Appetizer
3523 recipes found
Chili-Flavored Pumpkin Soup
Bavarian-Style Soft Pretzels
These pretzels, called laugenbrezeln, take a bit of planning and time. But they only spend a quarter-hour in the oven, filling the kitchen with a lovely smell, and then you have soft, warm, salty pretzels that you made yourself. What’s that worth? A lot.
Caramelized Kohlrabi Soup
This is a great way to use the mountains of kohlrabi and turnips available in winter at the farmers’ market (or crammed into your community-supported agriculture box). When caramelized in the oven and simmered into soup, these hardy roots turn sweet and mellow, making for a comforting and cozy soup.
Herbed Spring Salad With Egg and Walnuts
This bright, herby, fresh-tasting salad makes a very nice accompaniment to a pan-fried breaded pork chop. Cooked beets (preferably golden) thinly sliced radishes, celery and turnips are dressed, then tossed with a mixture of zesty salad greens — use a combination of watercress, dandelion, curly endive, escarole, radicchio, mizuna, spinach, or red sorrel leaves. The components can be prepared in advance, but wait until the last minute before dressing and serving.
Cucumbers With Labneh and Cherries
This recipe comes from Kismet, the chef Sara Kramer's restaurant in Los Angeles. There, the labneh is made in-house, providing an advantage that can never quite be overcome at home. Still, buy the best labneh you can find. This recipe calls for cherries, but any stone fruit can work: apricots, peaches, plums, nectarines. The slight pickle intensifies the fresh fruit, the taste of summer. The Persian cucumbers can be cut on the bias, as specified here, or sliced thinly on a mandoline.
Caramelized Beets With Orange-Saffron Yogurt
This astonishingly pretty platter is equally delicious, a signature of the British chef Yotam Ottolenghi, who provided the recipe: soft, sweet beets against the tart astringency of the orange-tinctured yogurt, its coolness threaded with saffron. It is also an ace make-ahead dish: You can prepare the yogurt and the beets the night before serving, or in the morning. Look for a good variety of beets if you can, for reasons of color and taste alike: golden ones to offset the red, say, with a mixture of candy canes between the two.
Smoked Chicken Soup With Fennel And Spaetzle
Shrimp Stock
Beef Barley Soup With Lemon
With a higher ratio of broth to barley than one usually sees, and the addition of plenty of fresh baby spinach, this beef barley soup is a little lighter than most of its kind. However, it’s still a substantial, satisfying meal that gets a heady aroma from spices (coriander, cumin and paprika) and a brightness from lemon. If you like your meals with a kick, top this with thinly sliced jalapeño, which will wilt slightly from the heat of the soup. Leftovers freeze perfectly for at least three months, though if using the jalapeño, don’t add it until serving time.
Chilled Golden Beet and Buttermilk Soup
The beauty of this quick, simple soup recipe is in its layers of bright and carefully balanced acidity. Golden beets, puréed with buttermilk and lemon juice, have a sweet, gentle twang; Erin French, a chef from Freedom, Me., takes things even further, garnishing each bowl with fresh herbs, finely chopped shallots macerated in rice wine vinegar, and dollops of sour cream. Serve this soup as a side or with crusty, garlic-rubbed grilled bread to make it a meal.
Kreplach
Frisee Aux Lardons
Dandelion Salad With Beets, Bacon and Goat Cheese Toasts
Tender dandelion leaves make a sensational salad. This one is modeled after a classic Paris bistro salad, but the vinaigrette has fresh ginger and lime juice to stand up to dandelions' faintly bitter flavor. It still tastes very French, as do the goat cheese toasts.
Smoky Beef and Vegetable Sliders
Sliders are a great way to stretch out a small amount of ground meat. I made this dish, which is reminiscent of a sloppy Joe (though a lot tidier), to use up the half-pound of left-over ground beef, and added vegetables to bulk it out and lighten it up.
Watercress Salad With Raw Beets and Radishes
This colorful salad, made with peppery watercress, is easy to put together. Dressed only with lemon juice, a separate horseradish cream is passed at the table. Serve a small portion as a first course or a more generous amount as a main course for a light lunch.
