Recipes By Sam Sifton
385 recipes found
Jerk Ribs
Harold Dieterle, the chef and an owner of two restaurants in Manhattan, Perilla and Kin Shop, cooks food that is often fiery and always immensely detailed. It resembles intricate music that is played very, very loud. This Jamaican-style jerk sauce is no exception. Its heat is towering, but it does not overwhelm the flavors that accompany the flames: thyme and allspice, along with wisps of caramelized sugar and a scent of rum. “You could serve it on chicken,” Dieterle told me. “It’s insane on ribs.” Not to mention pork tenderloin and bluefish. Jerk tofu? That’d be terrific as well.
Wedge Salad
Wedge salads are essential steakhouse fare and have been for decades – “iceberg wedges, blue cheese, bacon” was Roger Sterling’s order on “Mad Men” when he and Don Draper saved the Madison Square Garden account in Season 3, set in 1963. But there is no reason not to bring them home: Pale green-white triangles of commodity iceberg drizzled in pale white-blue dressing, with crumbles of bacon and bright red pops of cherry tomato, and pricks of green chive strewn across the top. Serve a wedge and a steak, or a wedge and a hamburger, or a wedge and a roast chicken, or just a wedge and a lot of warm bread and cold red wine, and it’s a pleasant evening you’re having, a retro delight. Wedge is a salad for pleasure.
Short-Grained Rice
Japanese short-grained rice, sometimes labeled as "sushi rice," needs a good rinsing before you cook it in a ratio of one cup of water for every cup of rice. The result is smooth and pearly rice that holds together well without being gummy, and tastes of the grain. You can make it on the stovetop. But once you start using an electric rice cooker, it is hard to go back. Serve it with soy-sauce-pickled eggs.
Seamus Mullen's Pan Con Tomate
Pan con tomate is traditionally a humble dish, a way to make a single tomato and some old bread serve a family for lunch. For Tertulia's version, use a box grater to shred the best tomato you can find. Microplane some garlic into it. Add salt and a big drizzle of fruity Spanish olive oil, then a little less of sherry vinegar. You'll heap this mixture onto a few thick slices of bread, and then scrape most of the tomato off. Add more olive oil and sprinkle with flaky sea salt.
Middle-School Tacos
Here is a taste of a time when Mexican food was not as widely available in the United States as it is today, when parents and sports bars looked for food to serve children and those who eat like them, when the combination of crunch and fat and silk was divine. It still can be, if you avoid the taco kits of yore and make your own picadillo, then put it in hard-shell tacos and top how you like. For those who want to avoid prefabricated taco shells, make a form out of aluminum foil, fry fresh corn tortillas in shimmering neutral oil and then allow them to cool into shape on their aluminum saddle. Taco night. You can’t eat just two.
Home/Made Mushroom Lasagna
Monica Byrne, with her partner, Leisah Swenson, runs a tiny restaurant in Red Hook, Brooklyn, called Home/Made. A plurality of words that appear on the Home/Made menu: “cheese,” “smoked,” “bacon,” “caramelized.” Three of those four appear in Byrne’s lasagna, leaving out only bacon, which would be a fine addition. She layers smoked mozzarella over a painting of rich, garlicky béchamel and sheets of pasta, then radicchio roasted into sweetness and tossed in sauce. Sautéed mushrooms add heft and loamy funkiness, and a mixture of Fontina and Gruyère add zing.
Pork Chops in Lemon-Caper Sauce
Here’s my favorite recipe in Toni Tipton-Martin’s excellent and invaluable “Jubilee: Recipes From Two Centuries of African American Cooking” (2019). It’s a remix of one that the chef Nathaniel Burton collected into his 1978 opus, “Creole Feast: Fifteen Master Chefs of New Orleans Reveal Their Secrets,” and one that Tipton-Martin glossed-up with lemon zest, juice and extra butter, a technique she learned from the restaurateur B. Smith’s 2009 collection of recipes, “B. Smith Cooks Southern-Style.” It’s a dish of smothered pork chops, essentially, made into something glorious and elegant. “The food history of Blacks in America has been a story of the food of survival,” she told me in an interview. “We need to start celebrating the food they made at work."
Crema
Crema is thinner than sour cream, a little more tangy and slightly salty. You can sometimes find it in stores, but it’s very simple to make at home by combining sour cream with heavy cream and lime juice (you could use buttermilk instead) and allowing it to set up at room temperature for a few hours, until it turns into a kind of liquid velvet. It’s marvelous with fish tacos, as a dressing for hot slaw, or drizzled over roasted carrots or sweet potatoes. Once you start using it, you will use it all the time.
Macaroni Milanaise
This is a dish that originated in ‘‘The Escoffier Cookbook’’ as a ‘‘garnish’’ for lamb chops: macaroni and cheese, essentially, for fancy people. It serves well as a main dish, though, particularly if you double the recipe. Escoffier added both truffles and tongue to the mix, and you can, too, though it is hardly necessary. Serve with a salad if not lamb chops, and give thanks for the old ways.
Grilled Broccoli
This grilled broccoli is dressed simply in tamari, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It results in crisp-tender florets that are beautifully sweet and salty beneath the smoke.
