Recipes By Sam Sifton
385 recipes found
Celebration Cake
This cake, which was developed by the British-Israeli chef Yotam Ottolenghi, may not look perfect. You may end up with cracked layers, roughly cut edges and a white-chocolate ganache spread willy-nilly. “I think it’s best if it is superrustic,” Ottolenghi said. But it will be elegant anyway, the astonishingly good result of care and time spent in the kitchen for loved ones, and the flavors are terrific.
Chile-Crusted Black Sea Bass
This recipe came to The Times from the chef Kerry Heffernan, who developed it after an afternoon fishing off Long Island for striped bass but catching black sea bass instead. It was refined in his kitchen in Sag Harbor, then taken back to Brooklyn for further work. It results in fillets of marvelous, flaky simplicity, with a blistering crust that intensifies the sweetness of the fish. White rice and a tangle of sautéed greens are excellent accompaniments, along with a glass of bracing white wine.
Tourtière
This savory French-Canadian meat pie combines ground pork and warm spices with chunks of braised pork shoulder and shreds of chicken or turkey. But you could make it with leftover brisket, with venison, with smoked goose or ham. Traditionally it is served with relish or tart, fruity ketchup — I like this recipe for cranberry ketchup best, though I use a splash of fresh orange juice instead of the concentrate it calls for. “I’ve never had a slice of tourtière and spoonful of ketchup and not liked it,” David McMillan, the bearish chef and an owner of Joe Beef in the Little Burgundy section of Montreal, told me. “I especially love a tourtière made by someone who can’t really cook.”
Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem Lamb Shawarma
The British-by-way-of-Jerusalem chef Yotam Ottolenghi cooked this recipe as part of what he called “a Middle Eastern take on a proper English garden party.” He raises high the street-meat ideal of shawarma, resulting in a deeply flavored cut of lamb. The lamb would ideally meet the spice mix the day before it is cooked, so it takes some time, but not much work. The first 11 ingredients, known as Lebanese spice mix, make a versatile mixture that can be used to marinate fish, meat or vegetables.
Cantonese-Style Turkey
This turkey, inspired by the flavors of Cantonese cooking, is roasted beneath a rich glaze of fermented soybean paste, garlic, ginger, soy sauce and alliums galore, then served with roasted potatoes basted in the sauce and drippings of the bird. It came to The Times from Dr. Carolyn Ling, a physician in Carmel, Ind., whose grandfather came to the United States in the late 19th century from southern China and set up an import-export firm in Manhattan. Her grandfather, Dr. Ling told me, also had “interests in restaurants.” Those interests played a big role in the Ling family’s early Thanksgiving feasts: They ate takeout. Dr. Ling’s father loved those meals. When Dr. Ling was young, she said, her father urged her mother, a passionate home cook and reader of Gourmet, to emulate them in her holiday cooking at home in Forest Hills, Queens. The result is remarkably easy to prepare, phenomenally juicy, and rich, Dr. Ling said, “with the umami of soy and turkey fat.”
Ina Garten’s Make-Ahead Coquilles St.-Jacques
Here is an easy version of coquilles St.-Jacques, the classic French preparation of scallops in a creamy sauce, under a crust of bread crumbs and cheese. It comes from Ina Garten, the celebrated cookbook author and television star, who has been cooking it for dinner parties, she told The Times, practically since the start of her marriage to Jeffrey Garten in 1968. It makes for a beautiful entree that matches well with a green salad, flinty white wine and good conversation. It can be made the day before serving and heated through in an oven while guests gather. “A lot of dishes taste better after they sit for a while,” Garten said. With its whisper of curry powder in the rich, unctuous sauce, this is one of them. You can make it in a casserole, but little gratin dishes are better and come in handy far more often than you might think. One per guest.
Cucumber-and-Mâche Salad
This delicate salad, from the chef Yotam Ottolenghi, is redolent with spring flavors. Do not dress it until just before it reaches the table, and if mâche is not available, try purslane.
