Recipes By Sam Sifton
385 recipes found
Yucatan Shrimp
This is a dinner to evoke deep summer, when the heat lies heavy even at dusk and humidity wraps you like a blanket: shrimp tossed in garlic butter made fiery with Indonesian sambal and jalapeño, cut by lime, fragrant with cilantro. It is a kind of scampi for the sun-kissed and sun-desirous alike, a vacation on a plate. Add a mojito and a couple of beers. The recipe comes out of southwest Florida, from Doc Ford’s Sanibel Rum Bar and Grille, a restaurant that sits off the road that runs slow and sultry along Sanibel Island toward Captiva, past the placid, russet waters of Tarpon Bay. Randy Wayne White, one of the owners, named the place after the fictional protagonist of his mystery novels. The air smells of salt and mangrove there, of tropical rot and fresh-cut grass. He graciously sent along a recipe, which we adapted for use at home, in 2010.
Roasted Sweet Potatoes With Smoked Paprika
This is a simple way to put an enormous amount of flavor on a plate, and it is particularly delicious with roast chicken — or as a side dish for slab-bacon tacos with burned scallion crema. (Drizzle a little of the crema onto the potatoes just before serving, as if to recall the aioli served with patatas bravas in Spain.) As always when using paprika, smoked or plain, if you can’t recall the last time you did so, it is time for a new jar. All spices go stale. Paprika does so quickly.
The Best Fried-Eggplant Sandwich
In the spring of 2016, my most favorite sandwich was fried eggplant, mozzarella and roast beef on an Italian hero, with hot peppers and a slash of mayonnaise. I adapted the recipe from a sandwich served at Defonte’s Sandwich Shop, on Columbia Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn. It is a beautiful torpedo of food, crunchy, silken, sweet and spicy all at once. You can certainly omit the roast beef to make it vegetarian or at any rate a little smaller, the sort of meal that offers satisfaction without hurting anyone, that delivers deliciousness at a lower cost to the body that consumes it. It is still a colossal feed. It is still the best sandwich.
Grilled Asparagus With Caper Salsa
Caprino fresco is a soft, tangy Italian goat cheese, and here, it lends a deep creaminess to a caper salsa that is draped over grilled asparagus. The recipe, from the chef Yotam Ottolenghi, is quickly prepared. Bread may be needed to sop up the rest of the salsa. (If caprino fresco isn’t available, try another soft goat cheese, like chèvre.)
Miso-Glazed Eggplant With a Bowl of Rice
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. You know how to make rice. For the rest of this dish, grab some small eggplants — the Japanese variety is a good option — and cut them on the bias into little steaks. Drizzle them with neutral oil and roast in a 400-degree oven for 20 minutes or so, turning them once or twice, until they’re soft. Then crank the oven to broil, and paint them with white miso that’s been cut with splashes of sesame oil and rice wine, a smaller splash of soy and a few grinds of black pepper. Let that get going until the skin begins to pop, then serve those little vegetarian flavor steaks over rice, with a spray of sesame seeds over the top. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Pasta With Chickpeas and a Negroni
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. A drink before dinner? Make a Negroni, then pasta with chickpeas and tomato sauce. First, the Negroni: one part gin, one part sweet vermouth, one part Campari, stirred with ice then strained over ice and garnished with orange peel. Sip! Then peel and chop an onion and sauté it in olive oil with a few cloves of smashed garlic and a spray of salt and pepper. Have another hit of Negroni. When the mixture has just started to brown, add a tablespoon of tomato paste and a 28-ounce can of chopped tomatoes, along with a stick of cinnamon. Stir and simmer away for 10 minutes or so, longer if you can, then add enough cream or half-and-half so that the sauce turns softer in color, running to pink. Meanwhile, boil some salted water and prepare your favorite pasta (I like shells for this application) until it is just al dente. Drain, then toss in a 14-ounce can of drained chickpeas and stir the whole thing into the tomato sauce, topping with chopped parsley and a sprinkle of red-pepper flakes. Finish that Negroni. Eat. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Curried Rice
I ate a version of this rice as an accompaniment to a few deep-fried paddles of Australian crab, sitting at the kitchen counter of Paul Carmichael’s excellent Momofuku Seiobo in Sydney. It tasted of a world far away, of Mr. Carmichael’s childhood in Barbados, in the Lesser Antilles, where influences of Africa, India, China and Britain combine in the food: the grains fried in butter scented with murky yellow curry powder, warm and fragrant, and flavored with fiery minced habanero and a salty punch of soy and oyster sauces. I sighed when I finished and asked for a recipe. I’ve been messing with it ever since. Please note: You’ll end up with more curry paste than you’ll need to season the rice, even if you season aggressively. Refrigerate the extra to make the dish a second time (it keeps well), or to enliven ground meat for a Caribbean-ish version of sloppy joes, even just to improve a bowl of instant ramen.
