Dinner
8856 recipes found
Jerk Chicken With Pickled Bananas
At the heart of superb jerk seasoning is the coalescing of spice and heat, specifically the two dominant forces of allspice berries and chile peppers. This marinade, which came to me from Shaun Lewis, a Jamaican cook I worked with during my time as a summer camp chef, is the best I’ve ever tasted, delivering a quietly thrilling, savory warmth that kind of spreads across the chest and remains there without ever ferociously igniting. This achievement — like a dark rolling thunder that somehow remains in the neighboring field and never crosses the fence — is undoubtedly the result of the 20 other ingredients in the recipe working in tandem, so don’t omit any of them.
Pasta Alla Vodka
There’s no need to order takeout from your neighborhood restaurant when this beloved, easy-to-assemble Italian-American classic gets dinner on the table in no time. Adding pancetta brings a salty smokiness, but if you leave it out, you’re still in for a quick and flavorful dish. If you’re feeling ambitious, the pasta is delightful with Caesar salad or garlic bread, but it’s also satisfying enough to take centerstage. Put on some Puccini, open up a bottle of red and you’re guaranteed a more relaxed dining experience than the one you might get at the local red-and-white checkered-tablecloth joint.
Spicy Clam Chorizo Pasta
Clams work their way into plenty of dishes in the Baja Peninsula of Mexico, which is where the chef Pati Jinich picked up this recipe for pasta con salsa picante de chorizo y almejas. The dish, which she featured on an episode of her PBS show, “Pati’s Mexican Table,” is a nod to the prized clams that are harvested in and around the coastal lagoons on Mexico’s Pacific shores. It pays homage to the surf-and-turf dishes in Tijuana, where cooks find seemingly endless ways to mix meat and seafood on a single plate. The dish takes its aggressive heat from chorizo and chiles de arbol, but it can be dialed down by substituting 1/2 teaspoon or less of red-pepper flakes. The beer in the dish is Ms. Jinich’s nod to the craft-beer boom in Baja.
Turkey Scaloppine With Prosciutto and Cheese
Garlic-Braised Greens and Potatoes
Winter greens take well to braising, transforming from hearty and sturdy to tender and sweet as they mellow in a garlic-infused olive oil bath. This dish makes use of both the leafy greens and the stems, cooking them alongside potatoes, which add creamy bites. Use your favorite greens or any combination of collard greens, kale, Swiss chard and escarole. The dish is finished with mild shallots, tangy lemon juice and fresh parsley to create a bright sauce. Serve these garlic-braised vegetables with crusty bread or over a bowl of grains or pasta.
Make-Ahead Fried Chicken
Fried chicken is one of the few fried foods that tastes just as good served at room temperature as it does when it's served hot enough to burn your fingers. This recipe has been specially engineered to be made in advance. It’s seasoned assertively, so the flavors won’t dull as it cools. But the real key is double-dipping the chicken in the flour mixture before you fry it, making for an extra-crunchy crust that holds up all afternoon. And it lets you serve fried chicken to your guests and still have enough time to clean the kitchen and take a shower before they arrive. Although the recipe calls for all drumsticks, which won’t dry out as they sit, feel free to substitute other chicken parts.
Alice Waters’s Seasonal Minestrone
Alice Waters often recommends that cooks master a good minestrone. It’s communal and seasonal, two pillars on which she has built her cooking career. This summer recipe came from the cookbook that is her top seller: "The Art of Simple Food." It uses the best of the season’s green beans, tomatoes and squash. In the spring, fresh peas, asparagus and spinach would make a good vegetable trio, with some fennel standing in for the carrot in the sofrito. In the fall, cubes of butternut squash, a small can of tomatoes and a bunch of kale would star, with rosemary and a little chopped sage instead of thyme for seasoning. Winter might bring a soup built from turnips, potatoes and cabbage. If the turnips have greens, add them, too. Start with a large pot that has a heavy bottom. Always cook the vegetables through, about 10 minutes. They should look good enough to eat on their own. Add the beans about 10 minutes before serving. A cup or two of cooked pasta can be stirred in at the last minute. Don’t overcook the pasta. The olive oil and cheese garnish should be added once the soup is in the bowls. Ms. Waters likes to pass those at the table, once everyone is served. Pesto makes a lovely garnish, too, and gives a garlicky, herbal punch to the soup.
Beet Soup With Tarragon, Chives and Yogurt
Freshly cooked beets, though they take a while to prepare (see Tip), are so delicious that they’re worth the effort. Cook them the day before you need them and keep them in the fridge for up to a week, to use in salads or for a soup. For this borscht-inspired soup, a splash of vinegar tempers the beets’ natural sweetness, which is perfectly complemented by a splash of tart herby yogurt. The good news is this soup may be served warm or chilled; each way is refreshing.
