurant dish than steak frites. It is perhaps America's favorite French food, a cheeseburger deluxe recast for date nights, celebrations, feasts. Few make the dish at home, though: The frites are too labor-intensive for all but the most project-oriented cooks. Here, then, is a recipe to fake out the fries, one that will take even a relatively neophyte home cook little more than an hour to make. The aim is great steak, a delicious sauce of maître d'hôtel butter, and potatoes with a terrific quality of French fry-ness, supreme crispness, with soft and creamy flesh within. (Here's a video to get you started on how to cook the perfect steak at home.)
Ashkinaze Rib-Eye
This rub comes from Alan Ashkinaze, the longtime chef de cuisine for Laurent Manrique, a celebrity chef of sorts. Steak, in Mr. Ashkinaze’s view, is crucial to the enjoyment of a grilled salad. And by steak, he means rib-eye, thick cut, on the bone. “I put a rub on it,” he said. “Cooking at home, over a charcoal fire, I want to have some spice and sugar to help make a crust.” He mixes sugar and salt, paprika and ancho-chile powder, tamps it all down with cumin, celery seeds, a little faux-Southern onion and garlic powder to create a mixture that manages not to obscure the meat’s beefiness but somehow to intensify it.
Canlis Salad
Canlis, a longtime Seattle institution, floats high above Lake Union. A menu highlight is the Canlis salad, which is in some measure a basic steakhouse salad: chopped romaine with bacon and croutons and cherry tomatoes, all cloaked in a thick, lemony dressing that recalls Caesar (you all did love him once, and not without cause). But a strong scent of the Middle East flows through it as well, courtesy of the Canlis clan’s roots in Greece and Lebanon, with heaps of chopped mint and oregano mixed in with the greens. These combine with the bright, eggy taste of the dressing to elevate the entirety far beyond the confines of a salad to be eaten simply with meat and potatoes. A Canlis salad, properly prepared, is a revelation.
Bulgogi Sliders With Scallion Salsa
Here is a sandwich version of the Korean barbecue standard known as bulgogi — “fire meat,” is the literal translation — and a taste of the sort of home cooking that can lead to more home cooking. It serves as a fragrant hamburger crusher, an elegant vanquisher of pizza. It is an enemy of takeout. I learned the recipe from Hooni Kim, the chef and owner of Danji, on the edge of the theater district in Manhattan, where bulgogi “sliders” are a hallmark of the menu and by far the restaurant’s most popular dish. It’s been adapted for use in the home.
Coke-Brined Fried Chicken
John Currence, of City Grocery in Oxford, Miss., spent a long time in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit, and was justly celebrated for his hard work there helping to rebuild a cathedral of Southern fried chicken, Willie Mae’s Scotch House. In his 2013 cookbook, “Pickles, Pigs and Whiskey,” Currence paid tribute to the wet batter used on Willie Mae’s legendary dish. But for the purpose of weekend chicken warriors we have omitted it in our adaptation of his homage, concentrating instead on Currence’s use of a Coke-based poultry brine that not only adds some sweetness to the chicken thighs he uses but mildly tenderizes them along the way. Let the meat sit in the brine for a few hours before using, but not so long as overnight, where it really begins to break down. Then dry the thighs, dredge them in seasoned flour, and fry in peanut oil, ideally enhanced by lard. The result is mahogany-brown chicken with a crisp crust and a luscious interior.
Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Here’s a simple, foolproof way to prepare brussels sprouts: Toss with a little olive oil or bacon fat, salt and pepper and roast until tender inside and crisp outside. Finish with a little red-pepper flakes or a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, if you'd like. This recipe serves two, but it doubles or triples easily.
Whole-Roasted Stuffed Delicata Squash
Here is a vegetarian dinner course of impressive size and heft, to rival any stuffed chicken, turkey or loin of pork. The interior is a riff on a kale salad run through with croutons, dried cranberries, blue cheese and a spray of maple-scented pecans that complement the sweet flesh of the squash. You could use small sugar pumpkins for the main event, or really any sweet-fleshed winter squash, but delicata squash is our favorite option for reasons of taste and beauty. Unless you are serving it as a side dish, avoid the temptation to cut the squash vertically, to create boats for the stuffing. Boats are for side dishes. They are halves of a whole. For a main course, serve a squash per person, standing tall on each plate.
Bobby Flay’s Salted Caramel Sauce
Make a batch of this sauce before guests come to dinner, keep it warm in the oven while they eat, then spoon it over vanilla ice cream for dessert: That’s a win. Or make it in the morning and pair it with pancakes. Mr. Flay, the voluble chef and television star, pairs it with double-chocolate pancakes. That is a very serious business.
St. Anselm’s Iceberg Wedge Salad
This wedge salad, adorned with blue cheese and warm bacon vinaigrette, is served at the restaurant St. Anselm in Brooklyn. The revelatory vinaigrette is actually a roux made with bacon fat, then thinned with cider vinegar and water, a hit of sugar and another of Dijon mustard. It is superb, and it would not be out of place drizzled over grilled asparagus, accompanied by chopped hard-boiled eggs.
Green and White Pizza
Topping a freshly cooked pizza with a freshly dressed salad of baby greens is a marvelous weeknight meal even if you order the pizza from down the street. But making your own, as The Times learned from the pizza mavens at Roberta’s in Brooklyn, from whom we acquired this recipe, delivers even greater pleasures. Any young greens may be substituted for the arugula.
Pan-Roasted Chicken in Cream Sauce
This recipe is an adaptation of a dish the chef Angie Mar served at the Beatrice Inn in Manhattan, the chicken crisped in a pan, then napped in a Madeira-laced cream sauce dotted with morels. Which sounds fancy and hard to make but isn't, really. Brown the chicken, and set it aside to rest. Cook the morels in the remaining fat — you could swap them out for another wild mushroom or even button mushrooms in a pinch — and then flash them with Cognac, which you'll find will come in handy again and again once you start cooking with it. (Try it on steak au poivre!) Then build up a sauce with cream and a little butter and crème fraîche for gloss, get the chicken into it and add some fresh savory and tarragon at the end — or just one of those, or neither. Make the dish as you prefer or as you can. It's luxurious, every time.