Recipes By Samin Nosrat
93 recipes found
Olive Oil Refried Beans
Use whatever variety of beans and chiles you’ve got in your pantry to make this recipe, which is inspired by the silky, lard-fried, pinto bean version available at nearly every Southern Californian taqueria. Eat these however you like, whether alongside rice and greens, smeared onto garlic-rubbed toast or spread onto a warm tortilla and with a perfectly fried egg on top. The overnight soak allows the time for both water and salt to penetrate the beans, cutting down the cooking time and leading to better seasoned, more evenly cooked beans. But if you’re short on time, you can skip the presoak; the beans will just take longer to cook through, and might not cook as evenly, which isn’t the end of the world if you’re mashing them up. You can also skip simmering altogether and use the drained, rinsed beans from two (15-ounce) cans and begin with Step 3.
Maple Breakfast Sausage
This classic recipe will come together in the time it takes to make a frittata or a stack of pancakes for brunch. You could also try frying the patties in a cast-iron pan alongside eggs in a hole. As the maple-and-sage-tinged fat renders out of the sausage, the bread will thirstily absorb it. You might even want to drizzle a tiny bit more syrup over the whole thing as you sit down to eat, so that each bite of sausage, bread and runny yolk has the perfect blend of savory and sweet. Be sure to use ground pork with enough fat or you'll end up with dry, flavorless hockey pucks. Twenty percent by weight is a good ratio, though 25 doesn’t hurt. If the ground pork available to you is too lean, ask the butcher to replace two ounces or so of the lean meat with ground pork belly or bacon. For variations on the sausage, check out these recipes for Italian fennel sausage and Nem Nuong, Vietnamese sausage.
Polo Ba Tahdig (Persian Rice With Bread Crust)
No dinner in an Iranian household is complete without polo, or rice. And no pot of polo is complete without tahdig, the crisp crust whose name means “bottom of the pot.” Tahdig is a highlight of Persian cuisine, and it can be made of rice, potatoes, lettuce or bread, as it is here. If you can’t get your hands on lavash bread, use a thin flour tortilla to line the bottom of the pot. Tahdig is easiest to prepare in a nonstick pot, but you could also prepare it in a cast-iron Dutch oven by reducing the heat to low and extending the cooking time to 50 minutes.
Basic Herb Salsa
Serve this bright, simple sauce alongside any grilled fish, shellfish or meat. Use as a garnish for rice, quinoa or farro. Drizzle over roasted sweet potatoes, carrots and beets. Or spoon over poached eggs and hash.
Khoresh-e Ghormeh Sabzi (Persian Herb, Bean and Lamb Stew)
There are three essential elements to this khoresh, or stew, which is often called Iran’s national dish. First, the sweet, pungent flavor of dried or fresh fenugreek leaves defines the stew, which simply isn’t the same without it. Likewise, Omani limes (also known as dried Persian limes) add a distinct aged sourness that is vital to the dish. Finally, the classic Persian technique of sautéing a mountain of finely minced herbs lends character and complexity to the foundation of the stew. Don’t be afraid to really cook down the herbs until quite dark and dry; this step is essential to concentrate their flavor.
Faloodeh (Persian Lime and Rose Water Granita With Rice Noodles)
Faloodeh is an ancient Persian dessert, a sort of granita threaded with rice noodles and spiked with rose water and lime. Though you may typically cook noodles until al dente, you’ll need to really cook them through here before adding them to the syrup so that they soak up enough liquid to become as crunchy as possible as they freeze. In Iran, most ice cream shops sell just two items: traditional saffron ice cream and faloodeh, which is typically topped with bottled lime juice that tastes mostly of citric acid. Faloodeh has been my favorite since childhood, but now I prefer it with the juice of freshly squeezed limes. It’s incredibly refreshing and the ideal end to a rich meal filled with complex flavors.
Green Goddess Dressing
Unlike more complicated versions of green goddess, this one, adapted from the cookbook author Jessica Battilana, comes together quickly in a food processor. Mayonnaise and full-fat Greek yogurt give the dressing richness and tang, while parsley, basil and tarragon lend the springtime perfume of fine herbs. Two anchovy fillets offer salt and a rumor of umami. The recipe is so mouth-smackingly perfect that it doesn’t require any adjusting. Serve with this greenest-green salad. Use leftover dressing as a dip, alongside carrots, cucumbers and radishes, or as an accompaniment to grilled fish or chicken.
