Appetizer
3523 recipes found
Roasted Veggie Tarts
Ashley Wood of Winnipeg, Canada uses a mini-muffin tray to form the shells of her crowd-pleasing butternut squash and zucchini mini-tarts. The vegetable filling is made quick and easy by using a wok to cook the vegetables. “I do advise to make more than needed …because they vanish off the plate quickly!” she warns.
Tostadas Campechanas de Mariscos (Seafood Tostadas)
At the beautifully abundant Mercado Negro in Ensenada, Baja California, the clams, mussels, oysters, shrimp and fish that are for sale each day are highly sought after by locals and chefs. Almost more common than street tacos served there are these tostadas, made in stands that sell towers of fresh, raw seafood tossed with squeezed lime juice and topped with a number of different housemade salsas.
Zucchini Phyllo Pizza
Smoked Bulgur and Pomegranate Salad
This colorful and flavorful mountain of bulgur, flecked with pomegranates, walnuts and herbs, is typical of the out-of-the box thinking of the chef Ori Menashe. He learned how to char vegetables in a heavy pan from chefs from Mexico City, who did a pop-up at his Los Angeles restaurant Bestia before it opened and showed him their technique for adding a smoky flavor to rice. (Libyan and Egyptian cooks also have started stews this way for centuries.) Just be careful about the hot pepper as it chars; it might make you cough, so keep the window open for the 6 minutes it takes to do this. This recipe yields 8 cups of cooked bulgur, but you only need 6 cups for the salad. Use those leftover 2 cups in other salads or add them to soups for heft and texture.
Chicken Wings With Gochujang, Ginger and Garlic
Wings have a higher ratio of skin to meat than almost any other cut of chicken, which is what makes them so appealing. In order to crisp the skin, you need to render out most of the fat that comes with it, otherwise you’ll get chewy wings instead of crunchy ones.
Roasted Grape and Butternut Squash Bruschetta
Rob Beasley, the chef at the Chaumette Vineyard and Winery in Ste. Genevieve, Mo., created these bruschetta to show off the flavors of fall. He uses the coeur de clos cheese made a short drive away at Baetje Farms. It’s a Camembert-style cheese from goat and sheep milk. It works well in this recipe, but a fresh chévre is perfect, too.
Smoked Chicken Wings
If you have an offset smoker, even a leaky old fellow with rust spots and broken wheels, this recipe will provide one of its finest uses. Smoking chicken wings for 15 minutes or so before grilling or roasting them under thin bastings of barbecue sauce yields meat that is smoky but not aggressively so, deeply flavorful, with a marvelous crust. But you don’t need a smoker! Simply set up your grill for indirect cooking, with a fairly small fire, and use soaked wood chips to create a plume of smoke. Put the wings on the cool side of the grill, then cover it and allow the smoke to perform its magic. You’ll get wings that are pale gold, the color of chamois that you can cook into perfection over the direct heat of the fire.
Orange and Radish Salad
The marriage of radish and orange punches way above its weight as a salad. This version is based on one James Beard collected. Alice Waters, the founder of Chez Panisse, has a recipe, too. So does Paula Wolfert, who dedicated her nine cookbooks to Mediterranean cuisine. Their inspiration came from countless Moroccans who have this salad in regular rotation, often with orange flower water. This recipe leaves it out, opting for a simpler but still refreshing salad that requires careful, precise preparation of the oranges and the radishes to make it shine. If you like, add a pinch of cinnamon to the dressing or sprinkle a bit on top.
Grilled Ratatouille With Crostini and Goat Cheese
Grilled ratatouille is a warm-weather recipe with many charms in both method and result. Grilling takes the whole process of cooking outside, and the grill also adds a lovely smoky nuance to the finished dish without overpowering the essential flavors of vegetables, olive oil and herbs. The dish is less stew-y and more saladlike than a typical ratatouille, but with its concentrated flavor and velvety texture, along with a garlicky kick, it may well become a favorite all the same.
Roasted Cauliflower, Paneer and Lentil Salad
The Indian cheese paneer doesn’t typically show up in salads, but this one from food writer Nik Sharma’s cookbook, “Season,” involves cutting paneer into cubes and roasting it alongside cauliflower for about 25 minutes (though doing so for longer wouldn’t hurt). Paneer maintains its structure in heat, so its skin will come out of the oven charred, its insides still soft. You’ll stir the paneer and cauliflower with green and black lentils, cooked and drained, and scallions, resulting in a pleasing jumble of textures. Drizzle it with a cilantro-lime dressing, which gives the salad a tart kick.
Radicchio Grilled With Olive Paste and Anchovies
Grilled Clams With Fried Garlic
Crispy Smoked Shiitakes
Most vegetable charcuterie involves several days of curing and smoking, but these crispy smoked shiitakes — mushroom bacon, if you will — can be made from start to finish in less than a half hour. The recipe comes from a terrific vegan restaurant in Washington D.C., called Fancy Radish, by way of the chef and co-owner Rich Landau. It involves a two-step process: First you fry thinly sliced shiitakes to make them crisp, then you smoke them to make them taste like bacon. You can do the smoking in your smoker or a charcoal grill, or indoors with a handheld or stovetop smoker. You’ll love the crisp crunch and rich, baconlike mouthfeel, with a smoky flavor that’s similar to bacon’s but with distinct mushroom overtones. Make shiitake crispy smoked shiitakes for a vegan snack or BLT, or serve it with eggs if you eat them.
