Appetizer
3523 recipes found
Squid Salad with Cucumbers, Almonds and Pickled Plum Dressing
Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad
Depending on your appetite, this variation on a classic Caesar salad with grilled chicken makes an excellent first-course or a full-on meal. Hitting the lettuce with a little fire is an unexpectedly brilliant trick; the green leaves char and crisp and the insides become slightly tender, but you still get the satisfying crunch everyone loves about romaine. If you're a pescatarian, try it with grilled tuna, salmon or scallops.
Cauliflower Popcorn
Small florets of cauliflower look a lot like popcorn, and when coated with classic popcorn seasonings, they can be just as snackable. Roast pieces the size of popped kernels until deeply tender and frizzled, shower with panko bread crumbs seasoned with nutritional yeast, then return to the oven to toast. The panko mimics the airy crispness of popcorn, while nutritional yeast adds a cheesy, salty flavor. Adjust seasonings based on what you like: Add wet ingredients, like hot sauce or soy sauce, to the cauliflower before roasting, and dry ingredients, like Old Bay, furikake or Tajín, when you add the panko.
Steamed or Roasted Beets and Beet Greens With Tahini Sauce
I usually roast beets, but I decided to steam them for this dish. I then added some water to the steamer and blanched the greens – though you could also steam them. Beets take about the same time to steam as they do to roast, and it’s a good option if you don’t want to heat up your kitchen with the oven. But I find that roasted beets have a richer flavor. Here, the flavor of the tahini sauce is so pungent that it doesn’t matter if the beets are muted.
Spicy Watermelon Salad With Pineapple and Lime
Refreshing, sweet and spicy, this salad is the edible equivalent of a crisp beer on a hot summer’s day. It pushes the watermelon-feta-mint combination to new heights with a Mexican-inspired flavor profile of lime, jalapeño and cilantro. It’s also easy to prepare, requiring little more than a knife, a bowl and a whisk. Enjoy it as soon as it’s assembled, as the salty dressing draws the juice out of the fruit fairly quickly and the salad can lose its fresh crunch. A sprinkle of Tajín, a chile-lime Mexican spice blend, is optional, but adds a touch of smoke.
Provençal Tomato and Basil Soup
I learned to make this soup years ago when I lived in France. If there are no fresh tomatoes at hand, use canned. The soup is delicious and silky if you thicken it with tapioca.
Apple-Potato Latkes With Cinnamon Sour Cream
These latkes are golden, crunchy, salty-sweet and very satisfying, with applesauce and without. The secret here is squeezing the liquid out of the grated apple and potato mixture before frying; otherwise the latkes end up on the soft side rather than truly crisp. This is because apples are juicier than potatoes, so a firm squeeze in a clean dish towel brings down the moisture content considerably.
Cabbage, Potato and Leek Soup
Here's a warming, economical soup that combines cabbage with leeks, potatoes and plenty of black pepper. The potatoes melt slightly into the broth, making the texture silky, lush and even a bit sexy (at least as far as cabbage goes).
Stone Fruit Caprese
A standout caprese starts with great fruit. You need ripe tomatoes to weep juices, which then mingle with grassy olive oil and milky cheese to make your dressing. Basil adds freshness, black pepper and flakes of sea salt add crunch, and that’s it, a perfect combination. But if the stone fruit options are looking better than the tomatoes at the market, you can use them instead. They’re similar in flavor to tomatoes, but need cajoling to relinquish their juices. By letting sliced fruit macerate with salt, sugar and lemon juice, their fruitiness becomes more electric and their juices pool on the plate. Start with fruit you can smell and pair it with equally quality ingredients. Caprese is more about shopping than cooking.
Frittata With Kasha, Leeks and Spinach
I like adding cooked grains to a frittata, but you have to choose just the right one; it should be soft, not too chewy. Rice works, and so does bulgur. But if you want to add a grain that will contribute a lot of flavor to a frittata, kasha is your grain. It is wonderfully nutty, and a cup of cooked kasha contributes just the right amount of bulk to make this frittata substantial but not at all heavy. Leeks, cooked down until sweet and tender, a small amount of baby spinach, which always partners well with kasha whether raw or cooked, lots of fresh dill and a little bit of feta are the other components. Serve this for dinner and take leftovers to work for lunch.
Celeriac, Celery and Carrot Remoulade
When I lived in France I discovered céleri rémoulade, the creamy grated salad made with celery root, mayonnaise or crème fraîche, or both, and mustard. It was a dish I always ordered when I saw it on café menus, and brought home from French delis on a regular basis. This is inspired by the French salad, but it is not quite as creamy (or gloppy). However you can make it more so if you wish just by adding more crème fraîche, yogurt (healthier), or mayonnaise.
Buffalo Cauliflower
Cauliflower is a blank canvas that can take on flavors that pack a punch, like Buffalo sauce. It also has lots of craggy edges that the sauce can cling to for maximum flavor. For crisp-edged buffalo cauliflower without a fryer, turn on the broiler. Once the tender florets are roasted, broil them a few minutes so the silky, spicy sauce caramelizes and chars in spots. (A finish under the broiler can also elevate chicken wings coated in Buffalo sauce.) Stir together a quick Ranch-style yogurt sauce for dipping, and get on with the game (or lunch).