Kuku Sabzi (Persian Herb Frittata)
Kuku, which is like a Persian frittata, comes in many forms, but this one, packed to the brim with herbs, is my favorite. Washing and picking through the piles of herbs can be overwhelming if you’re not used to staring down a mountain of produce, so feel free to prepare them in advance. I particularly love kuku sabzi for the contrast between its vivid-green herbaceous interior and its dark, sweet crust. Kuku is traditionally served with flatbread and a selection of crunchy and acidic condiments to balance the sweetness of the herbs; my favorites are fresh radishes, the chopped eggplant pickles called liteh and chunks of soft, salty feta cheese. Leftover kuku slathered with mast-o khiar makes for a wonderful sandwich.
Earlonne’s Chicken and Brown Rice
Layered with savory, satisfying flavors, this one-pan recipe was inspired by a dish Earlonne Woods regularly prepared for himself while incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison. Mr. Woods, a co-host of the popular Ear Hustle podcast, generally relied on kitchen connections to secure a raw chicken hindquarter. He’d boil it in a hot pot with whatever seasonings he had available, then use the resulting broth to rehydrate some instant brown rice. Offered as a cooking lesson to Mr. Woods, who is now an amateur home cook, this version instead relies on chicken legs browned in butter, a vibrant mix of spices and aromatics, and rich, homemade broth to pack in flavor. And just as the dish did when Mr. Woods served it, it may prompt your diner to compliment the meal: “You put your foot in it!”
Caesar Salad
Making the dressing for Caesar salad is an exercise in the art of layering salty ingredients to build flavor; there are anchovies, Parmesan and Worcestershire sauce, in addition to the salt itself. (There is also garlic, which is pounded with a pinch of salt using a mortar and pestle to make a smooth paste.) Since a delicious balanced dressing depends on working in the right amounts of each of those ingredients — and the other, unsalted elements — refrain from adding the salt crystals until you’ve added the right amount of everything else. This recipe is adapted from "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" by Samin Nosrat, and it's absolutely worth making the torn croutons — store-bought croutons can’t compete, and you'll have leftovers for another salad.
Arroz con Gandules (Puerto Rican Rice With Pigeon Peas)
Every step and ingredient adds something important to this recipe from the Puerto Rican-born chef and writer Reina Gascón-López. Annatto seeds steeped in oil give the rice its signature marigold hue. The banana leaf imparts a subtle tropical aroma to the rice as it cooks. Olives, ham, beer and peppers with their brine offer salt, fat, acid, umami and a bright pop of color. The sheer number of flavors layered into this dish make it a delight to unpack. The most exhilarating layer is the last one: pegao, the crisp, glassy shards of rice at the bottom of the pot. Gandules (pigeon peas) make this version of rice and beans distinctly Caribbean. Ms. Gascón-López prefers to start with dry gandules, which her family sometimes ships to her from Puerto Rico, then flavors the pot with some sofrito, a bay leaf or two and a smoked pork neck. If you have trouble finding dry pigeon peas, they are often labeled as toor at Indian grocery stores.
Corn on the Cob With Green Coriander Butter
Green coriander, or the fresh seed of a cilantro plant, is known for its intensely aromatic, slightly citrusy, mildly cilantro-ish flavor. Use it anywhere you’d use cilantro: marinades, dressings, hummus; in stews, soups or braises; in herbed rice; with rice noodles or soba; mixed with oil and drizzled atop poached eggs. In this recipe, a handful of traditional Southeast Asian ingredients — fish sauce, ginger, garlic, chiles and a generous amount of pounded green coriander, of course, are worked into a stick of softened butter. It’s savory and spicy, fragrant and pungent, and the first thing you’ll want to do is slather it all over hot grilled corn. Save the rest of the butter to toss with shellfish or roasted vegetables, or to melt into a bowl of steamed rice. For an extra special treat, brown some of the leftover butter, then toss it with pasta and scallops and a squeeze of lemon.
