Recipes By Sam Sifton
385 recipes found
Roasted Chicken Provençal
This is a recipe I picked up from Steven Stolman, a clothing and interior designer whose “Confessions of a Serial Entertainer” is a useful guide to the business and culture of dinner parties and general hospitality. It is a perfect dinner-party meal: chicken thighs or legs dusted in flour and roasted with shallots, lemons and garlic in a bath of vermouth and under a shower of herbes de Provence. They go crisp in the heat above the fat, while the shallots and garlic melt into sweetness below. You could serve with rice, but I prefer a green salad and a lot of baguette to mop up the sauce.
Sweeney Potatoes
This is a variation of a dish sometimes called "company potatoes," popular in the postwar kitchens of the 1950s, made with canned condensed soups and frozen hash browns. Maura Passanisi, of Alameda, Calif., shared it with The Times as a tribute to her grandmother, Florence Sweeney, who originally served it as a Thanksgiving side dish. Ms. Passanisi uses fresh russet potatoes and no condensed soup, but plenty of cream cheese, sour cream, butter and cheese. "Legendary," she calls the dish. And so it is. Small portions are best. It's rich. And feeds a crowd.
Pineapple Salsa
This is a simple salsa with a bright acidity, one that you could temper with some diced mango if you like. I’ve called for a single jalapeño. You could use two if you like. Just keep all the flavors in balance – sweet, salty, sour and fiery. It’s terrific on pork and with grilled fish, on tacos or as an accompaniment to breakfast eggs.
Coconut Kale
The kale in this recipe, adapted from Meeru Dhalwala and Vikram Vij of Vij’s Restaurant, in Vancouver, British Columbia, is rich and fiery, sweet and salty all at once. Grilling softens the texture of the kale without entirely removing the mild bitterness of the leaves, while the marinade of coconut milk, cayenne, salt and lemon juice caramelizes in the heat to create a perfect balance of flavors. Made over a charcoal fire or even in a broiler or wickedly hot pan, it becomes a dish of uncommon flavor, the sort of thing you could eat on its own, with only a mound of basmati rice for contrast.
Cabbage-and-Caraway Slaw
Nothing quite captures the spirit of a cookout like a fine coleslaw. This version elevates the traditional slaw with apples, scallions and watercress. Ready in minutes, it’s just as perfect with a bunch of hot dogs on a sweltering summer day as it is paired with your tailgate favorites.
Jamaican Oxtail Stew
Here is a midwinter cook-up of deep fragrance and lingering heat, a trade-wind stew that emerged in Jamaica and made its way north. It is oxtail stew, brown and steaming, light with ginger and thyme, pungent with allspice and soy, a taste of the Caribbean to warm winter’s heart. You could make and eat it today while reading Derek Walcott poems as the afternoon vagues into indigo — or allow it to cure into greater magnificence overnight, and stretch out its gravy for the course of a week. Paired with bowls of coconut-scented rice and peas, a staple of the Caribbean diet, it makes for an excellent family dinner or a transporting lunch, as if the flavors within it were a spur to memories of better times, in warmer climes, with soft sand on your feet and a kiss of sun upon your shoulders.
Simplest Grilled Peaches
Grilled peaches may be summer’s greatest joy. Cook them over a medium to low gas grill or a dying charcoal fire, and serve them with ice cream, whipped cream or nothing at all.
Bananas Foster Bread Pudding
Here is a nod both to the original bananas Foster at Brennan’s restaurant in the French Quarter of New Orleans and to the luxe version of bananas baba au rhum that the Louisiana chef Allison Vines-Rushing once cooked at Jack’s Luxury Oyster Bar in the East Village. Silky and rich, deep with the flavors of bananas, rum and custard, it is not much work to make, and pays off in incredible flavor. Do not be afraid to use an even darker sugar than the brown called for in the recipe, though molasses may be a step too far. You are looking for a deep caramel hue and flavor in the sauce, to complement the rum and the fruit. (And if you're looking to try the original, make our bananas foster recipe.)
