Cheese
2190 recipes found
Grilled Zucchini and Feta Toasts
Though its flavor is subtle, zucchini absorbs seasonings readily, and develops deep complexity when grilled. In this recipe, the grilled squash is doused with a flavorful oil made with garlic, cumin and coriander. If you have extra time, marinate the grilled zucchini pieces in the spice oil for up to 24 hours to help build flavor. You can serve the dish hot off the grill, or prepare in advance, then serve at room temperature.
Sweet Potato and Onion Dip
George Washington Carver, the botanist, educator and inventor, was known as “the peanut man,” but he geeked out over sweet potatoes as much as peanuts. He recorded recipes for sweet potato flour, sweet potato starch and commercial canning. “The delicate flavor of a sweet potato is lost if it is not cooked properly,” he wrote in his 1936 Bulletin No. 38. (His paper booklets were distributed to rural farmers to assist with crop rotation and provide instructions for added-value products.) Dr. Carver considered baking the best way to cook sweet potatoes while preserving the most flavor. Use varieties like Covington, Vardaman or jewel; the sugary notes balance the alliums and warming spices. Raw vegetables or tortilla chips make practical dipping utensils for this spread, or lather the dip over toasted thick-cut bread.
Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Fresh Figs
This dish from Yotam Ottolenghi, a chef and an author of "Jerusalem," the beloved Middle Eastern cookbook, takes inspiration from a city where fig trees grow in abundance. Roasted sweet potatoes, along with wedges of fresh figs, are piled onto a plate, drizzled with a green onion-chile sauce and a balsamic reduction then dotted with generous pats of goat cheese. Do plan ahead, as this recipe does require a bit of preparation, but it's easy work that's more than worth it.
Brown Butter Lentil and Sweet Potato Salad
This simple lentil salad has a little secret: a toasty, brown butter vinaigrette perfumed with sage. The dish has as much texture as it does flavor. French green lentils or black lentils are the ideal choice, as they hold their shape well after cooking, but brown lentils will work too, though they’ll be a bit softer. Start testing your lentils for doneness after about 15 minutes of cooking; you want them cooked through but not mushy, and they’re best if they retain some bite. Roasted until tender, the sweet potatoes add richness, but feel free to substitute just about any roasted vegetables. Carrots, beets or red bell peppers would all be delicious in their stead.
Galatoire’s Sweet Potato Cheesecake
This recipe is adapted from a popular dessert served at Galatoire's, a famed New Orleans restaurant founded on Bourbon Street, in 1905. A simple graham cracker crust is filled with cinnamon-spiced sweet potato cheesecake then topped with a lightly-sweetened layer of sour cream. It is to die for.
Sweet Potato Hummingbird Cake
This magnificent version of the popular banana-pineapple-pecan cake developed by Southern Living magazine in 1978 is adapted from the chef Ashley Christensen's cookbook, "Poole's: Recipes from a Modern Diner." It is a Thanksgiving-worthy dessert for the pie averse: a supremely moist, dense cake crowded with sweet potato, roasted bananas, pineapple, currants and green peanuts (if you live north of the Mason-Dixon line, the plain, roasted variety work just fine). A lightly sweet, butter-cream cheese frosting finishes it off. Set aside a solid afternoon for this project cake, as you have to roast the bananas and grate the sweet potato, and the assembly takes some patience and agility — but it is well worth the toil. This recipe is for a towering three-layer version (get out your biggest mixing bowls), but you could just make a more modest, but still generously sized, two-layer cake instead. To do so, cut all of the ingredients in half (use just 2 eggs); divide the batter between two 8-inch round cake pans; and bake at the same time and temperature.
Cheesy Eggplant and Rigatoni Bake
Put on your cozy pants and get comfortable with a giant bowl of this cheesy, eggplant-studded pasta. Don’t be shy about adding plenty of reserved pasta cooking water to the sauce; it's the magical ingredient that creates a silky sauce and keeps the pasta moist while baking. A little grated ricotta salata to finish adds a slight tangy bite that rounds everything out — but, truthfully, more Parmesan or any firm, salted cheese will do.