Sourdough No-Knead Bread
So you’ve brought a sourdough starter to life, or received one as a gift, or purchased one somewhere. You’ve fed it and watched it become bubbly and fragrant, with a light yeasty-boozy scent. Now it’s time to bake bread. An easy way to start is with this adaptation of the baker Jim Lahey’s storied recipe for no-knead bread, replacing commercial yeast with a little less than three-quarters of a cup of healthy, well-fed sourdough starter. Give the resulting dough a long, long rise and then plop it into a hot, enameled cast-iron pot with a lid. You’ll have an incredible loaf within the hour, and may well find yourself addicted to the smell, the taste and the process alike.
7Up Cake
I love a clandestine soda in the preparation of food, a flash of carbonation where the French might use wine, or brandy. It may be transgressive to say so, but I’m hardly alone, for all those who cringe at the thought. Page through church or community cookbooks and you’ll find examples: Coke-spiked Jell-O situations, root beer-glazed fillets of salmon, beans simmered in Moxie. This recipe for a lemon-and-lime soda cake came to me a while back from a Times reader who thought I’d appreciate it (I did!). She said she’d gotten it from a grandmother down south, who stored it on an index card placed in her copy of the cookbook published by the Symphony League of Jackson, Miss., in 1971. The original called for oleo and Crisco oil. I swapped these out for dairy and neutral oil, and a little less soda, and an additional 15 minutes in the oven. This leaves the cake toast-brown and glistening, glossy-crumbed and high-risen, a marvelous moist yellow within. I’m no shill for Big Soda. You could just as easily make it with plain sparkling water and a spritz of lemon or lime. You could make it with sparkling wine!
Tater Tot Casserole
I first ate this hot dish, a Midwestern favorite, on a late fall evening in the humid kitchen of the cook and television star Molly Yeh, at her farmhouse in Minnesota. The casserole accompanied venison, lefse and talk of the sugar beet harvest outside. I thrilled to the cream-beefy, umami-strong flavors that sat beneath its golden, cobbled exterior, and I loved the way the potatoes soaked up the gravy that pooled below the venison. You could substitute other ground meats for the beef, and other frozen vegetables for the peas or corn, but the tots are mandatory, and I do love the addition of cheese at the end.
Florida Lime Pie
Jane Nickerson was the food editor of The New York Times from 1942 until 1957, when she moved with her family to Lakeland, Fla. There, she eventually became food editor of The Ledger, in Lakeland, then owned by The Times. Her successor in New York was Craig Claiborne, whose star eclipsed hers for, among other things, systemic reasons we wrestle with still. But Ms. Nickerson was a hugely influential force in American home cooking, introducing ingredients and recipes from chefs and home cooks to a nation that met her first on a wartime footing and grew to find itself on a prosperous one. In Florida, she embraced local ingredients and foodways, and in 1973 published “Jane Nickerson’s Florida Cookbook,” an invaluable guide to the state’s appetizing abundance. Her lime pie is a little richer than the more well-known Key lime pie. I like that about it.
