Dinner
8856 recipes found
Fried Tagliatelle With Chickpeas and Smoky Tomatoes
Two pantry staples, chickpeas and pasta, come together to give you this hearty vegan main. (Do check the ingredient list on the packaging for your tagliatelle, as some may contain egg.) Frying the pasta nests before cooking them provides plenty of texture, even as the pasta softens and releases its starches into the chickpeas and their cooking water. Feel free to play around with the smoky tomato oil, adding different chiles or spices, such as cumin or coriander seeds. And be sure to start the night before by soaking your chickpeas. However, if you’re running low on time, you can also use two drained 14-ounce cans of chickpeas, adjusting liquid levels as necessary.
Jamaican-Spiced Turkey
When Francine Turone hosted her first Thanksgiving dinner in New York City, she declared turkey “bland and boring.” But after friends protested, she came up with this recipe inspired by her upbringing in Kingston, Jamaica. This turkey, a showstopping centerpiece for any big family event, roasts on a bed of whole vegetables, which absorb its fat. A deeply spiced brine and rub packed with cinnamon, allspice berries, thyme and chile pepper imparts huge flavors, rounded out by an herb-infused brown butter. If things are looking to be busy, the butter and rub can be prepared a day ahead.
Wild Rice With Mushrooms
In Wisconsin, wild rice is truly wild, not cultivated as in other states, the tassels rising and swaying over rivers, lakes and floodplains come late August and September. Called manoomin by the local Chippewa, it is a protected crop that can be harvested only by state residents holding a valid license. And only by hand, as the Chippewa have always done, using wooden flails gently (the grains should fall from the stalk without great effort) from canoes propelled by paddles or push poles. Shellie Holmes of Rhinelander, Wis., who shares her recipe here, likes to cook wild rice just until it pops open. This is a break with her family’s tradition, which favored a chewier texture and did not allow popping. “Do not mix with other rice,” she urged, lest you lose the flavor of the wild.
Stuffing Panzanella With Cranberry Vinaigrette
The best way to reheat leftover stuffing? Press it into a pan, cut it into cubes and fry it in oil until crisp. The exterior browns and caramelizes, while the inside remains tender and creamy, just like the best bread pudding. This trick works best with stuffing made from smaller pieces of bread, but even if you don’t end up with perfect cubes, they will still be delicious. Serve them warm, on top of a fresh, raw salad tossed in a tangy cranberry-mustard vinaigrette, with fried pepitas running throughout for even more crunch. If you use a homemade cranberry sauce for the dressing, you may want to sweeten it with a touch of honey.
Bean and Cheese Burritos
Mexican refried beans are a cinch to make at home on a weeknight thanks to some staple pantry items and a few basic fresh ingredients. Buttery canned pinto beans are perfect in this dish, breaking down into a creamy, silky mixture. (Black beans would also work great.) While the beans are often fried in lard or bacon drippings, this vegetarian version builds flavor with caramelized onion, bell pepper, garlic and smoked paprika instead. Pico de gallo adds a touch of tang to counter the rich beans. Pan-frying the wrapped burritos guarantees a golden, irresistibly crispy exterior and an interior that oozes with melted cheese.
Fish With Citrus-Chile Sauce
This light yet earthy sauce lends a generous, almost floral warmth to any white, sturdy fish. For heat, there are crushed Calabrian chiles, smoky and sunny; for a mellow sourness, Moscatel vinegar — feel free to substitute apple cider vinegar and a little sugar to approximate the same fruitiness; and for funk, fermented white pepper (although regular white pepper will work too). Other notes include delicate marjoram, cousin to oregano but less forward, with its comforting contour of balsam, and Timur pepper from Nepal, fragrant and bright, calling to mind a just-peeled tangerine. (If you use Sichuan pepper instead, give it a citrus boost with extra orange juice and a shower of orange zest.) The sauce comes out denser than a vinaigrette but still loose and the orange-red of a young sunset.
Purê de Mandioca (Creamy Yuca Purée)
For some Brazilians in the United States, yuca purée takes the place of mashed potatoes on the Thanksgiving table. In Brazil, where yuca is indigenous and abundant, the root vegetable is often peeled, boiled and mashed. Milk and butter make the purée rich and creamy. This recipe was provided by Thailine Kolb, who learned the dish from her mother, Liomar dos Santos Paula Araujo. In Brazil, her mother serves the dish at Christmas, but Mrs. Kolb, who lives in New Haven, Conn., has embraced it as a Thanksgiving tradition. You can use fresh or frozen yuca, with similar results. If using fresh, be careful when cutting the firm vegetable and removing the outer bark. When using fresh or frozen yuca, be sure to remove and discard the starchy core before eating.
