Appetizer
3523 recipes found
Chard Cakes With Sorrel Sauce
Sweet Plantain Fries
Like maduros or dodo, these feature ripe plantains, but the cut here gives even more room for crisp, caramelized outsides and sweet, tender insides. You want very ripe plantains, which are high in sugars that will caramelize in the hot oil. For some brightness, you could also finish this with citrus salt, or take a cue from dodo and squeeze lime juice over. Pair these with something light and spicy, like jerk salmon or a citrusy roast chicken, or something light off the grill, like a salmon or turkey burger.
Bulgarian Cucumber Soup With Walnuts
Walnuts are used in sweet and savory dishes throughout the Mediterranean. Along the Italian Riviera, a rich ricotta and walnut sauce traditionally is served with ravioli filled with greens. In Turkey, a thick, garlicky walnut sauce called tarator is served with cooked vegetables, much as aïoli is in the South of France. In France, walnuts are added to salads, breads and many desserts, and they are eaten fresh as well as dried — a great delicacy in the fall, just after the harvest. I’ve never encountered creamy, fresh walnuts in American farmers’ markets, but if you know a walnut farmer, perhaps you could request some the next time they’re harvested. Before the weather becomes too chilly for cold soups, try this one. Bulgaria once was well known for the number of centenarians in its population, which some scientists attributed to the daily consumption of Bulgarian yogurt. Now, both the yogurt and eating culture in this mountainous country have changed for the worse, and so have local lifespans.
Mushroom and Beet Borscht
This lighter, vegetarian version of hot borscht has the depth of flavor that a meaty backdrop provides, without overpowering the winelike, heady flavor of the beets.
Mushroom Toast With Pea Purée
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Take a bag of frozen organic peas and heat them in a little bit of boiling water for a couple of minutes to get them warm and cooked through, then drain them off and whiz them in a food processor with a hit of olive oil, some lemon juice and, if you have any, some tarragon leaves, until it resembles a thickish purée. Next, sauté a bunch of thick-sliced portobellos (count on about two mushrooms per person) in a lot of butter with a little bit of garlic. Really cook those down. Finally, make toast from hefty slices of your favorite bread, spread them with the pea purée, top with the mushrooms and — dinner! Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Phyllo Triangles With Squash and Mint
When you make these baked Greek phyllo bites, you have to take care that the pastry does not dry out, which will cause it to crack when you fold the triangles. Keep the sheets and strips you are not working with covered with a damp towel to avoid this. If you do have a problem with cracking, wrap each triangle in another strip of phyllo.
Fried Okra With Rémoulade
“Fresh, never frozen” — that’s Joseph J. Boudreaux III’s motto when it comes to making the best fried okra. The Tipping Point Coffee co-owner and Houston home cook believes fried okra relies on fresh okra pods and a righteous cornmeal breading. Paired with a creamy rémoulade that’s infused with a bit of heat, Mr. Boudreaux’s fried okra recipe pays homage to his father, who grows the flowering plant right in his backyard in Texas. It captures all that the South adores about the quintessential summer side: simplicity, ease and plenty of flavor. If you'd rather not deep-fry, you also can pan-fry okra or stir-fry it.
Creamy Queso With Pickled Jalapeños
Queso, the crown jewel of Tex-Mex cuisine, is a creamy, tangy dip made with melted cheese. But it can't be just any cheese. This is one of those rare instances (see also: cheeseburger) where the preferred cheese is good, old-fashioned, highly processed American cheese. Velveeta is tops, but Land O'Lakes and Boar’s Head have deli versions that will do. Kraft singles work, too, but it's a lot of unwrapping. The pickled jalapeños in this recipe aren’t traditional, but they do add some welcome heat and a bit of tang that cut through the richness.
Pan-Fried Okra
As one of the most respected cooks in America’s Lowcountry region, Emily Meggett knows a thing or two about taking humble ingredients and transforming them into an irresistible plate of food. Such is the case for the matriarch’s pan-fried okra, from her cookbook “Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes From the Matriarch of Edisto Island” (Abrams, 2022), a book that I co-wrote. Her recipe is constructed around the use of fresh, seasonal okra pods. Mrs. Meggett dismisses what she views as the excessive use of dairy-based cornmeal batters in restaurant versions of fried okra; instead, she lightly coats her okra, allowing the beauty and taste of the vegetable to shine in each mouthful.
Puréed Winter Squash and Red Lentil Soup
Here the tawny hue of the cooked lentils blends well with the sweet yellow-orange winter squash. If you’re looking for Halloween colors for a dinner main dish or starter, look no further.
Chopped Liver on Matzo
I’m just guessing here, but I feel like “chopped liver” will never be my most popular recipe. I do love to eat it, and for those who feel the same way, "Hello, nice to meet you!" It’s not much to look at, but at least one of you will become a fan after spreading this funky, savory mixture onto a salted matzo with a sprinkle of parsley and lemon juice. (I’m hoping that person is you.) It won’t keep very long (it’s best within 24 hours), but that’s why this version makes the perfect snackable amount.
Panzanella With Winter Squash and Sage
This cool-weather panzanella trades tomatoes for caramelized roasted squash. It is a great salad for a buffet, but you can also make a meal of it.