Shiro (Ground-Chickpea Stew)
Shiro is a simple, silky ground chickpea stew that takes little time and effort to bring together. In Eritrea and Ethiopia, it’s a most beloved and important dish — a vital source of flavor and protein. In those countries, it’s made with widely available shiro powder, a mixture of ground chickpeas, garlic, onion and spices. This version, based on Ghennet Tesfamicael’s recipe published in “In Bibi’s Kitchen,” by Hawa Hassan with Julia Turshen, cleverly suggests replacing shiro powder with chickpea flour and a homemade blend of berbere spice. You’ll be transported as your kitchen fills with the aroma of toasting warm spices and ground chilies. Traditionally, shiro is served alongside cooked greens and injera or other flatbreads. But it’s also delicious spread in a thick layer atop sourdough toast rubbed with garlic and finished with slices of tomato and a fried egg.
Rémoulade
This tangy, well-spiced sauce starts with mayonnaise and ends with a horseradish kick. It comes together quickly and is the ideal accompaniment to Jared Austin’s Cajun shrimp boil. It’s also pretty tasty served with steamed or fried fish, crab cakes or fritto misto. A full batch of this recipe makes enough sauce for a 12-person seafood boil, so for everyday home cooking, make half a batch.
Nem Nuong (Vietnamese Sausage)
Traditionally grilled over charcoal, these little sausages also cook up beautifully in a cast-iron pan. Serve them in a bowl over rice noodles or steamed jasmine rice with fresh mint and cilantro, cucumbers and pickled carrots. Top with green chiles and toasted peanuts, then drizzle with fish sauce and lime. Or, use to make banh mi sandwiches. Be sure to use ground pork with enough fat or you'll end up with dry, flavorless sausage. Twenty percent by weight is a good ratio, though 25 doesn’t hurt. If the ground pork available to you is too lean, ask the butcher to replace two ounces or so of the lean meat with ground pork belly or bacon.
Handmade Lasagna Sheets
There’s nothing quite like lasagna made with thin, silky sheets of fresh pasta. The noodles absorb the sauces as the dish bakes, and everything separate becomes one. Each bite will melt in your mouth. When rolling out the dough, sprinkle generously with flour to prevent sticking. And if you can’t cook the pasta right away, make sure to spread flour abundantly between each sheet because the longer it sits, the more it will threaten to stick back together. If after assembling the lasagna you are left with uncooked sheets of pasta, cut them into noodles, toss with flour, and freeze on a baking sheet in a single layer before transferring into a freezer bag. Freeze for up to a month, and to cook, just drop into boiling, salted water.
Kimchijeon (Kimchi Pancake)
At Pyeong Chang Tofu House in Oakland, Calif., Young S. Kim’s golden kimchijeon are a revelation. Tart with pungent kimchi, the pancakes are both satisfyingly chewy and shatteringly crisp. At the Tofu House, where Mrs. Kim turns 1,400 pounds of Napa cabbage into kimchi each month, her homemade kimchi is the secret to her kimchijeon’s unsurpassed flavor. Use the most flavorful traditionally prepared kimchi you can find — it’ll make all the difference in this simple recipe. This version, adapted from Mrs. Kim’s original recipe, comes together quickly: Just combine kimchi and its juice with a few dry ingredients into a simple batter, then fry it in a cast-iron skillet into a mouth-watering pancake. Serve it to a crowd as an appetizer, or eat it on its own as a filling meal.
Fish Stuffed With Herbs, Walnuts and Pomegranate
During Nowruz, the Persian New Year, it's traditional to eat fish, a symbol of life. This version, adapted from the chef Hanif Sadr, is stuffed with bij, a mixture of chopped herbs, walnuts and pomegranate molasses that forms the base of many northern Iranian dishes. After a short turn in a hot oven, the fish emerges with crisp, brown skin. The sweet and sour herb filling contrasts with the delicate, flaky fish without overwhelming it. You can use a food processor to chop the herbs if you’d like. It's key to do the herbs in batches (don't overfill the bowl of the processor), to pulse rather than run and to stop and scrape a few times for even chopping. Work until the pieces are nice and small, about an eighth of an inch or the size of a small sunflower seed, but not so far that they begin to break down and form a paste.