Family-Meal Fish Tacos
This is a fast, satisfying fish dinner with Cajun flavors. Chad Shaner cooked it for staff meals when he was a line cook at Union Square Cafe in Manhattan. It was, he said shyly when The Times talked to him in 2013, one of the restaurant staff's favorites. “Everyone loves taco day,” he said. The recipe is not particularly Mexican. Shaner hails from Smyrna, Del., and served in the Navy before he went to cooking school. He makes a forceful kind of American food that borrows its flavors from wherever they are strongest. His fish tacos, he said, are something he cooked up one night with his brother, Andy, a bartender. “We were looking for intense flavor,” he said of the Cajun-style rub they used on the fish.
Turkey Meatloaf
This is a recipe that helps explain the Twitter-era term "humblebrag." I made it for the celebrated writer and filmmaker Nora Ephron after a different recipe resulted in a disaster and I had to discard the result with only a few hours before my dinner with -- did I mention? -- Nora Ephron. It derives from a meatball dish once cooked by the chef Mark Ladner at the restaurant Lupa in Manhattan, and published as a recipe in Details magazine in the early years of the century. I scaled it up over the years, increasing some spices here and there, lessening others, until I had what I thought to be a pretty terrific meatloaf. But don't take my word for it. “This is remarkable,” Ms. Ephron told me. I'm bragging about it still.
Bobby Flay’s Pan-Roasted Chicken With Mint Sauce
Bobby Flay served a version of this chicken at Bolo, the elegant little jewel box of a restaurant he had on 22nd Street until 2007, when the building that housed it was sold. It came pan-roasted beneath a blanket of what Flay called Spanish spices, with a vibrant green mint sauce rich with chiles, honey, salt and mustard. The dish was one of the restaurant’s best sellers. I ate it about 3,000 times there before getting the recipe and adapting it for those of us who cook at home. Of course you can make the exact same dish with chicken thighs if you want. But some will prefer the breast meat. Some always have.
Beef With Farro, Egg, Kimchi Purée and Broccoli
Houseman's Roasted-Squash Salad
At Houseman, the restaurant Ned Baldwin and Adam Baumgart opened in the Hudson Square neighborhood of Manhattan in 2014, you’ll find this astonishing salad made with red kabocha squash. But the more easily found green kabocha works beautifully in the recipe, as does buttercup squash and sugar pumpkin. For the dressing, some confidence is required. What seems an enormous amount of dried spices — ground fennel, sumac and coriander — is combined with chopped parsley and cilantro. The result looks dry and grainy, as if something is wrong. But olive oil, lime juice and white-wine vinegar (best available, please!) begin to smooth things out, and the cheese, pistachios and vinegar-plumped currants finish the job. The combination makes a fine vegetarian main-course lunch or dinner, particularly paired with braised greens and good bread.
Pork Gyros
This lemon-bright and paprika-dusted pita filling is based on memories of the gyros served at Kalimera Souvlaki Art in Melbourne, Australia, one of the best Greek restaurants in a city that supports a great number of them. I've cooked it here in the oven, but the preparation would take well to the grill. However you prepare it, serve the crisped meat with warm pita, cucumbers, tomatoes and onion, tzatziki sauce, hot sauce, French fries, mint leaves, really whatever you like.
Kalpudding (Meatloaf With Caramelized Cabbage)
This Swedish version of a dish with roots in the Ottoman Empire is served here with lingonberry preserves cut with vinegar and Worcestershire sauce, and made velvet with butter. The dish goes beautifully with boiled potatoes. In Sweden, you’d use golden syrup to caramelize the cabbage, but molasses works just as well. The Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson told me the result is no less Nordic for the substitution. “Cabbage smells in a very special way when it almost burns,” he said. “It gets savory, almost like a beef stock. It tastes almost brown and umami yummy.” You’ll want to eat it right away, but the leftovers make for a fine sandwich in coming days.
Baby Bok Choy With Oyster Sauce
This is among the easiest, most flavorful preparations of greens imaginable, and it pairs beautifully with almost any vaguely Asian roasted meat or fish. It is also exceptional on its own, with rice. You could swap out the bok choy for broccoli, if that's all you have, or chard, or beet greens.
Arroz Con Leche
This recipe for arroz con leche came to us from Veronica Garcia of Houston. The original came from her maternal grandmother, but Ms. Garcia has since made a few adjustments: a little less sugar, a split vanilla bean and no raisins. But she still soaks and rinses the rice two times, making it a little lighter than a traditional rice pudding.