Pasta Alla Norma Sorta
Say “ciao” to your new pasta alla Norma. This updated version of the Sicilian classic includes prosciutto, which is fried until golden. Its rendered fat is used to start the dish and provide a rich, nuanced flavor, and the cooked bits are used to finish it for a salty crunch. To save on time, the eggplant roasts while a quick sauce of cherry and canned tomatoes, shallots, garlic and chile comes together on the stovetop. Just before serving, the eggplant, pasta and mozzarella (in place of the traditional ricotta salata) are tossed together until melty and delicious. Some rules are worth breaking.
Eggplant, Lamb and Yogurt Casserole
This hearty dish is inspired by moussaka, but simpler to prepare. Everything is baked in one roasting pan, with the different elements added in stages. Made with yogurt, cheese and egg, the topping cuts wonderfully through the richness of the eggplant and lamb, even though it lacks the body of béchamel. If you can get them, sweet and properly ripened tomatoes would be better than the canned ones. This is best served with a piece of pita or a slice of white bread to scoop it all up.
Eggplant Focaccia With Ricotta and Olives
A generous amount of olive oil in the dough gives this flatbread its especially crisp edges, and a soft, bready crumb. The topping, a mix of thinly sliced eggplant slathered with garlic-imbued olive oil and minced olives, is silky, rich and very flavorful — even without the optional (but excellent) anchovies. Just as good devoured warm from the oven and as it is at room temperature, this makes perfect picnic fare. Or serve it with a leafy salad for a light but satisfying dinner.
Donald Link's Eggplant Casserole
Donald Link is a New Orleans restaurateur with a passion for the Cajun food of his youth and a restaurant, Cochon, devoted to its delicious execution. His eggplant casserole is warmed with the spicy North African sausage known as merguez. But it works extremely well with lamb sausage, too, or with fresh chorizo.
The Best Fried-Eggplant Sandwich
In the spring of 2016, my most favorite sandwich was fried eggplant, mozzarella and roast beef on an Italian hero, with hot peppers and a slash of mayonnaise. I adapted the recipe from a sandwich served at Defonte’s Sandwich Shop, on Columbia Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn. It is a beautiful torpedo of food, crunchy, silken, sweet and spicy all at once. You can certainly omit the roast beef to make it vegetarian or at any rate a little smaller, the sort of meal that offers satisfaction without hurting anyone, that delivers deliciousness at a lower cost to the body that consumes it. It is still a colossal feed. It is still the best sandwich.
Crunchy Eggplant Parmesan
In most eggplant Parmesan recipes, crusty slices of fried eggplant go into a casserole with sauce and cheese -- where they quickly turn to sludge. This recipe holds on to the crunch by transforming each whole eggplant into a crisp cutlet. You can make one eggplant per person to serve this as an appetizer, or add a bed of pasta to make it more substantial. There's no Parmesan cheese in this recipe, but that's not a mistake: in Italian the phrase "alla Parmigiana" refers to a style of dish. It doesn't refer to Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
Pan-Fried Eggplant With Chile, Honey and Ricotta
For the crispest, most burnished pieces of eggplant, nothing beats frying, and it’s worth every last splattered drop of oil to get there. This dish pairs the golden spears of fried eggplant with milky ricotta cheese, fried garlic slices, red-pepper flakes and a generous drizzle of honey. You can serve it as a first course, a substantial side dish or a light main course with a green salad on the side. Note that tender, young eggplant cook a lot more quickly than denser, larger ones, and are worth seeking out here.
Crostini Alla Norma
The classic Sicilian pasta sauce of eggplant and tomato makes a hearty topping for summery crostini. Traditionally, the alla norma method involves frying eggplant, but this recipe calls for roasting it, which saves time and requires much less oil. The eggplant and tomato mixture can be made up to two days in advance, which makes this a great dish for entertaining, since it benefits from some extra time for flavors to develop. For an even quicker appetizer, serve in a bowl with toasted baguette slices on the side.
Charred Cabbage and Lentil Soup
To make a soup that is different and perhaps more interesting than the last, play with how your usual soup ingredients are put to work. Instead of layering ingredients in the pot, build the foundational flavor in the oven. Here, cabbage is roasted until mostly charred and chip-like, while lentils, cubed carrots and onions simmer on the stove. When the smoky cabbage, sweet vegetables and earthy lentils meet in the bowl, they offer a range of textures you’d never achieve if everything boiled away together. (And once you roast cabbage, it’ll be hard to think of it as drab again.) As with most soups, this one’s adaptable: Roast sausage with the cabbage, use cauliflower instead of cabbage, or finish with lemon and so on.
