Appetizer
3523 recipes found
Macaroni Salad With Lemon and Herbs
Consider this a macaroni salad for the 21st century: Like the original, it’s a welcome accompaniment to picnic fare and pairs with virtually anything off the grill. But this version also happens to be bright, acidic and herbaceous. The traditional elements have been preserved — elbow macaroni, mayonnaise and a pinch of sugar are mandatory — but they’ve been bolstered by bright flavors: lemon zest, tangy capers and pickles, crunchy celery and tons of fresh herbs. It goes lighter on mayonnaise than the original, swapping in tangy buttermilk for a dressing that is more glossy than gloopy. It can be served straight from the fridge or at room temperature. A splash of water stirred in restores its silky sheen.
Cucumber-Ricotta Sandwiches
Part sandwich, part salad, this is an extremely refreshing and satisfying meal. It’s very simple, but there are two requirements: freshly baked bread, with a crisp crust and tender crumb, and the best ricotta you can find, preferably basket ricotta. Skip the low-fat supermarket type: Instead, make your own or use natural cream cheese or queso fresco.
Pasta With Marinated Tomatoes and Summer Herbs
The easiest summer dinner known to man, pasta con salsa crudo, is a one-bowl, infinitely variable riot of seasonal flavors. It can be made with fancy Italian tuna and local heirloom tomatoes for foodies, or with supermarket mozzarella and tomatoes for children, or with excellent olives and extra pine nuts for vegetarians. It puts you in the kitchen for about a half-hour at the tail end of lunchtime. After that, all there is to do is cook the pasta, and serve with or without crusty bread, boiled corn, sliced tomatoes, or a nice, simple green salad.
Sesame Cucumber and Avocado Salad
Crispy cucumber and creamy avocado perform a delicate dance with earthy notes of sesame in this most simple of salads. Thin-skinned varieties such as Persian or English cucumbers work best, as they are almost seedless with a robust flesh that stays crisp. But don’t worry if you only have access to seedy cucumbers: Peel them if their skins are thick, then cut them in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds before slicing. No-cook and ready in a matter of minutes, this elegant salad can be dressed up according to your mood. It is a satisfying meal on its own, but it can also be served alongside cold soba noodles, or with brown rice and a fried or jammy egg on top.
Cucumber Salad With Roasted Peanuts and Chile
Easy to assemble but far from basic, this cucumber salad delivers a riot of flavors and textures with snappy cucumbers, velvety peanut sauce, crunchy cilantro-peanut topping and zingy chile oil. The details make all the difference: First, salting the cucumbers mutes the fruit’s subtly bitter notes while heightening flavor. Next, the simple peanut sauce adds richness to the cool cucumbers. (Make a large batch and store it in the fridge to drizzle over vegetables, chicken and salads.) Finally, a flurry of finely chopped peanuts, cilantro and red-pepper flakes gets dusted over the salad in layers to disperse flavor.
Savory Corn Fritters
These corn fritters use fresh, whole kernels, mixed with spices, scallions and a simple batter. Corn fritters come in many types, from the cornmeal-based, deep-fried hush puppies, to the more patty-shaped, pan-fried fritters. Pan-seared in hot oil until crisp, these patty-like fritters contain Cheddar, which adds creaminess while still allowing the crunchy corn kernels to provide a pop of sweet flavor and texture with each bite. Fritters make an excellent side for a cookout, as they stand up to smoky barbecue flavors and can be enjoyed warm or at room temperature. Leftovers make an excellent breakfast, with a dollop of sour cream or plain yogurt on top.
Zucchini Pancakes
Mucver (pronounced moosh-vair) are delicate, crisp zucchini pancakes popular in Turkey. This version has not just shredded zucchini, but also tiny clouds of feta and a sprinkling of minced fresh dill and scallions. They are crisp on the outside, tender within and subtly herbaceous. The trick to making the pancakes crisp and not soggy is to squeeze all the water out of the zucchini before mixing it with the other ingredients. A little brute force is required.
Festival
According to Helen Willinsky, author of “Jerk From Jamaica: Barbecue Caribbean Style” (Ten Speed Press, 2007), festival is a relatively new entry into the Jamaican culinary canon, “but it is already a must.” A cousin of cornbread and hush puppies, festival is a fluffy yet crisp cornmeal-based fritter that is often seasoned with nutmeg or vanilla, then shaped into “fingers” or long buns and fried. (To make them vegan, substitute an equal quantity of full-fat coconut milk for the whole milk.) A touch of nutmeg adds warmth, and salt balances and enhances the sweetness of the corn. Serve festival with jerk chicken, ribs or fish.