Guinness Pie
Beef in dark, silky gravy composed of fat and reduced stout, flecked with tender vegetables, covered in pastry: This is a dish that delivers good cheer and contentment in equal measure. We built it out of advice and instruction from the British chefs Jamie Oliver (the stew) and Fergus Henderson (the pastry). Eating it — salty and rich, buttoned with sweetness — will occasion thoughts of a coming walk or a nap on the couch with the dog. You’ll want some red wine to drink. It's awesome.
Cal Peternell’s Braised Chicken Legs
Here is a pleasant, delicious family meal adapted from the California chef Cal Peternell’s excellent home-cooking manifesto, “Twelve Recipes,” published in 2014 by HarperCollins. There are two steps to the process, which as Mr. Peternell points out can lead to endless improvisation. First, season the chicken and brown it well in a pan. Salt, pepper and flour are what’s called for in this basic recipe, but adding some paprika would be a delicious option, or some cumin, coriander, paprika and a dash of cinnamon and caraway for a scent of Morocco. Then, braise it in liquid — white wine for the classic, red wine for a coq-au-vin feel, or with beer, chicken stock or plain water. Mr. Peternell does his braising in the oven, but you could easily do it on the stovetop as well, simmering the chicken slowly beneath a lid. Pair with rice or boiled potatoes, with couscous, with big hunks of garlic bread.
Salt-and-Pepper Beef Ribs
These beef ribs are an adaptation of the ones the chef Kenny Callaghan used to serve at the restaurant Blue Smoke, in Manhattan. For best results, order the ribs ahead of time from a butcher. (Pre-packaged ribs are generally too well-trimmed of meat for good barbecue purpose.) Ask for two back-rib racks trimmed from the prime rib, keeping as much meat on the ribs as possible, each rack approximately 6 ribs wide. That will do you brilliantly. Cook for a while in a bath of hickory smoke, then finish in the oven. Beef, salt, pepper, smoke, fat. You'll need napkins.
How to Make Burgers
A great burger requires a little planning. Sam Sifton has done the work for you.
Rotisserie Chicken Panzanella
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Grab a super-tanned rotisserie chicken on the way home. Tear the meat into strips, then cut a few smallish supermarket tomatoes (or better, if you’ve got them) into wedges and marinate them in oil, salt, pepper and red wine vinegar. Pay a few bills or fold some laundry, then turn the whole thing into panzanella by mixing together the chicken, the tomatoes, some fresh watercress and some chunks of stale or toasted bread, then showering the salad with freshly ground black pepper and a spray of kosher salt. This, too, is cooking. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
How to Make Pizza
You can make pizza at home that will rival some of the best on the planet. Sam Sifton shows you how.
Pasta With Sausage and Parm
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. I like cooking the sausages twice for this pasta dish: first as links, to firm them up; then as coins, which get good and crisp in a melting knob of butter, releasing fat that, with a few leaves of sage and a splash of the water in which you cooked the pasta, makes for a terrific sauce for the pound of orecchiette in your pasta pot. Start by putting some neutral oil in a hot pan and searing the links, pricking them with a fork if they threaten to split. Boil your pasta water, salted as always. Retrieve the sausages from the pan when the skins are golden and crisp, let cool slightly, then cut into coins. While the pasta cooks, wipe out the pan and add some butter to it and the sausage coins; cook over medium heat. Scatter sage leaves over the whole, drain the pasta, and add a little of the pasta water to the pan with the sausage to make a velvety sauce. Combine with the pasta, grate a lot of Parmesan over the top, and let me know how it goes. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
New Mexican Hot Dish
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. I’ve been cooking enchiladas con carne ever since Robb Walsh taught me how to make them in the kitchen of his El Real Tex-Mex Cafe in Houston. But I can’t say I make them the way he taught me any longer. First, sauté a pound or so of ground beef in a splash of oil, with a little flour and a pinch of salt, then set it aside. Use the same pan to cook chopped onion, garlic and jalapeño. Return the meat to the pan, and hit it with chile powder, ground cumin and oregano, to taste. Add chopped tomatoes and a little water to loosen everything up. Let it reduce a little. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 425, and grab a casserole dish. You’ll need corn tortillas as well, and grated cheese — I like a mixture of Cheddar and American. Sue me. Enchiladas can be a drag to assemble. So do as the New Mexicans do, and stack rather than roll. I put a little chili in the bottom of the casserole, warm my tortillas in a dry skillet and lay them across the chili as if building the first layer of a lasagna. Then I do that again and again, and finish with the remaining chili and cheese. Bake in the oven until everything’s bubbling. Serve with chopped raw onions, sour cream and salsa on the side. Enchilada casserole, hon. New Mexican hot dish. I’m telling you, you could make it tonight. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
How to Cook Ham
Holiday ham is a truly majestic centerpiece. Sam Sifton shares the essentials.