Eggplant Baked With Tomatoes and Ricotta Salata
I have always loved eggplant parmigiana, but the first time I tried preparing it at home, I found the standard recipe daunting: too much frying and too much cheese. I've been simplifying it ever since. This recipe is more pared-down than most. I baked the eggplants with a simple tomato, eggplant and garlic topping bolstered with fragrant herbs. I used ricotta salata, but other cheeses, including shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano, fontina or mild pecorino, would be fine. Though the dish can be served hot from the oven, I prefer to let it cool somewhat, to let the flavors bloom. If made well in advance but not refrigerated, it can be reheated in a 300-degree oven for 20 minutes. And it makes for a handsome and delicious buffet dish.
Baked Eggplant With Ricotta, Mozzarella and Anchovy
I learned this dish from a Sicilian cook in a small town outside Palermo. She makes it by layering thinly sliced eggplant with fresh curd cheese and caciocavallo (I use fresh ricotta and provolone instead), as well as pecorino and Parmesan cheese — a bit like a lasagna without pasta. It is quite delicious and unusual in that there is no tomato sauce, as there often is in so many Sicilian baked eggplant dishes. The anchovies, melted into the crisp bread-crumb-and-cheese topping, provide a sharp contrast to the sweetness of the eggplant. I like to serve a tomato salad alongside.
Bacon, Egg and Cheese Fried Rice
Bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches and fried rice are each beloved for their simplicity and affordability, but also because they deliver great comfort and satisfaction. They typically offer a combination of salty meat, creamy eggs and a carb in the form of bread or rice, but each dish is infinitely adaptable. In this playful weeknight meal, the two come together. Rendered bacon fat is used to cook the dish’s components, infusing the vegetables and rice with smokiness. Eggs are beaten with nutty grated Parmesan to create rich, fluffy scrambled eggs that add an extra layer of savoriness to the dish. Any type of leftover rice will work, as would other leftover grains like farro or barley.
Lemony Asparagus Salad With Shaved Cheese and Nuts
Less is more when it comes to asparagus, especially those first tender stalks that show up in spring. Here they’re quickly steamed and turned into an elegant salad tossed with a lemony, shallot dressing, and enriched with plenty of grated Manchego or other cheese. Chopped pistachios add another shade of green to the plate along with their sweet crunch, but use any nuts you like, or skip them entirely. This tangy, bright salad doesn’t need them.
Polenta With Asparagus, Peas and Mint
Buttery polenta serves as a soft, savory bed for asparagus and peas in this verdant, vegetable-rich main course. Sautéed shallots add sweetness, while fresh mint lends brightness to a satisfying yet light meal. You can substitute any soft herbs for the mint or use a combination for the most complex flavor. And, if you’re short on time, instant polenta will work in place of regular, too. Just follow the directions on the package to cook it.
Pasta With Fresh Tomato Sauce and Ricotta
This wonderful pasta is made with nothing more than fresh tomato sauce and good ricotta, plus a little pecorino. It’s most delicious if you keep the pasta quite al dente; use just enough sauce, no more; give it a good pinch of crushed red pepper; and season it with enough salt of course.
Pasta With Asparagus, Arugula and Ricotta
This recipe works best if you use thin asparagus and peppery wild arugula, available at some farmers’ markets.
Egg-in-a-Hole With Asparagus
What would you get if you crossed savory Parmesan French toast with egg-in-a-hole and served it beneath a pile of roasted asparagus? An easy, vegetable-focused brunch or light dinner that you can make on a single sheet pan. The key here is to use wide slices of bread large enough to hold two eggs each: Choose slices from the middle of the loaf. (If your bread slices are smaller, just use one egg in each.) Feel free to substitute other quick-roasting vegetables for the asparagus. Broccoli florets, halved cherry tomatoes or brussels sprouts, or sliced mushrooms will all work equally well. And if you want to double the recipe, use two sheet pans, arranging the bread on one and the asparagus on the other.