Grilled Halloumi and Vegetables
Halloumi is a firm, white, brined cheese traditionally made from a mixture of goat’s and sheep’s milk. (Though today, cow’s milk is often used.) Like other low-fat cheeses, it is perfect for grilling. It sears and colors quickly when it hits the hot grill. The interior softens, but the cheese doesn’t melt; it just warms up invitingly.
Quick-Pickled Okra
Quartering the okra significantly cuts down pickling time in this recipe: The vegetable pickles more quickly because its insides are exposed. Most picklers have their own special way of seasoning the love-it or leave-it vegetable. “Pickled okra had to grow on me,” Kenneth Garrett, a lifelong New Orleans resident and avid pickler, said. Now, he eagerly awaits okra’s growing season, and he makes pickled okra with basil and oregano, all from his garden. He serves it alongside fried chicken or as a snack. Mr. Garrett adds Creole seasoning, but this recipe uses whole peppercorns instead. Feel free to be creative with spices here. This recipe is ready in hours, but you can minimize okra’s characteristic gooeyness by refrigerating the pickles for two weeks before enjoying. Lastly, whenever preserving or canning, even for a “quick” job like this, it’s important to maintain a sterile environment. Wash the jars, lids and rims with hot, soapy water and dry them with clean towels.
Grilled Feta With Nuts
This skillet of warmed feta and nuts can tide guests over before dinner or embellish a meal of grilled lamb kebabs, mixed vegetables, pork or chicken. Inspired by saganaki, a fried-cheese appetizer from Greece, the feta here is surrounded by nuts, olive oil, honey and herbs. Thyme, oregano or za’atar adds earthiness to the salty feta and sweet honey, but you could incorporate orange or lemon peel, fresh or dried chile, or any other aromatics you like on spiced nuts. You could also trade the nuts for tomatoes, dates, salami or olives. Whatever you do, be sure to drizzle the herbed honey and oil over each spoonful of feta.
Provençal Greens Soup
In France this simple, nutritious soup is made with wild greens that you might forage on an afternoon’s walk, such as nettles, watercress and dandelion greens. If you must use one green, make it Swiss chard. The soup can be prepared through step 1 several hours before serving.
Cheesy Bread With Marinara
Soft, pillowy bread stuffed with melty mozzarella and dipped in a marinara sauce makes for an easy, crowd-pleasing appetizer or side dish. Here, store-bought sauce is doctored up with a few pantry staples, including dried oregano, garlic and red-pepper flakes, but you can use homemade sauce, too. Slice the bread or let everyone tear off pieces, like they would a fresh baguette, for a more spontaneous, cheese-pull moment. To round out the spread with something green, roast broccolini, broccoli or kale on a sheet pan in the oven as the bread cooks, then dip alongside. For a crunchier exterior, unwrap the bread and cook uncovered for the last 5 minutes.
Almost Aunt Sandy’s Sweet and Sour Salmon
All my other relatives served gefilte fish at holiday meals, but not Aunt Sandy. Instead of breaking the fast on Yom Kippur with gefilte fish, kugel and bagels and lox, she made potage Parmentier, pesto pasta salad and, her masterpiece, sweet and sour fish in a shimmering aspic. In my version, I reduced sugar and substituted balsamic for the sharper wine vinegar. I added raisins and sliced lemons, an idea stolen from a similar recipe I found online. I eliminated the peppercorns, which were unpleasant to crunch, adding aromatic thyme instead. Finally, because I didn’t want aspic, I substituted prepared fish broth for the mess of boiling bones. The broth was light and refreshing with a gentle acidity that was balanced by the sweetness of the raisins. And the fish was succulent and rich and suffused with flavor.
Fresh Ricotta
Why make homemade ricotta? Because you can. And because the results are so much better than most of the packaged stuff you can buy, especially at the supermarket. Making it yourself is also less expensive than buying fresh ricotta at a fancy gourmet market.
The court-bouillon
Korean Corn Cheese
A uniquely Korean-American creation, corn cheese is a dish inspired by two cultures. The simplicity of the ingredients — canned corn, mayonnaise and mild shredded cheese — yields a nearly effortless banchan, or side dish, that smells and tastes like comfort. It’s extremely kid-friendly, but is also enjoyed as anju, or food that pairs well with alcohol. (Soju, a popular Korean alcoholic beverage, is a great match.) This versatile, sweet-savory dish is best enjoyed hot and accompanied by an array of dishes, like kimchi, gochujang-glazed eggplant, bulgogi or galbi.
Cheesy Cauliflower Toasts
Trust Ina Garten to take two big food trends — cauliflower and toast — and combine them into something completely fresh. This recipe, adapted from her 2018 cookbook, “Cook Like a Pro,” is a bit like an open-face grilled cheese sandwich with a nutty layer of roasted cauliflower, and spiked with nutmeg and paprika. We made it vegetarian by leaving out the prosciutto, and also lightened up on the cheese. It makes a vegetarian dinner with soup and salad, or a good snack with drinks.
Chard-Wrapped Greek Yogurt Pies
These little Greek-style pies are traditionally wrapped in grape leaves, but chard leaves make a fine alternative. Served warm, the texture is akin to a fresh cheese, perfumed with dill, mint and olive oil.
Spanish-Style Shrimp With Garlic
Garlic and shrimp take center stage in this classic Spanish dish, which is served as a tapa in Spain but also makes a great main dish. Serve with rice, or if serving in earthenware dishes, with crusty bread for dipping.