Chickpeas Escabeche With Plantain Strips
In the Spanish-speaking world, the technique of cooking ingredients and then immersing them in vinegar is called escabeche. Anything can be made escabeche; it brings a lovely little shiver of sourness to the table. The writer and cultural critic Alicia Kennedy, who lives in Puerto Rico, likes to use chickpeas, simmering them in vinegar, olive oil and sofrito, a potent blend of garlic, onions, sweet peppers, grassy-bright cilantro and its swaggering cousin culantro. Just before serving, she adds Spanish stuffed olives, for extra richness. The beans are meaty enough to sate and small enough to scoop up with a chip — or, as Ms. Kennedy prefers, to be spooned, almost daintily (‘‘like caviar,’’ she says), onto a delicate strip of crisped plantain, hot from the skillet.
Roasted Broccoli With Tahini Garlic Sauce
One of my favorite Middle Eastern mezze is deep-fried cauliflower served with tahini garlic sauce. I decided to try the dish with broccoli, but instead of deep-frying the broccoli I roasted it, a method that requires a lot less oil. The buds on the broccoli florets toast to a crispy brown, and the texture of the stalk remains crisp. It goes wonderfully with the classic and irresistible tahini garlic sauce.
Roasted Tomato Tart With Ricotta and Pesto
Save those wider-than-tall, about-to-burst tomatoes for slicing and showering with flaky sea salt. For this recipe, you want smaller, sturdier varieties like kumato, Campari or petite heirlooms. Brushing the uncooked puff pastry with crème fraîche adds a subtle tanginess that you won’t necessarily notice, but the tomatoes will taste better for it. You might be tempted to skip salting your tomatoes, but don’t: It helps prevent a soggy crust while intensifying the flavor of your tomatoes. This tart is best enjoyed straight out of the oven, at its flaky prime, but it’s also great at room temperature, or even cold, devoured directly from the fridge.
Microwave-Steamed Eggs
The reward for this delightful steamed egg dish, smooth and savory, will seem much too high for the effort. Reminiscent of Chinese zheng shui dan, Japanese chawanmushi and Korean gyeran jjim, this streamlined recipe cooks entirely in the microwave. The key to that perfect, soft-set wibble-wobble texture (think silken tofu) is using your microwave at around 500 watts — or half its power on a 1,000-watt machine. This lower heat lets the eggs and broth steam together gently until they cohere into something ethereal, existing somewhere between liquid and solid. More slurpable than chewable, it tastes fantastic as a light starter or breakfast on its own, or for lunch or dinner alongside steamed rice and other dishes to complete the spread.
Watermelon Chaat
This recipe for watermelon chaat, a savory fruit salad dressed in toasted cumin and dried mango powder, comes from Malika Ameen, a cookbook author whose Pakistani-American family in Chicago makes infinite variations on fruit chaat in the summer. You could swap out the watermelon for a mix of what's in season, whether it's stone fruit, berries or cubed apple and pear. It's an ideal dish to break the fast during Ramadan, full of flavor and hydrating, and quick to put together.
Palmitos Aguachile Verde (Chile-Lime Hearts of Palm)
If you love acid and heat, this is the dish for you. Aguachile, which is a Sinaloa-style ceviche, is made here with serrano chiles and an abundance of lime juice. That combination works perfectly with delicate palmitos, hearts of palm, that have a just-right balance in texture between creaminess and firmness. Pick up the nori sheets in the snack aisle to add just a bit of saltiness that replicates the briny ocean flavors of seafood-based aguachiles. Serve in a bowl with a generous side of tostadas or tortilla chips — and don’t forget the micheladas. To get vegetarian recipes like this one delivered to your inbox, sign up for The Veggie newsletter.
Asparagus, Goat Cheese and Tarragon Tart
Because you don’t have to make your own crust, this gorgeous asparagus-striped tart is so easy it almost feels like cheating. But it’s not. It’s just simple yet stunning, effortlessly chic and company-ready. As there are so few ingredients in this recipe that each one makes an impact, be sure to buy a good all-butter brand of puff pastry. If you can manage to serve this tart warm, within an hour of baking, it will be at its absolute best, with crisp pastry that shatters into buttery bits when you bite down and still-runny cheese. But it’s also excellent a few hours later, should you want to get all your baking done before your guests arrive. If tarragon isn’t your favorite herb, you can use chives, basil or mint instead. And if you can manage to trim all the asparagus to the same length, this tart will be especially neat and orderly looking.
Indian-ish Nachos With Cheddar, Black Beans and Chutney
These vegetarian nachos take their cues from paapdi or papri chaat, the spicy, tangy and sweet Indian snack of fried dough wafers piled with chickpeas, tomatoes, onions, yogurt and various chutneys. This take starts with standard nacho elements: tortilla chips, black beans and a healthy amount of bubbly, melted cheese. But the classic chaat pairing of spicy and verdant cilantro chutney with sweet and sour tamarind sauce provides another level of brightness and complexity. Don’t skip the chhonk, a sauce made of melted ghee, cumin seeds and red chile powder that is drizzled over the top of the nachos. It provides a rich finish and even more crunch.