Apricot-Noyaux Jam
Tart and sweet, tinged with the faint scent of almonds and flowers, apricots are ideal for both eating and preserving. But cooked fruit, no matter how expertly preserved, can never measure up to the flawlessness of its fresh counterpart. To be extraordinary, apricot jam must offer something the fruit, out of hand, cannot. The most seductive flavor apricots have to offer is hidden within their pits. While the kernels, or noyaux, taste bland and bitter, they are rife with the sweet aroma of almonds, vanilla, apricots and lilies. Take the time to crack them from their shells. Steep them into the pot of bubbling fruit, where the heat will coax the perfume out of the noyaux and into the preserves (the heat will also disable the small amount of amygdalin the kernels contain, preventing the body from converting it to cyanide). To intensify the noyau flavor even more, add a generous splash of homemade extract. The resulting jam is an improbable improvement over the natural perfection of ripe stone fruit. Spread the jam on hot, buttered toast. Swirl it into thick Greek yogurt. Slather it between layers of almond or spongecake. Or sneak spoonfuls of it straight from the jar — no one will fault you.
Cilantro-Date Chutney
Inspired by two classic Parsi recipes from the chef and anthropologist Niloufer Ichaporia King, this sauce introduces the toasted cumin and medjool dates from her date and tamarind chutney into her classic green chutney, full of fresh ginger, jalapeño and lime. The ginger and the sweetness of the dates echo many of the flavors already present on the Thanksgiving table, and the cilantro, chiles and lime bring a much welcome vividness. It’s a delight! This sauce is also fantastic on leftover turkey sandwiches, and, other times of year, it makes for a great condiment on rice, fish, chicken and vegetable dishes alike.
Lowcountry Okra Soup
Representing ingredients from at least four continents and five spiritual traditions, this okra soup is a true amalgamation of global culinary influences, from West Africa to Peru, all of which intersect in the Lowcountry kitchen. This version belongs to Amethyst Ganaway, a chef and writer of Gullah Geechee ancestry, a direct descendant of people once enslaved on the lower Atlantic Coast. Ms. Ganaway’s okra soup is not your Louisiana-style gumbo, thick with roux and rich with sausage and shrimp. It’s a simple, wholesome dish that, like the best Gullah Geechee cooking, emphasizes the freshness of its ingredients. As Ms. Ganaway advised, “The okra will naturally thicken the broth, and the fresher it is, the better it’ll do the job.’’ Since the vegetable is cooked for just 10 minutes, it grows tender but not slimy, while the pod’s caviar-like seeds add a textural pop with every bite.
Crispy Spiced Cauliflower Steaks
This recipe, developed by 19-year-old Ella Heckert and her mother, the chef Kelsie Kerr, yields crisp cauliflower steaks with a golden crust so tender that they shatter upon first bite. Made with brown rice and tapioca flour, the incidentally gluten-free batter is delicate but unfussy. This version is spiked with fresh turmeric and garam masala spices, but consider it a blank slate and feel free to experiment with other spice combinations, too. At Kerr’s Berkeley restaurant, Standard Fare, the batter is used throughout the year to coat all sorts of other ingredients, including winter squash, eggplant and even housemade paneer, which is a perennial favorite. Try the dish with cauliflower, then make it your own — you’ll be surprised how long the crust remains crisp!
Chicories With Pears, Blue Cheese and Secret Anchovy Dressing
Gently bitter, yet fresh and crunchy, chicories are the perfect canvas on which to create a Thanksgiving salad. With a single anchovy fillet, mustard, vinegar and lemon juice at its base, this light, vibrant dressing is surprisingly refreshing and flavored with a faint rumor of umami that will make you reach — over the stuffing — for seconds. If you don’t have, or don’t like, pears, substitute Fuyu persimmons or a crisp, tart apple variety such as Fuji or Honeycrisp. If you don’t like pecans, use walnuts. If you can’t find Roquefort, use another sheep’s milk blue, such as Oregon Blue or Ewe’s Blue, both of which are American-made in the Roquefort-style.
French Onion Panade
Panade is the French country cook's answer to stuffing — a satisfying and efficient way to use up stale bread. Because there are so few components, taking care to ensure that each one is just right will make all the difference in how the final dish tastes. Start with a stale, crusty loaf of sourdough bread. Cook the onions slowly, until they're a deep caramel color, and then season them properly with vinegar and wine. Buy good Gruyère and Parmesan, and grate it yourself. And finally, use either homemade chicken stock, or buy some from a butcher. The result will be triumph of upcycling: basically French onion soup without the soup — just bite after bite of cheesy, onion-and-stock-soaked bread. Serve it as a main course, with a light green salad and a dry white wine or an ice-cold beer.