Homemade Corned Beef
“The reason to corn your own beef is flavor,” said Michael Ruhlman, a chef and passionate advocate of the process. He wrote about it with Brian Polcyn in their book, “Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing.” “You can achieve tastes that aren’t available in the mass produced versions,” he said. Feel free to experiment with the “pickling spices” called for below — you can customize them, if you like, from a base of coriander seeds, black peppercorns and garlic — but please do not omit the curing salt, which gives the meat immense flavor in addition to a reddish hue. (It’s perfectly safe, Mr. Ruhlman exhorts: “It’s not a chemical additive. Most of the nitrates we eat come in vegetables!”) Finally, if you want a traditional boiled dinner, slide quartered cabbage and some peeled carrots into the braise for the final hour or so of cooking. Or use the meat for Irish tacos.
Mojo Turkey
This recipe nods to what happened when Cuban culture drifted onto the Thanksgiving tables of South Florida, with a bird dressed in a marinade of sour oranges (a mixture of orange and lime juice works as well) mixed with a lot of garlic and oregano. Serve the bird with black beans and white rice on the side — and a Key lime pie for dessert.
Savory French Toast With Cherry Tomatoes and Basil
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. You know a stash of leftover bread makes the best French toast for breakfast, so it stands to reason that a savory version would be equally satisfying for the crew around your dinner table. At least that’s true in my house. Whisk the eggs as you usually would, but omit the sugar and cinnamon, hitting it instead with black pepper, chopped basil and a dash of hot sauce. Slide some slices of old bread in there to soak, then fry the toasts up in butter just as you would at breakfast. Scattering a few handfuls of halved cherry tomatoes into the pan as the bread cooks will yield a fine topping. Those who have doubted will doubt no more. 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.
XO Sauce
In Hong Kong in the 1980s, when expensive Cognac was all the rage, legend has it that some smart cook at the Spring Moon restaurant in the Peninsula Hotel on Kowloon got it into his head to name the funky new condiment he’d come up with after the status mark on the bottle of Remy Martin at the bar: “XO,” extra old, rare, very expensive. The stuff was a hit: dried scallops and dried shrimp, a ton of chiles, a faint pork-smokiness and a whisper of allium, expensive to make and worth it for the flavor-enhancing pop. By the end of the decade, XO sauce was on menus all over Hong Kong and eventually the world. Recipes for XO vary wildly, save for those scallops and shrimp. Mine derives from the teachings of Diana Kuan, who included a formidable XO in her 2019 cookbook, “Red Hot Kitchen.”
Veal Chops in Cherry-Pepper Sauce
You can use this sauce — spicy and fragrant and slightly syrupy, what the Italians call agrodolce — on veal chops as I call for here, or on pork chops, on steaks, on chicken. I bet it’d be good on grilled seitan or drizzled over tofu. The recipe is reminiscent of the cooking at red-sauce emporia like Bamonte’s in Brooklyn, Rao’s in Manhattan, Dominick’s in the Bronx and, I hope, Carbone in Greenwich Village, where I first learned how to put it together at the elbow of the chef Mario Carbone. Serve with spaghetti dressed in butter and Parmesan, with garlic bread, with a spoon so you can slurp what’s left on the plate. “It’s a flavor that’s purely Italian-American,” Carbone told me. “You won’t find it in Italy, no way.”
Risotto With Sausage and Parsley
This is a very simple if slightly stove-intensive dinner, a two-pot meal that comes together serially to achieve a hearty whole. I use sweet Italian sausage most of the time, but the hot varieties work as well, and always the richest chicken stock available — sometimes adding bouillon to my homemade stock for the extra oomph it provides. The key is stirring, stirring, stirring the rice as you add the stock, taking care to incorporate each ladleful entirely into the rice before adding more. Taste often at the end, and adjust the seasoning as you like, but do not stint on either the lemon juice or the parsley, as their brightness acts as a terrific foil to the rich, unctuous quality of the rice.
Red-Cooked Beef Short Ribs
Traditional red-cooked dishes — they take their name from the mahogany color the sauce imparts to the meat — are simple braises of rice wine, light and dark soy sauces, with some sugar and aromatics. The version Jennifer Hwa Dobbertin and Quealy Watson serve at Best Quality Daughter, their restaurant in San Antonio, turbocharges that formula. Dried chiles and Sichuan peppercorns bring fire and tingle, and star anise and cinnamon provide warmth. There’s a whisper of orange, a bite of ginger. Tomato paste and doubanjiang, a fermented chile bean paste, offer depth. Do take the time to use some of the braising liquid to serve as the base for the finishing glaze, thick and glossy as demi-glace. It’s worth it.
