Recipes By Susan Spungen
39 recipes found
Chicken Caprese
Originating in Capri, Caprese mimics the colors of the Italian flag in salad form using the now-classic combination of mozzarella, tomato and basil. Here, that trinity transforms everyday chicken cutlets into something special. Thanks to the proliferation of hothouse tomatoes (which are better enjoyed cooked than raw), this dish can be enjoyed year-round. Cocktail tomatoes, slightly larger than a golf ball and often sold on the vine, are perfect for this, but any size will work. Simple to assemble, this dish forms its own delicious pan sauce as the liquid from the cheese and tomatoes mingles with the caramelized juices from the browned chicken.
Sheet-Pan Gnocchi With Asparagus, Leeks and Peas
This sunny dinner cooks entirely in the oven on two sheet pans, so both the vegetables and gnocchi are cooked properly with minimal effort. Asparagus, shallots, leeks and peas balance out the rich, caramelized gnocchi, but you could experiment with your vegetable choices: Cut delicate vegetables in larger pieces and firmer vegetables in smaller pieces so they cook at similar rates. Refrigerated gnocchi (often labeled “skillet gnocchi”) work best here, but shelf-stable gnocchi are also fine. Simply boil them first.
One-Pan Shrimp and Pearl Couscous With Harissa
This easy dish relies on harissa for its flavorful broth. Different brands can vary wildly in flavor and heat, so incorporate the harissa slowly, especially if yours is very spicy, and add more at the end to taste. The final dish does have some sauciness to it: The starch from the couscous will thicken the sauce in the few minutes it takes to go from stovetop to table, but you may want to provide a spoon along with a fork. If you prefer a drier dish, you can reduce the amount of water by 1/4 cup.
Coconut Milk-Simmered Chicken Breasts With Vegetables
This fast but fabulous chicken dish pairs Thai-inspired flavors with French technique. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts have weeknight appeal, largely because they cook so quickly, but that also means they can dry out and become tough if you’re not careful. Here, the chicken is gently cooked for about 10 minutes, then simmered in a ginger-scented coconut sauce studded with green beans and corn, resulting in tender and juicy chicken. Slicing the breasts before serving allows the sauce to coat each piece, adding more moisture and flavor. If you want more heat, sprinkle thinly sliced serrano chile over the top before serving. The best part is the entire meal comes together in about a half-hour: If you’re quick, you can get all the vegetable prep done while the chicken cooks.
Sausage, Egg and Kale Casserole
Finding a brunch dish that feeds a crowd can be a challenge, but this large-scale frittata does just that by layering sausage, kale and fontina with cream-thickened eggs. Use any fresh sausage you like (chorizo, merguez, or hot pork sausage work well), and swap in mild Swiss chard or peppery mustard greens in place of the kale. You can prepare this dish the night before serving by cooking through Step 5 and layering the sausage, vegetables and cheese in the baking dish. Let it warm up slightly at room temperature before adding the eggs, then bake as directed. Baking times will vary depending on how cold or warm the dish is, as well as its depth and ingredients, so keep an eye on the eggs; they should be just set in the center.
Matzo Frittata
This savory matzo brei, loaded with caramelized onions and mushrooms, is made like a frittata that you cut into wedges. While commonly eaten for breakfast during Passover, this one serves as a substantial side dish. Leftovers make a nice brunch or lunch, especially with a green salad. The key to a good matzo brei is soaking the matzo just enough to retain a little bit of chew, but not so much that it becomes soggy. Here, the matzo is submerged in boiling water for one minute to soften. If keeping kosher and making this for a dairy meal, use a tablespoon of butter instead of oil for extra flavor.
Grilled Cheese With Apples and Apple Butter
If Cheddar on a slice of apple pie sounds good to you, you will love this twist on a grilled cheese sandwich, which marries salty and sweet elements between two caramelized pieces of buttery bread. Look for dark apple butter, with no added sugar, since it will have the richest flavor. Unlike most grilled cheese recipes, which call for building the sandwiches, cooking them on one side, then flipping, this one calls for cooking the sandwiches open-faced, then assembling them.The cheese melts more quickly and reliably if cooked this way. Depending on the size of your bread slices and your skillet, you may be able to cook two sandwiches at a time. You could also have two pans going, or just serve them as they are finished. To serve all four at once, just transfer the cooked sandwiches to a baking sheet in a 200-degree oven while you crisp up the remaining sandwiches on the stovetop.