Party Board
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. You don’t need a recipe for a party board, which is a fine dinner for a Wednesday night. You don’t even need a no-recipe recipe. You need only what cheese is in the refrigerator, sliced or wedged or cubed, along with cured meats — I like rolled mortadella, spread inside with a little mayonnaise and dotted with pickled jalapeño — and a little bread or pile of crackers. Maybe add to the board some cherry tomatoes, halved and tossed in olive oil and good vinegar with salt and pepper? You could stuff them with mozzarella, if you have the time. Or celery, cut into batons? Carrots, likewise? Raw or roasted peppers, sliced? The chef Gabrielle Hamilton calls the assemblage a snack tray. In the name of romance, she once stacked Pringles on one, with a ramekin of Castelvetrano olives. Her swain, now her wife, Ashley Merriman, responded with “pepperoni cut as thin as fish scales and shingled just as neatly.” You could go with Jarlsberg, Triscuits and vodka sodas. Or smoked salmon, shaved asparagus, some crème fraîche with chives, dill and tarragon. A party board is what you make of it. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Kale Salad With Cranberries, Pecans and Blue Cheese
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. How about a kale salad? (Stick with me, please.) Just make a mustardy vinaigrette that’ll stand up to the greens — mustard, olive oil, a splash of lemon juice, salt and pepper — then drizzle it over clean, chopped kale with a host of big-flavored mix-ins that wink at whatever season you’re in without being dorky about it: dried cranberries or currants, say; pecans toasted with maple syrup and a pinch of cayenne; some crumbled blue cheese; a spray of croutons. Sweet, salty, spicy, sour. That and a chilled glass of red wine? Why don’t we eat salads for dinner more often? Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Rice and Beans With Extras
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Maybe tonight is calling for simple rice and beans, with limes to squeeze over the plate, warm tortillas to scoop up the food? First, rinse a cup or two of rice and cook as you usually do. As it steams away, dice an onion and sweat it in a saucepan with a drizzle or two of olive oil set over medium-high heat. When the onion begins to go translucent, add a few cloves of garlic and, if you’d like, some crumbled sausage, ground beef or lamb, then cook until it has started to crisp and the onion has started to caramelize. Add a healthy dusting of cumin, some salt and pepper to taste, and allow it all to go muddy and fragrant. Splash the mixture with the orange juice, maybe half a cup, and allow it to cook down, almost to syrup. Then add a big can of black beans (drained, please) and stir to combine, turning down the heat and allowing the flavors to come together, perhaps using a spoon to mash some of the beans as they cook. Serve it all on top of the finished rice, adorned with wedges of lime and accompanied by warmed tortillas or buttered toast. I like some pickled jalapeños, cilantro and hot sauce on there, too. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
How to Make Fried Chicken
Fried chicken is a crispy, savory delight, and it's easier to make than you think. Sam Sifton shows you the basics.