Roast-Beef Hash
Rau Ram Pico de Gallo
Pico de gallo is a fresh salsa deployed all over Mexico: raw onion and tomato with cilantro, serrano peppers, lime juice and salt. The San Antonio chef Quealy Watson uses the Vietnamese cilantro known as rau ram as an additional ingredient, along with fish sauce, which gives the salsa an earthy, flavorful bounce. ‘‘No Mexican grandmother I’ve ever cooked with has ever had a recipe for pico de gallo,’’ Watson told The Times in 2015. ‘‘They just taste as they go.’’ It’s the same principle here, which yields an excellent salsa to serve with fish tacos or barbecued meats.
South Texas BBQ Duck
This is a remarkably straightforward way of cooking a duck and results in powerfully smoky and salty-sweet meat. The recipe came to The Times in 2015 via the San Antonio chef Quealy Watson, who cooked it in a smoker filled with small logs of mesquite. You could make do with a grill if you kept one side of it entirely free of coals and placed the duck away from the flames. Straight kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper can be used in place of the Lawry’s.
Enchiladas Con Carne
There are a few cool tricks to this recipe, one of which I picked up from an old issue of Bon Appétit, one I learned from Robb Walsh, the great Tex-Mex scholar and restaurateur who runs El Real Tex-Mex in Houston, and a final one I learned by happenstance. First, for the thickening agent in the chile sauce, toast raw all-purpose flour in a pan until it is nutty and golden brown, then reserve it to stir in with the browned beef later in the recipe. Second, if you like truly melty cheese in the classic Tex-Mex tradition, use a mixture of American cheese, like Velveeta, with the Cheddar you use inside and on top of the finished enchiladas. Finally, if you’re fearful that a casserole of cheese, chili and fried tortillas may be a little rich for dinner, serve it with a bowl of tomatillo pineapple salsa on the side. The acidity provides a nice balance. (Note also that as with all recipes, but particularly this one, some planning and practice can get the preparation down to 60 minutes.)
Quealy Watson’s Cabrito
Barbecued baby goat is a specialty of South Texas, where The Times traveled in 2015 to see the chef Quealy Watson cook it in mesquite smoke under a spray of dried avocado leaves, which gave the meat a faint scent of anise. You could make this dish with a single goat leg or a pork butt or even a brisket. The idea is simply to get a lot of smoke on the meat, then wrap it and allow it to steam slowly into perfection over time. Serve over brown paper on a big table with lots of tortillas and salsas: Tear away what you need for a taco, then repeat.
Clam-Chowder Pizza
The clam pizza is thought to have been born in New Haven at Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana, in the middle of the last century, and has since made its way south to New York City. My recipe honors no one particular preparation but does pay homage to the clam pan roasts of the Grand Central Oyster Bar. It uses as sauce the building blocks of a classic clam chowder — alliums slowly fried with bacon, then infused with clam juice and wine, reduced to a glaze and thickened with cream — and tops it with chopped clams, lemon zest and a spray of hot pepper flakes. This makes for a heavy pie. If you’re having a hard time moving it around on the pizza peel before baking, place a sheet of parchment paper beneath the dough, which will help when you slide the pie to the hot surface of the baking stone in the oven.
The Best Clam Chowder
This is a basic New England clam chowder, though with leeks used in place of the traditional onions, and a splash of wine to add a floral note. Also: thyme. Very continental! It is shockingly delicious and deserves its title as best. Bacon will add a smoky note to the stew. If you use it, it may be worth it to go the whole distance and get expensive double-smoked bacon instead of the standard supermarket fare. The salt pork, which is not smoked, will take the meal in the opposite direction, emphasizing the pure flavor of the clams.
Crisp Lamb With Yogurt and Scallions
Here, a lamb breast cooked into tender excellence in the oven, under a sheet of aluminum foil, its skin rubbed with garlic, rosemary and mint. The result is cooled, its flavors concentrating overnight. To serve, the home cook cuts the meat from the bone, then sears it. The crisp surface of the meat gives way to soft, luscious lamb within, strong-flavored and salty-sweet. Citrus-flecked yogurt only slightly thinned by olive oil provides cool contrast, its creamy brightness melting against the flesh. Wilted scallions add a vegetal note, slightly acid, percussion in a love song.