Beef and Broccoli
Here is a streamlined, powerfully flavorful recipe for a delivery-food standby: velvety wok-fried beef in a oyster-soy sauce, served in a forest of green. ‘‘It’s diaspora food,’’ the chef Jonathan Wu told me, describing the cooking of Chinese immigrants to the United States and a dish that is almost unknown in China but beloved in America. The recipe is a version of the one Wu’s mother made for dinner when he was growing up outside Hartford, Conn., with a little chile-garlic paste added for zip and, thanks to the Brooklyn chef Dale Talde, a pat of butter swirled into the sauce at the end. This provides a plush gloss that is far better than the traditional cornstarch slurry. It is midweek family cooking at its best.
Braised Tofu in Caramel Sauce
This is a vegetarian take on a classic of Vietnamese restaurants, ca kho, or fish braised in caramel sauce. Here, tofu, firm and rich, absorbs the velvety sauce and heightens its flavor. Vietnamese caramel sauce — nuoc mau — is easier to make than you might think, though it can be a dramatic process. In essence what you’re doing is melting sugar in a pan, then allowing it nearly to burn and finally adding water and soy sauce in order to arrest the process at a dark and golden bittersweet flavor that is at the heart of Vietnamese cooking.
Momofuku’s Bo Ssam
This is a recipe to win the dinner party sweepstakes, and at very low stakes: slow-roasted pork shoulder served with lettuce, rice and a raft of condiments. The chef David Chang serves the dish, known by its Korean name, bo ssam, at his Momofuku restaurant in the East Village and elsewhere. He shared the recipe with The Times in 2012. Mr. Chang is known as a kitchen innovator, but his bo ssam is a remarkably straightforward way to achieve high-level excellence with little more than ingredients and time. Simply cure the pork overnight beneath a shower of salt and some sugar, then roast it in a low oven until it collapses. Apply some brown sugar and a little more salt, then roast the skin a while longer until it takes on the quality of glistening bark. Meanwhile, make condiments – hot sauces and kimchi, rice, some oysters if you wish. Then tear meat off the bone and wrap it in lettuce, and keep at that until everything’s gone.
Grilled Soy-Basted Chicken Thighs With Spicy Cashews
Here's a hack I performed on a recipe for an appetizer portion of skewered chunked chicken thighs that the great live-fire cooks and cookbook writers Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby wrote many years ago, and that I have slowly altered into a main-course grilled dinner. The skinless chicken browns nicely over a medium flame, and the sugary soy basting sauce lacquers it beautifully in the final few minutes of cooking. It's terrific with rice, or as a topping for a salad of sturdy greens. You may wish to double the recipe for Sriracha-roasted cashews. Those are addictive, and for them you will find many delicious uses.
Smothered Pork Chops
Get the best pork chops you can, and the thickest, and give yourself a good 12 hours or more of lead time to soak them in the brine. If you are omitting the anise in the brine, you could add some flavor to the dredging flour — chili powder, say, or smoked paprika.
All-Purpose Dry Rub
Here is a rub that provides a fast, flavorful coating for barbecue: beef, pork, chicken, lamb, venison. It calls for the process known as indirect grilling, in which you build a fire on one side of your grill and cook on the other, so that the meat is never in direct contact with flame. (If you grill this rub directly, the sugar and spices will burn rather than melt into appetizing darkness.) The recipe is forgiving. You might add granulated onion or garlic powder to it, or omit the coriander if you don’t have any. Be careful with the paprika, as there are so many different varieties afoot: if it’s smoked, you’ll need less, and if it’s fiery you may need less cayenne. No cayenne? Use red pepper flakes. Adjust the seasonings to your taste, then apply liberally.
Eastern North Carolina-Style BBQ Sauce
Chris Schlesinger is the chef and an owner of the East Coast Grill in Cambridge, Mass., which he opened in 1985. He is also the author, with John Willoughby, of six cookbooks that relate somehow to the pleasures of fire. This is an adaptation of his recipe for barbecue sauce meant to be served with his pulled pork.
Beer-Can Chicken
The moist environment created by smoke-roasting a chicken vertically, atop a half-full can of beer, turns out to be a nearly fail-safe way to achieve barbecue perfection. A smoky-sweet dry rub adds complexity. The dish can also be made in an oven, in a roasting pan. (You can even buy stainless-steel vertical roasting stands for this very purpose.) What follows is a recipe for a traditional, spice-rubbed version of the dish. But once you have dialed in your technique, feel free to experiment. Coating the chicken with a paste of miso, mirin and soy, then replacing the beer in the can with sake, is one way to start.