Roasted Chickpeas and Peppers With Goat Cheese
In this quick, colorful sheet-pan dinner, sweet bell peppers and spicy chiles caramelize as they roast, becoming even more intense under the oven’s high heat. Crunchy chickpeas and soft bits of goat cheese add flavor, texture and protein, rounding out the dish. Most of the work here takes place in the oven, leaving you free to make a salad if you want a cool and crisp accompaniment. Note that this recipe serves two or three; if you want to double it, be sure to use two sheet pans and add a few minutes to the cooking time so everything has a chance to turn golden brown.
Tuna Poke
This is a dish that comes from Long Island, New York, not the Big Island of Hawaii, a Northeastern take on a Pacific classic. I’ve made it with Atlantic bonito caught offshore and yellowfin tuna bought at the market, the meat trimmed, cubed and mixed with sesame oil and soy sauce, a little chile-garlic sauce and lot of chopped scallions. I top the salad with roasted macadamia nuts and a few vigorous shakes of furikake, a Japanese seasoning that is made of sesame seeds, dried fish and seaweed, salt and sugar. It makes for about the most delicious eating in the world.
Grilled Cucumbers With Tomato-Cardamom Dressing and Mozzarella
Grilling cucumbers gives them a nice charred flavor while retaining their bite. Try to buy Persian cucumbers that are thicker as the thin ones can often be too flimsy to cook. Torn mozzarella adds richness to the cucumbers doused with a garlicky, spiced tomato dressing. (Feel free to cook the cucumbers on an outdoor grill, treating them in the same way.) If you’re into creamy cheeses, then burrata works very well here, too — or, you could keep this dish vegan by leaving out the mozzarella completely. It will still have a wonderful umami flavor without it. Make this a complete meal by serving alongside your protein of choice.
Roasted Eggplant Salad
In Morocco — and similarly throughout the Middle East — the most delicious salads are made with seasoned, cooked vegetables, not leafy greens. This dish, smoky eggplant salad with cilantro, infused with cumin, hot pepper and a generous amount of olive oil, is a winning combination. For the perfect flavor, you want to seriously blacken the eggplant. Choose very firm eggplants, which will have fewer seeds. The salad will keep, refrigerated, for several days.
Lemony Fish and Orzo Soup
This warming, weeknight one-pot meal is inspired by avgolemono, the Greek lemony chicken soup that’s rendered silky from egg whisked into its broth. Here, the technique of adding an egg mixture at the end creates a creamy soup that remains light in body. Mild, flaky fish, such as sea bass or cod, pairs beautifully with the buttery leek-and-garlic broth, which is fortified with clam juice for extra briny flavor. Orzo adds texture, while a final addition of freshly grated ginger brightens the soup. For a thicker, stew-like meal, make the soup an hour ahead and let it rest at room temperature (it will thicken as it sits); gently reheat before serving.
Cheesy Baked Pasta With Sausage and Ricotta
Like a cross between baked ziti and sausage lasagna, this mozzarella-topped pasta is rich with ricotta and crushed tomatoes — and cooks entirely in one pan, including the pasta. The Italian sausage adds meaty depth to the sauce, but vegetarians can leave it out or use their favorite plant-based sausage instead.
Spoonbread
Popular in Virginia, the Carolinas and elsewhere in North America, spoonbread has a long history thought to date back to the Sewee tribe of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Somewhat closer to soufflé than cornbread, its tender texture comes from eggs and the creamed corn. It’s slightly sweet from the kernels, a bit of sugar and vanilla extract, but gently tangy from sour cream, relying upon simple ingredients that come together into something great. This version uses fresh or frozen crawfish, but don’t worry if crawfish isn’t available to you: Spoonbread is still wonderful without it.
El Cholo’s Sonora-Style Enchiladas
These chicken-filled, Sonora-style enchiladas have been offered at El Cholo in Los Angeles since it began as the Sonora Café in 1923. They are based on the recipe of Rosa Borquez, who started the restaurant with her husband, Alejandro. Both were born in the Mexican state of Sonora. This dish, with stacked tortillas rather than rolled, is known in Sonora as “enchiladas chatas,” flat enchiladas. Adapted from “A Taste of History: With Authentic El Cholo Recipes” by Ron Salisbury (2020), this recipe includes a chicken stew base with tomatoes, poblano and white pepper, plus a classic red enchilada sauce with smoky dried chiles and a green enchilada sauce with verdant notes from tomatillos, fresh chiles and spinach. A fried egg crowns the top.
Roasted White Bean and Tomato Pasta
With a flavor profile inspired by pasta e fagioli, this weeknight pasta recipe coaxes rich flavor out of simple ingredients while enlisting the oven to create a luscious sauce from roasted tomatoes and white beans. Essentially, the dish requires just three steps: Boil pasta, roast your sauce ingredients, then stir together until the pasta is glossy. When roasted in the oven, the beans become crispy, like croutons, and break down in a way that helps thicken the sauce. Though a flurry of freshly grated cheese would be welcome on top, this otherwise-vegan dish doesn’t need it: The roasted tomato sauce is rich and luscious, fortified by starchy pasta water, roasted beans and a good glug of extra-virgin olive oil.