Sweet Potatoes With Tsimmes Glaze
Traditional tsimmes is a stew of sorts that includes sweet potatoes, carrots, one or two kinds of dried fruits, and spices. It’s usually served as a side dish at Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, but it also makes frequent appearances on the Passover Seder table. The word “tsimmes” sometimes means a fuss or commotion, or even a muddle. This version is anything but fussy and definitely not muddled. Here, halved sweet potatoes are simply roasted and served with a scrumptious glaze that includes prunes, orange juice, fresh ginger and a hit of lemon.
Caramelized Sheet-Pan French Toast
Caramelized and crunchy on the outside, soft and custardy on the inside, these almost comically thick sourdough slices taste like the love child of bread pudding and French toast. But instead of the usual brioche or challah, this calls for sturdier bread, preferably a not-too-tangy sourdough or country bread with a crust that’s neither chewy nor thick. You want a round or oblong loaf large enough for big pieces and soft enough to absorb the custard. It’s easy to caramelize the French toast in the oven, but the timing depends on your oven and pan, so check it frequently to ensure that it’s burnished but not burned.
Roast Chicken With Apricots and Olives
This festive dish is a fairly easy main course for the Seder meal — or anytime. Marinating overnight leaves very little work on the day of serving, but two hours is enough to infuse the chicken with tangy citrus and the sumac. Dried apricots, already more tart than sweet, are marinated along with the chicken and become almost savory in the oven. Using pitted Castelvetrano olives will save you a lot of elbow grease, and their meaty texture and mild flavor are perfect here. After roasting together, everything goes under the broiler to deeply brown and thicken the cooking juices into a tasty sauce.
Sheet-Pan Pizza With Asparagus and Arugula
You might be tempted to call this a focaccia, not pizza, and you might be right, but it probably falls somewhere in between. Store-bought pizza dough can be a real time-saver, but if you can’t find it refrigerated, you’ll need to plan ahead to defrost frozen dough. Defrosting is best done for 24 hours or so in the fridge — or longer, as the dough will continue to ferment and improve in flavor after a day or two. The dough is easier to stretch if it’s not ice cold, so let it come to room temperature. The pancetta can be omitted for vegetarians, but the lemony herb and arugula salad on top is not to be missed.
Mushroom Bread Pudding
Wonderful served as a brunch centerpiece or as a holiday side, this rich meatless casserole can be assembled in advance, refrigerated overnight, then baked just before serving. You could certainly prepare it day-of and let the bread soak for 15 minutes before baking, but allowing it to sit overnight will make it more tender. Delicate brioche is the ideal bread for this pudding, and it is available in most supermarkets, often in the form of hamburger rolls, which are a good size and shape for this dish. Challah is also a good option, but it’s a bit denser, so it may take more than 15 minutes for it to soak up the custard.
Thumbprints With Dulce de Leche, Nutella or Jam
Thumbprints are the simplest of cookies, but these are packed with flavor from freshly toasted nuts, each paired with its own filling: pecans with dulce de leche (or homemade caramel sauce, if you have some on hand), hazelnuts with Nutella, or pistachios with a festive pool of red currant jelly in the center. Choose a single combination, or make a batch of each. These cookies benefit from forming the thumbprint halfway through baking, but if you can't take the heat, let the dough soften a bit and then press the thumbprints into the dough before baking.
Blood Orange Poppy Seed Window Cookies
The classic linzer cookie provided inspiration for this sandwich cookie. You’ll want to roll out the dough on a silicone baking mat or sheet of parchment paper, removing the excess, rather than trying to move each cookie, which might distort its shape. The added bonus is that you can also slide them onto a baking sheet should the dough warm up too much, and chill it until it’s workable again. You can fill these window cookies with any kind of marmalade, jam or preserves — even lemon curd. If using any of the first three, warm the filling in the microwave, adding a dribble of water if very thick. Strain through a sieve to remove the solids, if you want.
Leek Risotto With Sugar Snap Peas and Pancetta
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to stir risotto constantly, but achieving a creamy risotto with slightly toothsome grains does require some attention. During the cooking process, the rice should always be lightly coated in liquid and bubbling energetically, and the liquid needs to be added gradually: Add just before the rice threatens to stick to the bottom of the pan. For the creamiest results, stir more frequently and more vigorously during the second half of the cooking, when the grains begin to release their starch.