Smoke-Roasted Chicken Thighs With Paprika
These chicken thighs are roasted in the heat of a covered grill, smoke commingling with the tint and flavor of paprika to create, thanks to caramelized honey, a sort of crust that makes it very difficult to stop eating. You start by making a paste of sweet and hot paprikas, honey, lemon juice, garlic and butter. Rub that all over the meat, then cook the chicken on a charcoal grill over indirect heat until done. If using a gas grill, make sure one side of the grill is unheated, and either swap out the paprika for the smoked version known as pimenton de la vera or wrap two small mounds of moistened wood chips in heavy aluminum foil and pierce the tops of the packets with the tines of a fork. Place those on the hotter side of the grill before roasting the chicken.
Grilled Chicken Parm
Chicken parm – crisp chicken served with tomato sauce, draped in mozzarella and anointed with grated Parmesan, served perhaps on a hero roll or beside a tangle of pasta – is among the finest dishes of the Italian diaspora in America. There is sweetness and salt to the dish, along with the base creaminess of cheese and the satisfying crunch of the chicken’s crust. These combine, especially under a spray of red pepper flakes, to deliver immense satisfaction. This recipe, adapted from one the chef Justin Bazdarich uses at the Speedy Romeo restaurants in New York, moves the preparation of the dish to the grill, and delivers a dish that is smoke-scented and beautiful, with flavors that manage to be both delicate and robust.
Grilled Baby Back Ribs
We think of ribs as an all-day affair, the meat cooked in smoke and low heat until it begins to pull from the bone. But baby backs are quicker and can be grilled as well, and the result is delicious. This recipe benefits from a basting technique used by the chef and barbecue madman Adam Perry Lang, who thins out his barbecue sauce with water, then paints it onto the meat he’s cooking in coat after coat, allowing it to reduce and intensify rather than seize up and burn.
Smoked Chicken Wings
If you have an offset smoker, even a leaky old fellow with rust spots and broken wheels, this recipe will provide one of its finest uses. Smoking chicken wings for 15 minutes or so before grilling or roasting them under thin bastings of barbecue sauce yields meat that is smoky but not aggressively so, deeply flavorful, with a marvelous crust. But you don’t need a smoker! Simply set up your grill for indirect cooking, with a fairly small fire, and use soaked wood chips to create a plume of smoke. Put the wings on the cool side of the grill, then cover it and allow the smoke to perform its magic. You’ll get wings that are pale gold, the color of chamois that you can cook into perfection over the direct heat of the fire.
Pulled Lamb Shoulder
This pulled lamb is an homage to the barbecued mutton of Western Kentucky. Smoke the meat over charcoal and wood, not gas. It’s bonkers delicious. Or at least make the dry rub that covers the meat and use it to cook something else.
Hamburgers (Tavern Style)
Here is a hamburger you might find in taverns and bars, plump and juicy, with a thick char that gives way to tender, medium-rare meat. It is best cooked in a heavy, cast-iron skillet slicked with oil or fat. Ask a butcher for coarse-ground chuck steak, with at least a 20 percent fat content, or grind your own. Keep it in the refrigerator until you are ready to cook, and then when you do, form your patties gently. Season after the meat is in the pan.
Grilled Caesar Salad
This recipe, from Alan Ashkinaze of the now-closed Millesime in Manhattan, came to The Times in 2012. In his version of the classic Caesar salad, a light grilling enhances the flavor of the romaine lettuce, which is then brushed with a dressing brightened by lime juice. The whole thing is finished with Parmesan, toasted on the grill. It comes together quickly, and it’s a perfect pairing for a rib-eye, served along with a deep red.
Dry-Rubbed London Broil
Here is a cheap beef dinner of uncommon flavor, perfect for serving to a crowd. It calls for the process known as indirect grilling, in which you build a fire on one side of your grill and cook on the other, so that the dry-rubbed meat is never in direct contact with flame. (If you grill the meat directly, the sugar and spices will burn rather than melt into appetizing darkness.) The recipe is forgiving. You might add granulated onion or garlic powder to it, or omit the coriander if you don’t have any. Be careful with the paprika as there are so many different varieties afoot: if it’s smoked, you’ll need less, and if it’s fiery you may need less cayenne. (No cayenne? Use red pepper flakes.) Adjust the seasonings to your taste.