Warm Bread Salad
This is, quite possibly, the bread salad to end all bread salads. Judy Rodgers, the legendary chef and bread lover, developed it to serve alongside roast chicken, but it's perfect paired with any roast meat. Bread chunks are mixed with a sharp vinaigrette, softened currants, toasted pine nuts and lightly cooked scallions and garlic. Everything is piled into a roasting pan then slid into the oven just before the chicken comes out and stays in while the chicken rests (if you're not making it with chicken, heat the oven to 450, turn it off and pop the salad in for 15 minutes). At the last minute, toss the bread mixture with arugula and vinaigrette. Top with your meat of choice (or not) and dig in.
White Bean Salad With Roasted Cauliflower
This is the kind of substantial salad that’s nice to have on hand, no matter the occasion. If you have time, it’s best made with large dried white beans, such as cannellini, simmered at home. (It’s great to have a pot of cooked beans in the fridge all summer long, for deploying in salads and soups.) But using canned beans is absolutely OK. The recipe calls for roasting the cauliflower, but it could also be cooked on a grill to impart some pleasant smokiness.
Ham-Cured, Smoked Pork With Cognac-Orange Glaze
Think of this cured, smoked pork loin as ham you can make in a hurry, with 2 days’ curing time and an hour or so of smoking, as opposed to the weeks or even months that a traditional ham takes. Plus, the loin has no bones, so it’s a snap to carve. For the best results, use a heritage pork loin, like Berkshire or Duroc. Depending on your grill, the pork and the weather, smoking time may be as short as 1 hour or as long as 1 1/2 hours. The orange juice in this Cognac-citrus glaze cuts the saltiness of the cure, while the Cognac makes a nice counterpoint to the wood smoke. Besides, brown sugar and orange marmalade go great with salty ham.
Marinated Mozzarella, Olives and Cherry Tomatoes
This simple dish of marinated cherry tomatoes, olives and mozzarella is best, of course, when cherry tomatoes are in season. That it gets better as it sits is a boon: Bring it to potlucks or picnics, or simply let it sit in your refrigerator, a satisfying lunch at home. A generous handful of basil leaves, sprinkled atop just before serving, gives everything a bright, herbal finish. You’ll want to make this all summer long.
Slow-Roasted Tomatoes With Olive Oil and Lime
Inspired by a meal at Le Jardin des Plumes in the French town of Giverny, where the artist Monet lived and worked, this dish is as beautiful as it is unusual: It’s simply a tomato gently roasted and basted with olive oil. It tastes vegetal and rich, as you’d expect, but it’s also sweet and citrusy. The surprise is at the core, which gets filled with sugar and lime zest. During the hours in the oven, the oil, sugar and zest find their way into every fiber of the tomato, technically making it a kind of confit, a dish usually cooked in fat or sugar — or, in this case, both. Serve the tomato warm or at room temperature as a starter, perhaps with a tiny salad, or, for your most adventurous friends, serve it chilled for dessert, topped with vanilla ice cream, a drizzle of oil and some flaky salt.
Cheddar Cheese Coins
These snacks are packed with an intense cheese flavor that comes from blending extra-sharp Cheddar with nutty Parmesan. Mild scallions and spicy black pepper bring additional savory notes, which play up that cheesiness. The coins have golden crispy edges and slightly tender centers. They’re great for snacking on the go, serving as part of a cheese board or dunking into tomato soup. The recipe can easily be doubled for a holiday cookie swap, and the dough can be made 1 month ahead and kept frozen wrapped tightly in plastic wrap and stored in a resealable plastic bag; simply thaw, cut and bake when ready.
Pork Satay With Thai Spices and Peanut Sauce
Throughout Southeast Asia, little skewers of marinated meat, grilled over coals, are sold as street snacks. Sweetly fragrant with coconut milk and spices, they are perfect for barbecue parties served with steamed rice, or on their own with drinks, whether grilled indoors or out. You may use pork loin or tenderloin, but marbled sirloin or shoulder is more succulent.
Green Garlic and Chive Soufflé
This puffy soufflé is filled with chopped green garlic, chives and plenty of Gruyère cheese.
Chilled Beet-and-Sauerkraut Soup With Horseradish and Crème Fraîche
This recipe — invented by Camino’s Russell Moore because he couldn’t bring himself to discard the salty, pickly liquid left over from sauerkraut — is often on Camino’s menu in the winter. He tells me it is an especially good one to make at home, because so many of us have old jars of sauerkraut cowering in the backs of our refrigerators. If my own refrigerator is any gauge, he is correct.
Standard Masa for Empanadas
Masarepa is cornmeal that has been precooked, dehydrated and ground into a fine powder. It’s used all over Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia for a variety of recipes, including arepas and empanadas.
Chicken Soup With Leeks and Lemon
This is inspired by both the classic Greek soup avgolemono and Scottish cockaleekee. Start with a flavorful chicken or turkey broth, simmer leeks and rice or bulgur in the soup until tender, then enrich with eggs and lemon. The trick here is to begin with a flavorful stock and not to allow the eggs to curdle when you combine the soup and the avgolemono sauce. You can make a vegetarian version of this using a garlic broth or by making a robust vegetable stock using the dark leafy parts of the leeks.