Smashed Potatoes With Bacon, Cheese and Greens
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Get some nice baseball-sized, yellow-fleshed potatoes, one per person, and cut them into quarters. Toss them with olive oil, salt and pepper on a sheet pan, and slide them into a hot oven to roast, say 425 degrees. While they’re cooking, make yourself useful: Fry some bacon; grate some Cheddar; toss a few large handfuls of spinach or baby kale with olive oil, just enough to lightly coat the leaves; slice some avocados; and see if you have some sour cream in the refrigerator. When the potatoes are soft, pull them from the oven and smash the pieces down with the bottom of a coffee cup or drinking glass. Arrange the smashed potatoes on the sheet pan, and top each portion with greens, a chopped slice of cooked bacon, and plenty of cheese. Return to the oven to melt the cheese, then garnish with avocado and dots of sour cream. Or yogurt! It’s a no-recipe recipe. There are no rules! 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.
Quick-Broiled Pork Chops With Peanuts and Gochujang
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Here’s a nice Wednesday-night meal. Secure the thinnest chops you can find at the store — that’s crucial for the quick-broil part. Throw a few handfuls of dry-roasted peanuts in a pan set over medium-high heat with a glug of sesame oil. Let those go until they’re fragrant and just beginning to darken, then take them off the heat and toss with a few shakes of chile powder. Set the peanuts aside and heat your broiler. Line a sheet pan with foil, and oil it lightly. Salt and pepper your chops, lay them out on the pan, and slide them into the oven. Cook the chops for around four minutes, then flip them over to finish. Meanwhile, mix a tablespoon or so of gochujang, the Korean red-pepper paste, with a healthy splash of orange juice and a wisp of mirin. Taste. Adjust. Pour into a deep serving dish or platter. When the chops are well crusted and brown, slide them into the sauce for a toss. Top with the peanuts and some chopped scallions if you have any. Rice on the side. 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.
Velvet Fish With Mushrooms
Here’s a recipe that takes its flavor inspiration from a dish served at Nancy Xiao’s restaurant China Xiang, in the theater district of Manhattan: a sweet-salty rice wine sauce over velveted fish. Its preparation owes much to the teachings of the classic 1969 cookbook “Chinese Gastronomy,” by Tsuifeng Lin and Hsiang Ju Lin, and the advice of the chef Jonathan Wu. It is what the Lins call “two-passes” cooking, with the fish cooked twice, first to velvet it, then to cover it with sauce. (It’s important, Wu notes, not to think of it as stir-frying with high heat but as gentle, careful cooking that does not break up the fish.) It’s great with flounder as at China Xiang, but also with tilapia, with halibut, with whatever firm-fleshed white fish you can find at the market. You can substitute firm tofu in place of the fish, or go half and half. It’s a dish to fall in love with, to make your own.
Buttermilk Blue Cheese Dressing
This is an excellent dressing for wedge salads, and for ones of grilled romaine. I love it drizzled over a pile of really, really ripe tomatoes. It's a great dip for spicy chicken wings. And it is also good with steak. The amounts listed below are merely starting points. Adjust them as you like, to achieve the flavors you like.
Grilled Flounder
A Montauk fishing guide named Bryan Goulart was the first person I saw brine thin fillets of porgy and sea bass, and the Brooklyn chef Josh Cohen taught me how to do it with flounder, though the recipe would work on any flat fish. A mere 10 minutes in the bath will tighten the flesh nicely, and then three or four minutes of cooking the fish need follow, over a medium flame. Cook only that one side, then flip the fish onto a serving platter or plate, and top with a little bit of butter, chopped parsley and a spray of lemon.
Ham and Cheese Pasta With a Handful of Peas
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Pick up a box of large shells — the ones the size of a knuckle, so they hold a little pasta water in them. Pick up a ham steak from the butcher or the corner of the supermarket meat display, and dice it. Pick up a bag of frozen organic peas as well — they’re sweeter. You’ll need a block of good Swiss if you can find it, or some Jarlsberg if you can’t. (Hey, it melts like a dream.) Set a large pot of salted water to boil, and prepare your pasta. While it cooks, get to work on the next burner, browning the ham in a pat of good unsalted butter in a skillet. Offstage, grate about a cup of cheese into a large serving bowl. When the pasta has been cooked for just shy of the time called for on its packaging, throw in a handful of peas, cook another minute, then drain, reserving a little cooking water. Toss the whole mess into the cheese, along with the hot ham, another pat or two of butter and a splash of the pasta water. Watch as the cheese goes soft and ribbony in the heat, and the fat of the ham mingles with the butter and the pasta water, and the shells pick up some of it and grab peas in their valves. Shave some Parmesan over the top. Don’t you want to eat that right now? 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.
BBQ Shrimp
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. In New Orleans, barbecued shrimp aren’t cooked on a grill. They’re sautéed with salt and pepper, then tossed in butter-mounted Worcestershire sauce with lemon, sometimes with a splash of cream. I crank the oven to 450 degrees and make the sauce on the stovetop: diced shallots sautéed in butter, a healthy quarter-cup or so of Worcestershire, a little thyme, paprika and cayenne, some salt and then a whole lot more butter, cut into the pan a knob at a time and whisked into velvet. I add to that a splash of cream and a few more healthy cranks of black pepper. Then I roast the shrimp on a greased pan in the oven under a shower of salt and yet more pepper, and serve it on a warm platter with the sauce spooned over the top. Rice, green beans and plenty of good, crusty bread for mopping up make it an ambrosial meal. 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.