Avocado Salad With Herbs and Capers
This salad is both dead simple to make and highly luscious. It gets a velvety richness from the avocados. The salad is enlivened by a splash of red wine vinegar in the dressing and a handful of briny capers sprinkled on top. The herbs here are used in two ways, both chopped into a garlicky salsa verde-like dressing, and strewn in whole leaves across the plate. Choose your avocados carefully for this; look for firm but not rock-hard fruit, without any mushy spots. If you’d like to substitute another variety of avocado for the Haas you can, but the salad may not have the same texture. Then serve it either as a side dish or an appetizer with a meal of roasted or grilled meats, chicken or fish. Or make it the foundation of a light lunch, with some crusty bread and tangy cheese on the side.
Endive Salad With Blue Cheese Dressing
I modeled this salad after one of my own great secret weaknesses: iceberg lettuce with blue cheese dressing. The big difference here, of course, is that endive has much more flavor than iceberg, which has more texture than flavor. The bitter edge of the endive is soothed by the sharp blue cheese dressing, and the combination is set off by the small apple dice that garnishes the wedges.
Persimmon and Pomegranate Salad
Persimmons and pomegranate are colorful fall and winter treats. Be sure to use squat Fuyu persimmons, which are delicious raw. (The pointy Hachiya type must be fully ripe, or they are unpalatable.) To serve this salad as a first course, you may add arugula or radicchio leaves. Or just garnish with mint leaves if you are serving it as an accompaniment.
Watermelon and Feta Salad
A take on the Mediterranean combination of watermelon and feta, this refreshing zinger of a salad couldn’t be more perfect. Unassumingly simple, the sweet melon, salty cheese and fragrant basil reach their peak when doused with white balsamic vinegar and dribbled with fruity olive oil. Rather than building tall, this salad builds wide — so use a large platter for the most dramatic presentation. Vinegared watermelon does not keep its crisp, juicy texture well, so be sure to dress it (and eat it) the moment the last basil leaf falls.
Raw Artichoke Salad
In Italy, a favorite way to serve fresh small artichokes is raw, dressed with oil and lemon. It couldn’t be a simpler presentation, and it’s sensational. Slice the trimmed artichokes as thinly as possible, then season and toss with fruity extra-virgin olive oil and lemon juice. Serve over arugula and add curls of Parmesan.
Tuna With Capers, Olives and Lemon
This is not your mother's mayonnaise-laden tuna salad, but it's just as easy to prepare. Here's what you do: stir together some canned tuna, garlic, lemon juice, red onion, black olives, capers and fresh parsley, then spread it on buttered toast. Top it off with a round of ripe tomato or slivers of avocado and another slice of toast. That's it. If you want to make it into a dip, toss the mixture into a food processor with a few tablespoons of softened butter and a bit more olive oil. Purée until smooth and creamy and serve with carrots, fennel, bell pepper and seeded crackers. If you have a tin of sardines taunting you from inside your cabinet, we bet this recipe would work equally well with those.
Garlic Soup
This superior recipe comes from chef Juanjo López of La Tasquita de Enfrente in Madrid.
Egg Salad Sandwiches With Green Olive, Celery and Parsley
This zesty egg salad has no mayonnaise (but a dab of homemade mayonnaise would be permissible). Use picholine or other tasty green olives (not the bland canned supermarket type) or substitute Italian-style marinated artichoke hearts. You could add a little chopped anchovy and a few capers, too, if so inclined. Served open-face as appetizers, these sandwiches are very pretty, but there’s no reason not to use the filling for a conventional sandwich.
Farro and Swiss Chard Salad With Grapefruit Vinaigrette
A farmer at my market recently was selling huge, sturdy bunches of Swiss chard, the kind I used to cook with in France, with wide ribs and heavy leaves. One bunch weighed almost 2 pounds; the leaves alone, off the stems, weighed in at about 13 ounces. I used the greens for more than one dish, including this substantial salad, to which I also added diced sautéed chard ribs.
Chopped Salad With Apples, Walnuts and Bitter Lettuces
The best place for a salad on the Thanksgiving menu is at the beginning of the meal, before everybody fills up. We often pass around plates of this vegetarian chopped salad (no bacon) to accompany the drinks before we sit down at the table. The salad is a great mix of bitter and sweet flavors, juicy and crunchy, and comforting, too. Sweet/tart, crisp juicy apples like Braeburns, Jonagolds, Honey Crisp and Granny Smith work well here.
Kale and Red Cabbage Slaw With Walnuts
I can’t remember where I heard or read about massaging raw kale with olive oil and a little salt, but it is a very effective way to soften the leaves just a bit if you are not cooking the kale. This briny slaw gets its crunch from red cabbage and walnuts.
Kasha With Squash and Pomegranate
This salad works equally well with kasha or freekeh, both of which have a nutty-earthy flavor that serves as a great backdrop for sweet roasted butternut squash and sweet-tart, crunchy pomegranate seeds. Lately I have gotten into the habit of roasting diced butternut squash to keep on hand in the refrigerator for a few days; I usually don’t know in advance what I am going to use it for; then one night it finds its way into a salad like this one, the next night into a risotto, and so on until it is time to roast up another one. Four cups diced squash looks like a lot, but it reduces down to about 1 1/2 cups when you roast it, so you will use it up quickly (I use all of it, for example, in this salad).