Spanish Tortilla
The Spanish tortilla has nothing in common with the Mexican variety except its shape and its name. One is just a bread. The other can be an appetizer, a snack, or even a light meal. But the Spanish tortilla has another advantage: because it is better at room temperature than it is hot, it should be made in advance, anywhere from 15 minutes to a few hours. In its most basic form, the tortilla is a potato and egg open-faced omelet that derives most of its flavor from olive oil. Onions or scallions can replace the potato in part or entirely, as can cooked greens like chard. The only hard part is turning the partly formed tortilla, so do it swiftly and carefully (using a nonstick skillet makes it much easier). The worst that will happen is that a little potato and egg will be left behind when you return the cake to the skillet. If you can't bring yourself to risk the flip, just slide the pan into a 375-degree oven until the eggs are completely set, but not overcooked.
Roasted Broccoli Rabe and White Beans With Burrata
With just a few ingredients, this impressive and quick dish boasts many flavors and textures. Roasting broccoli rabe creates tender stems while the leaves crisp like chips. The broccoli rabe cooks alongside paprika-stained white beans, which become warm, creamy and even crisp in spots as they roast. Eat the beans and greens warm or at room temperature, as a starter or vegetarian main, with slices of orange and a puddle of creamy burrata for softness and sweetness. (You could also use ricotta, thick yogurt or avocado instead of the burrata.) This dish is good on its own, or with farro, pearl couscous or crusty bread.
Spring Minestrone With Kale and Pasta
This one-pot springtime minestrone combines asparagus, peas and kale with a healthy dose of fresh ginger. The ginger is optional, but it energizes the broth. This recipe is fairly flexible overall: You can swap green vegetables according to taste, use vegetable or chicken stock and toss in any type of short pasta. The pesto and Parmesan swirled in at the end provide brightness and richness, but you could also finish the soup with tapenade, sour cream, ricotta or even a splash of your favorite hot sauce.
Dumplings With Chile Crisp
Great dumplings are as much about texture as taste, and these double the welcome contrast of tenderness and crunch. Simultaneously fried and steamed in a covered skillet, the wrappers develop crackling brown bases, while the tops become delicately chewy. Inside, the crunch of spicy chile crisp punctuates soft tofu and greens. Wringing water out of both fillings first allows them to soak in the soy sauce and chile crisp and ensures the filling doesn’t end up watery or bland. Another benefit to this vegan filling is the ability to taste it raw and adjust the seasonings before wrapping.
Kale Soup With Potatoes and Sausage
Though kale probably originated in the dry heat of the Mediterranean, it became a fixture in the kitchens of northern Europe. In Scotland, according to the author Elizabeth Schneider, "to come to cail," was an invitation to come to dinner. Recent devotees extol the virtues of undercooked kale. But having spent five winters in Provincetown, Mass., where the Portuguese eat their kale with sausage or fish, I grew to like mine similar to theirs: slow-simmered in bacon or sausage fat, or braised in chicken broth until it's soft and sweet.
Chicken Nuggets
This is a mash-up of two kids’ menu standbys: chicken nuggets and meatballs. And the result is adult-appropriate, too. The combination is a streamlined mix of flavors and textures, since some of the ingredients added to ground meat for classic meatballs (bread crumbs, garlic, and Parmesan) are often used in the crispy coating on chicken nuggets. Cooking the panko and Parmesan-coated meatballs on the stovetop in a mixture of olive oil (for browning) and butter (for flavor) means no splatters — and meatballs that are tender on the inside and crispy on the outside. Eat with ketchup, ranch or honey mustard; pasta; or with a layer of tomato sauce and mozzarella like chicken Parmesan.
Chicken Miso Meatballs
Ground chicken breast meat is fairly lean, so milk is added to this recipe to keep them moist and tender. As the meatballs bake, the miso caramelizes into savory bites of sweet-salty umami. Crumbled Ritz crackers add richness and create a more juicy meatball (but plain, dry bread crumbs will also work). To make the Ritz crumbs, place the crackers in a resealable plastic bag and lightly crush them with the back of a wooden spoon or measuring cup. These also make a tasty hors d’oeuvre: Simply roll the mixture into smaller 1-inch balls. For a quick dipping sauce, combine 2 parts soy sauce to 1 part distilled white vinegar, and add sliced scallions, or red-pepper flakes, if you like heat.
Air-Fryer Tofu
Much like air-fryer French fries, tofu becomes perfectly crunchy in the air fryer without the need for deep-frying or an abundance of oil. This recipe takes a cue from Eric Kim’s crispy tofu nuggets, using potato starch to create a crackly exterior. The potato starch and salt coating, as well as the circulating high heat, helps evenly draw out the moisture. Similar to many air fryer recipes, the tofu benefits from being tossed or shaken halfway through to ensure even cooking. If using a smaller air fryer, cooking spray helps prevent the cubes from clumping when piled into the basket. For a full meal, serve with rice and a squeeze of lime for an extra shot of brightness.