Roman-Style Spring Lamb With Fresh Sugar Snap Pea Salad
The Romans make a classic dish in the spring with very young milk-fed lamb. Such meat is hard to find in American supermarkets, but the technique, which involves a short braise in vinegar and water with a boost of anchovy at the end, works fine with chunks of lamb cut from a leg or roast of any young lamb. This recipe is built on the precise technique for abbacchio alla cacciatora that Marcella Hazan offered in "The Classic Italian Cookbook," with some freshening up. The braised chunks of meat are topped with a crunchy sugar snap pea salad that carries the heat of Calabria peppers, a recipe from Whitney Otawka, who grew up in California and now cooks in Georgia. (The salad is a great stand-alone recipe, too, and one that would be terrific alongside a ham, if yours is an Easter ham family.)
Potato Tart With Goat Cheese and Thyme
Store-bought puff pastry is the true workhorse in this elegant recipe, which involves three basic components: puff pastry, cheese and potatoes. When cooking with limited ingredients, quality is key, so use puff pastry made with real butter if you can get it — the flavor is better and the puff is, simply put, puffier. The dough is formed by a process called “lamination” in which alternating layers of butter and dough are folded together. As it bakes, the butter creates steam between the layers, providing the puff. Be sure to use the tines of a fork to “dock” the dough before baking; this creates little chutes for steam to escape instead of getting trapped and forming unsightly bubbles. Master the puff pastry part and this tart is easy and versatile: Play around with various spices and top with any fresh herbs you have on hand.
Tteok Mandu Guk (Rice Cake Soup With Dumplings)
You can eat a bowl of tteok guk, rice cake soup, as South Koreans do on New Year’s Day (by the Gregorian or Lunar calendar) and freeze any leftover broth for multiple soul-soothing meals in the new year. The soup sometimes includes mandu, as it does here, and those dumplings also can be frozen. An aromatic gochugaru oil turns this ordinarily snow-white dish crimson, flavoring the bold, spicy-sweet kimchi dumpling filling and tingeing the final broth with its heat. The tteok, rice cakes, here come in the form of thick, cylindrical pieces rather than soggy coins, and are added at the last moment to maintain their pleasurable chewiness.
Miso Soup
In the United States, especially in Japanese American restaurants, the standard version of miso soup usually involves little more than soft tofu, seaweed and a lily-pad suspension of scallions. Think of this recipe as your blank canvas: You could add thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms at the end, or replace the katsuobushi entirely with dried shiitakes for a vegan version. Fried tofu, clams and even chicken are all fair game when cooking miso soup at home. The chef Seiji Ando, of Benkay restaurant in Portland, Maine, adds sake and mirin for balance, and says even a tiny bit of butter can be delicious.
Black-Eyed Peas With Ham Hock and Collards
For the New Year’s good fortune, a plate of black-eyed peas or other beans is considered auspicious, auguring wealth and prosperity. In the American South, they are traditionally eaten on the first day of the year. Adding cooked greens (the color of money) is said to make them even luckier. Simmered with onion and a meaty ham bone (other options are salt pork, bacon, pig’s feet, hog jowl and ham hock), black-eyed peas are often seasoned quite simply, with just salt and pepper. They may also be made highly seasoned with hot pepper and spices. Freshly baked cornbread is the perfect accompaniment.
Skillet Fried Plantains
Exceptionally ripe plantains are key in this recipe from Ricky Moore, the chef at Saltbox Seafood Joint in Durham, N.C. The chief indicator of a plantain’s ripeness is its color and texture; the darker and softer the fruit, the sweeter its meat. For this recipe, which is not unlike maduros or dodo, opt for fruit that are as black and as soft to the touch as possible. This will likely require some in-home ripening, as most store-bought plantains are sold firm and unripened, in shades that run the gamut from dark green to pale yellow. To ripen them at home, store plantains in a loosely closed paper bag in a warm, dry place. The inclusion of fresh lime juice to the finished dish adds a bracing zing of citrus, which pairs wonderfully if you enjoy the plantains with Brown Stew Pork Shoulder, as the chef does.
Kale and Brussels Sprouts Salad With Pear and Halloumi
Salty, fried halloumi cubes are the star of this bright, lemony kale and brussels sprouts salad. Crispy, melty and squidgy all at once, they are delightfully textural. Though the kale and brussels sprouts mix can sit in the fridge for a few hours before serving, for best results, you should fry the halloumi just before you plan to eat.