Marbled Tahini Cookies
Inky black tahini gives these cookies their dark swirl, sandy texture and nutty taste, which is reminiscent of halvah. But, if you can’t get your hands on black tahini, simply omit it. Instead, add 1/2 cup plain tahini to all the dough in Step 4, and skip Step 5. The crunchy black sanding-sugar edge makes them truly modern, but you can also use black sesame seeds or turbinado sugar to adorn the cookies.
Abstract Art Cookies
Some cookies feature tightly piped designs that require a master draftsman’s talents. That’s not this cookie, which looks best decorated with a looser hand. Here, sugar cookie dough is flavored with rosemary and lemon zest, baked, coated with lemony glaze, and sprinkled with crushed pistachios, freeze-dried raspberries, rose petals and pomegranate seeds. Finally, they are drizzled with a bit of pink glaze, Jackson Pollock-style. Each one looks like a little abstract painting, no special skills needed.
Color-Field Cookies
This tribute to the artist Ellsworth Kelly’s work “Nine Colors,” requires just one decorating skill: mixing colors. Use gel food coloring for the best results, and blend the colors together gradually, using the tip of a toothpick to control their transformation. For muted tones, add a touch of brown, or a complementary color, like a drop of purple to bright orange. Try a mixing lighter color first. Then, once you’ve used it, make it darker. For example, sky blue can be deepened with the addition of royal blue, navy blue or a combination. Don’t feel tied to the colors produced in Kelly’s work, but rather, think of these as an experiment in color.
Gingery Brownie Crinkle Cookies
These chocolate cookies are irresistible warm from the oven, when the chips or chunks inside are still luxuriously liquidy. They then cool to a fudgy, brownielike texture with a chewy edge — if any manage to stay around that long. Both fresh and candied ginger lend sophistication, but feel free to leave them out if you want a pure chocolate experience. These cookies are also ideal for late-night cravings: You can be eating them 30 minutes after you start measuring the cocoa powder.
Stamped Citrus Shortbread
Use cast-iron cookie stamps to leave imprints on this beautifully textured shortbread, which is flavored with tangy orange and lemon zests. The stamps, which are available online, are a fun way to shape and decorate cookies without much effort. (Don’t be afraid to be generous with the flour, on the cookie balls and on the stamps themselves, shaking off excess so you still get a clean imprint.) But if you don’t have stamps, you can roll and cut the dough using a simply shaped cutter, or roll the dough into a log for slice-and-bake cookies.
Spice-Rubbed Braised Brisket
With its assertive coffee and spice rub, this brisket cooks long enough to become very tender. A final sear under the broiler thickens the sauce into a glaze for the top. This recipe calls for the lean first cut, also known as the flat cut, and works with the much fattier second cut, sometimes labeled the point cut or deckle. This dish is delicious the day it’s made, but tastes even better prepared ahead of time. After chilling, the meat is easier to slice and the fat a snap to remove.
Clementine Confit
In the age-old French tradition of fruit confit, it takes many days and many pounds of sugar to make a whole clementine shimmer like a glass orb, preserving it for many and making it more of a conversation piece than anything you actually might want to eat. This is a decidedly fresher take that requires less sugar and time. Individual segments of the tart citrus take a long, warm oven bath in a light sugar syrup until chewy and translucent. They are a perfect topping for Ginger Chocolate Cake almost any dessert or even a bowl of yogurt, fruit and nuts.
Peanut Shortbread With Honeycomb
A giant crumbly peanut cookie topped with airy honeycomb and lashed with dark chocolate, this recipe is especially good if you love salty-sweet flavors, and fun to eat too, since you break off shards to serve. Honeycomb candy is one of the easiest confections to make, but, like any candy, it requires careful attention to timing and safety. It’s helpful to have a clip-on candy thermometer to tell you when the sugar is at the right temperature, and you’ll want to transfer the hot sugar mixture to a large bowl. Doing so not only ensures that there is plenty of room for the dramatic billowing that occurs when the baking soda is added, but it also slows the cooking, to avoid burning. This recipe yields quite a lot of pieces, making its perfect for packing into tins for gifts.
Salmon Fried Rice
It’s always a clever idea to cook extra rice so that you can make fried rice the next night, or the one after that, using various bits and bobs in your fridge. Allowing the rice a day or two to dry out makes it doubly flavorful: Since the grains have less moisture, they’ll absorb even more flavor from whatever liquid you add to them. Plus, the dry grains remain separate, which means more surface area to soak up any seasoning. When it comes to fried rice, anything goes — leftover meat or fish, or whatever stray vegetables are lurking in your produce drawer or freezer will do. Just make sure you don’t crowd the pan, or your rice will steam instead of crisp.