Barszcz (Classic Polish Borscht)
Most Slavic countries have their own form of beet soup, a winter staple across Central and Eastern Europe. Barszcz, the Polish variation, is usually served as a clear burgundy broth with bright, wintry flavors. It is sweeter and beefier than Ukrainian or Russian borscht, and much less textural: Most vegetables are strained after imparting their flavor, though the soup may include grated beets or morsels of meat. This recipe is adapted from “From a Polish Country House Kitchen,” an anthropological cookbook by Anne Applebaum and Danielle Crittenden (Chronicle Books, 2012). Strain the vegetables entirely and sip the restorative broth directly from a mug, or serve the soup with sour cream and enjoy with pierogi.
Black-Eyed Pea Fritters
The chef Pierre Thiam puts a twist on these traditional Senegalese accara, or black-eyed pea fritters. They are sold on street corners throughout West Africa, usually on fresh baguettes as a sandwich. But Mr. Thiam treats them a bit like falafel and stuffs them into fresh pita bread instead. The spicy pickled carrots he uses as a condiment are based on a recipe from his Vietnamese godfather. Accara are deliciously light and fairly addictive, and they make a great snack with drinks.
Smoked Trout and Beet Salad With Pink Caviar
This pretty winter salad gets an upgrade with a garnish of trout roe, sometimes known as pink caviar. Salmon roe is an option, too, as is a dab of relatively inexpensive paddlefish caviar. Make the salad as a first course composed on individual plates, or, for a stand-up cocktail affair, serve a small amount of the mixture spooned into the sturdy red leaves.
Roasted Golden Beet and Winter Squash Salad
Golden beets are more savory and earthy than their sugary ruby counterparts and fare better alongside the caramelized roasted winter squash in this many-textured salad. But red beets will work, too, if you don’t mind a slightly sweeter dish over all. If you can’t find delicata squash, other varieties, such as sweet dumpling (shown here), honey nut or acorn squash, make fine substitutes.
Fritto Misto di Mare
Every culture does fried food, but Italian cooks do it especially well. The concept of fritto misto (mixed fried things) can apply to vegetables, fish or meat. Here, with a beautiful assortment of shellfish, the only requirement is that everything be spanking fresh. In Italy, fritto misto is nearly always served as a first course. It is especially nice in bite-size pieces, to precede a meal as a stand-up antipasto.
Soupe aux Truffes V.G.E.
Craig Claiborne brought this recipe to The Times in the summer of 1975, for a short profile of the acclaimed French chef Paul Bocuse. Guests at a lunch in East Hampton, N.Y., ate the soup out of dishes marked "Palais de l'Elysée, 25 Février 1975. soupe aux truffles V.G.E. Paul Bocuse," commemorating Mr. Bocuse's Legion of Honor award by then French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the V.G.E. in question. Mr. Bocuse created the soup for the occasion and soupe aux truffles V.G.E. went on to become one of his most famous dishes.
Garlic Knots
Garlic knots are a beloved classic pizzeria snack that can easily be recreated at home. Start with premade dough from the supermarket or buy it straight from your neighborhood pizza joint. For best results, the dough needs to rest — or “rise” — twice. The first resting period achieves a dough that is pliable and easy to roll out and shape. Once formed into knots, the dough rests a second time, allowing it to relax after being stretched and shaped, resulting in a more tender and fluffier garlic knot. But it’s the garlic butter that’s the star here. Cook the garlic slow and low, since frying it too fast will make it bitter, then toss it with the knots. For a cheesy twist, sprinkle some grated Parmesan over the glossy rolls.
Cold Shrimp With Warm Cocktail Sauce
Siu Yuk (Crispy Pork Belly)
Known as siu yuk in Cantonese, this pork belly features two contrasting textures: a crunchy, crispy skin that crackles and pops and a tender slab of meat underneath. To achieve success with both components, a lot of care and time has to be put into the prep. The pork belly needs to be cooked low and slow to break down the tough sinewy bits, then the skin needs to be dried overnight until leathery and blasted under high heat until crisp. This recipe comes from Hong Kong resident Cherry Tang, who used to make siu yuk in the supper clubs she hosted back when she lived in London. Ms. Tang prefers to broil the meat under direct heat, which guarantees a crackling crust — but do keep an eye on the skin, so that it doesn’t char.