Fluke au Gratin
This is a very old recipe, taken from the kitchen of Henri’s in Lynbrook, N.Y., opened by an extravagant French restaurateur named Henri Charpentier in 1910. It asks for flounder, known on Long Island as fluke, but you could make it with cod or haddock or halibut, with freshwater trout or catfish, with any mild-flavored fish. It’s an elegant and really quite simple preparation, the fish fillets baked on top of and beneath a butter sauce cooked with chopped shallots, garlic, chives, parsley and minced mushrooms, brightened with lemon juice and white wine, and with bread crumbs, sliced mushrooms and dots of butter strewn across the top. You can make the sauce in the morning, if you like, and assemble the dish for the oven just before dinner, making it a breeze for weeknight entertaining. But it’s no stretch to do it all, as Charpentier might have said, “à la minute.”
Vegan Creamy Leek Pasta
This four-ingredient leek pasta coaxes as much flavor and texture as possible out of a few leeks, a box of pasta, some olive oil and lemon (plus salt and pepper). Though it doesn’t take long, this recipe is not fast — it’s even a little bit fussy. You’ll julienne and fry the leek whites to create a crispy garnish, then blend the resulting leek oil with boiled leek greens to create a silky sauce. You could absolutely make this dish on a weeknight, but since the recipe revolves around technique, it’s best not to rush. It’s about enjoying the process as much as the results.
Lamb Meatball and Semolina Dumpling Soup With Collard Greens
This hearty soup is a meal in a bowl. It is very much inspired by Iraqi kubba hamuth. “Hamuth” means sour in Arabic, which refers to the soup’s sour tomato and lemon broth. Traditionally, the soup contains lamb-stuffed semolina dumplings called “kubba.” The divergence here is that they exist as two separate components — meatballs and semolina dumplings — and add a wonderful textural contrast. If you can’t find collard greens, feel free to swap these out for an equal amount of Tuscan kale.
Beans Marbella
This recipe started as a wisp of an idea in The Veggie, our weekly newsletter about vegetarian home cooking, inspired by that iconic dish chicken Marbella, made famous in “The Silver Palate Cookbook.” Instead of chicken, a pot of thin-skinned, creamy beans and their rich cooking liquid form the base, which are then added to a pan of fried garlic and reduced red wine with plenty of olive oil, prunes and olives. They’re then topped with a simple roasted potato salad, dressed with vinegar-soaked shallots, capers and parsley. It’s not an exact replica of chicken Marbella, but it’s a beautiful and satisfying way to enjoy its familiar flavors — the tangy, briny sharpness of vinegar, capers and olives, set against the sweetness of prunes. You can serve the dish as is, but it’s even more luxurious with some thickly sliced and toasted bread, brushed with olive oil and garlic.
James Beard’s Farmer’s Chicken
This recipe from the eminent American food writer came to The Times through the chef Andrew Zimmern, who was a frequent guest at James Beard’s legendary Sunday and holiday open houses when he was a child. The savory combination of red peppers, onions, raisins, almonds and green olives was new and exciting to him in the 1970s, and still tastes fresh today.
Spinach and Chermoula Pie
This pie is a great way to use up your freezer staples: that one bag of frozen spinach and that packet of puff pastry sitting in the back. Feel free to make this pie your own by playing around with the herbs and spices. You can also veganize it by leaving out the feta and using a vegan-friendly puff pastry. Typically used as a marinade or condiment, chermoula is a North African spice paste with a multitude of variations. Here, it is used twice, once to flavor the base and then again as a sauce to drizzle alongside.
Southern Macaroni and Cheese
There is macaroni and cheese, and then there is special occasion macaroni and cheese like this one. Unlike most recipes, which start with a roux, this one begins with a milk-and-egg base, which gives the dish an incredibly rich, silky taste. It’s adapted from Millie Peartree, the owner of Millie Peartree Fish Fry & Soul Food restaurant in the Bronx, who has been making this dish since she was a little girl. The recipe was passed down in her family for generations, but because of the generous amount of cheese used, the dish was only made for events like Christmas and Thanksgiving. Extra-sharp Cheddar adds tartness and a layer of Colby Jack creates a gooey, molten center. If you can’t find a Colby Jack blend, shredded mozzarella or a Mexican-style blend will work in its place.
Leek and Cod Tortilla
Inspired by tortilla Española, this version of the classic Spanish dish uses mild, sweet leeks instead of onions. The addition of paprika-seasoned cod adds unexpected bites of smoky flavor, and cutting the potatoes into small cubes allows the tortilla to cook faster. The leek- and garlic-infused cooking oil is used to make a flavorful aioli to accompany the omelet. Store leftover flavored oil in the fridge and use it to make salad dressings, to sauté greens or fry eggs.