Slow-Roasted Oregano Chicken With Buttered Tomatoes
There are about a million ways to roast a chicken, and people will always tell you that theirs is the best way. Here is the truth: If you smear a good, high-quality chicken with enough fat, season it with plenty of salt and roast it until the skin is brown, it will always be excellent. But it’s slow-roasting that gives you golden skin, tender meat and plenty of salty, savory chicken juices to serve as a sauce. From the simple assortment of ingredients to the ridiculously hands-off preparation, this recipe from Alison Roman's cookbook "Nothing Fancy" (Clarkson Potter, 2019) is casual in a way that feels almost lazy (but isn’t), with make-sounds-after-you-take-a-bite levels of deliciousness. To truly put it over the edge, add a few anchovies to the tomatoes.
Tagine-Style Lamb Stew
Traveling in Morocco 30-some years ago, I had eaten tagines — stews distinguished by being cooked in the pot of the same name — that I did not recall as involving any browning. This method is described as “starting the tagine cold.” It involves heating the lamb gently along with spices and other aromatics, allowing the flavors to fully penetrate the meat. At that point it is covered and cooked until tender. When I tried the “cold start” approach, substituting a low heating of the lamb with aromatics and a little butter for the usual hard sear in olive oil, it worked like (well, kind of like) magic. The overall flavor of the dish was less robust than one that began with browning, but it was equally flavorful, in a gentler way.
Chicken Soup With Toasted Farro and Greens
Somewhere between a soup and a stew, this comforting dish starts with chicken stock seasoned with leeks, carrots and celery. Garlic and fennel seeds are toasted along with the farro to add another layer of flavor. Boneless chicken thighs are cooked in the broth, then greens are tossed in just before serving. This soup is best served right away, as the farro will continue to absorb liquid as it sits, but leftovers can be reheated with some additional broth or water over low heat. Lemon zest lends a lovely lift, but a spoonful of chile oil would also be a lively addition.
Spinach-Artichoke Lasagna
Inspired by the artichoke slice at Artichoke Basille’s Pizza in New York City, this white sauce lasagna is a dreamy multilayered dinner. Frizzling chopped canned artichoke hearts in olive oil reduces their water content, thereby concentrating their earthy, buttery flavor. What binds the dish together is a nutmeg-rich béchamel sauce that makes everything taste comforting and familiar. Cottage cheese in place of the more traditional ricotta nixes any potential for the grainy dryness that plagues so many lasagnas. Layering this creamy, saucy wonder in an 8-inch square pan leaves you with the perfect amount of leftovers for when you want some as a snack — a snacking lasagna, if you will.
Jerk Ribs
Harold Dieterle, the chef and an owner of two restaurants in Manhattan, Perilla and Kin Shop, cooks food that is often fiery and always immensely detailed. It resembles intricate music that is played very, very loud. This Jamaican-style jerk sauce is no exception. Its heat is towering, but it does not overwhelm the flavors that accompany the flames: thyme and allspice, along with wisps of caramelized sugar and a scent of rum. “You could serve it on chicken,” Dieterle told me. “It’s insane on ribs.” Not to mention pork tenderloin and bluefish. Jerk tofu? That’d be terrific as well.
Marinated Broiled Tuna Steaks With Sauce Nicoise
Matzo-Meal Fried Chicken
Michael W. Twitty’s use of matzo meal to coat his fried chicken is an ode to the innovative Black women of the American South, including his own ancestors. Marrying the traditions of Black southern cooking with Southern Ashkenazi Jewish culinary ones, Black women in cities like Savannah, Ga., Charleston, S.C., New Orleans and Nashville preserved their African heritage and local Jewish customs through this fried chicken. The fragrant spice mixture is enough to gather droves of people around the table, and the dish’s Southern charm is evident with the first crispy, tender and juicy bite.
Neck Bones (Pork Neck and Noodles)
This simple dish features pork neck bones simmered in seasoned water that slowly cooks into a broth. Elbow-shaped pasta is then added into the water to absorb all the meaty flavors. Erika Council, a software engineer who is also a professional cook and a food writer, shared the recipe, which she learned from her maternal grandmother, Geraldine Gavin Dortch. It shows up on the family Thanksgiving table as a subtle reminder of the food their enslaved ancestors cooked from the parts of the pig they had access to. It's a surprisingly rich, comforting and delicious dish coaxed from only a few ingredients.
Charlie Bird’s Farro Salad
There are two essential steps to a stellar farro salad. The first is cooking the farro with enough salt and aromatics so that it delicious before you combine it with the rest of the ingredients. The second is to use very good olive oil in the dressing. This farro salad, from the restaurant Charlie Bird in SoHo, hits both these marks. The chef Ryan Hardy cooks the farro in apple cider seasoned with bay leaves and plenty of salt, which renders it good enough to eat on its own. But it’s even better after he adds loads of olive oil, plus pistachio nuts and Parmesan cheese to make it even richer. Then, before serving, he folds in fresh vegetables to brighten it up: juicy tomatoes, radishes, arugula and plenty of herbs. There are many farro salads of this ilk out there. This is one of the best.