New England Recipes
72 recipes found
Pistachio Martini
In Boston’s North End, the pistachio martini is a common menu item, made with pistachio liqueur and vanilla vodka and then garnished with chopped pistachios. The origins are hard to pin down, but many believe the cocktail came about because of Boston’s strict liquor laws, which often inspire mixologists to get creative with flavored liqueurs. This recipe is based on the pistachio martini served at Caffé Vittoria, open since 1929, and it embraces the best parts of a pistachio dessert: rich and creamy, with plenty of bold pistachio flavor that’s accented by vanilla. Serve this at the end of a holiday dinner party as dessert in festive martini glasses that can hold at least 5 or 6 ounces.
Connecticut-Style Lobster Rolls
Connecticut-style lobster rolls celebrate the pure flavor of lobster, simply warming the cooked meat in melted butter to bring out its inherent sweetness and preserve its plump texture. (Maine-style typically serve chilled lobster meat tossed with mayonnaise.) The approach is simple: Toast your buns in butter until golden, then heat the cooked lobster in the same skillet just until warmed. The use of salted butter seasons the meat, so no extra salt is required (though seasoning to taste is never discouraged). Although the optional celery seed is not traditional, its herbal brightness nicely highlights the seafood flavor. Serve these lobster rolls with potato chips and tangy coleslaw for a classic summer meal.
Crab Cakes
Flavored with Old Bay seasoning, mustard and a splash of Worcestershire sauce, these classic Maryland-style crab cakes are heavy on the crab, with just enough bread crumbs and mayonnaise to hold everything together. Serve with homemade tartar sauce, lemon wedges and a green salad for a special lunch, dinner or appetizer any time of the year. For an hors d’oeuvre-sized portion, form smaller cakes (about 3 tablespoons of batter each) and pan-fry as directed. The batter can be made up to 24 hours in advance and stored, covered, in the refrigerator.
Ultimate Clambake
A clambake is one of those absurdly demanding culinary tasks that can still be performed by normal people — that is, nonchefs. I’ve worked through all of that. And if you follow my “recipe” (which includes phrases I don’t often employ, like “find about 30 rocks, each 6 by 4 inches”), you should have a memorable experience. Few meals are more beautiful than a well-executed clambake. And because demanding culinary tasks are in vogue, at least for a certain hard-working segment of the sustainable-food set, it seems like the right moment for a clambake revival.
Eggnog Custard
Grilled Yellowfin Tuna With Sun-Dried Tomatoes And Corn
Rhode Island Shortcakes With Fresh Raspberries
Maple Sugar Glazed Roasted Poussin
Apple and Fennel Soup
Rhode Island Shortcakes
Monkfish Encrusted With Pistachios
Boston Fish Chowder
Windjammer's Clam Chowder
Ken Fitzgerald, Bassist in Band
Corned Beef Hash
A jumble of salty meat, crisp potatoes and sweet onions, corned beef hash is a satisfying and hearty breakfast, lunch or dinner. The New England classic is also pragmatic, borne as Julia Moskin wrote “on leftovers from endless boiled dinners of beef, cabbage, potatoes and onions.” This recipe doesn’t require already-cooked potatoes, though you can swap them in if you have them. And instead of corned beef, use 1 1/2 cups bite-size pieces of another cooked protein, such as pastrami, roast beef, sausage, bacon, chicken or tofu — or omit for excellent home fries.
Steamed Lobsters With Sea Parsley And New Potatoes
Jason's Best Crab Cakes Ever
Sea Parsley Salad With Rice Wine Vinaigrette
Maine Coast Lobster Rolls
Here is the simplest of recipes, brought to The Times in 2001 by Jason Epstein in the low, dispiriting weeks that followed the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He was inspired, he wrote, by the food writer M.F.K. Fisher’s account of a disastrous love affair, and quoted her in his article about cooking for friends at that time: “We returned to the life that had been so real, like fog or smoke, caught in the current of air. We were two ghosts [but] very live ghosts, and drank and ate and saw and felt and made love better than ever before, with an intensity that seemed to detach us utterly from life.” Thus, of course, lobster rolls.
Sherry Vinegar Vinaigrette
The Best Clam Chowder
This is a basic New England clam chowder, though with leeks used in place of the traditional onions, and a splash of wine to add a floral note. Also: thyme. Very continental! It is shockingly delicious and deserves its title as best. Bacon will add a smoky note to the stew. If you use it, it may be worth it to go the whole distance and get expensive double-smoked bacon instead of the standard supermarket fare. The salt pork, which is not smoked, will take the meal in the opposite direction, emphasizing the pure flavor of the clams.
Fireplace Trout
Here is a recipe for trout like the one we ate in Maine. I now add garlic cooked in olive oil, because I have watched enigmatic Basques add it to regal white hake they cook above coals burned from oak. It goes well with the simple trout's innate subtlety and faint whiff of wood smoke, and it all ends up resolutely likable. This takes only a few minutes, and mostly needs only the fire that's already in your fireplace. I think it prudent to cook the garlic in a separate pan on the stove, leaving the fish the only thing to attend to on the actual fire — at least until you are confident and happy before the old Egyptian monster. It is doable all in one pan, but it is quite important to not let something simple and fun and ancient begin to seem complicated.
Lobster Chowder
Dick Bridges, a Maine lobsterman, gave this recipe to The Times in 2007, and we've adapted it here. It's a stew that's both humble and luxurious, making it the perfect dish to serve for a late-fall or winter dinner party.
Boston Brown Bread
Bread that slides out of a can? It might strike many Americans as a dubious culinary eccentricity, but throughout New England it is a staple, often purchased at the supermarket and served at home with a generous pour of baked beans. “I had this growing up,” said Meghan Thompson, the pastry chef at Townsman, in Boston, where the cylindrical brown tower comes to the table as something of a regional wink. Her version, commissioned by the chef Matt Jennings, dials down the cloying sweetness and amps up the flavor with a totally different manifestation of beans: doenjang, the funky Korean paste made from fermented soybeans.
‘Totally Local’ Gratin
All the ingredients listed in this recipe are local to New England. If you don't live there, do your best to substitute them with your own local ingredients. Or grow and make them yourself. (Just kidding.)