Dinner
8856 recipes found
Fish Koftas in Tomato and Cardamom Sauce
On first inspection, this dish looks like herb-flecked meatballs in tomato sauce, but the sauce is spiced, tangy and aromatic, and the meatballs are, well, fish balls, made of a combination of mackerel and sardines. We use tinned sardines here, for ease, but you can obviously substitute with fresh sardines, scaled and boned. You'll also want to pay attention to the total weight or volume of the mackerel: Some types are larger than others. All work here, but you may not need to buy as many fillets. Serve with some couscous or rice and a spoonful of yogurt, if you like.
Roasted Turnips and Winter Squash With Agave Glaze
Traditionally, this dish, from the Great Plains, would include timpsula, the wild turnip that grows in patches across the region. (Old Lakota harvesting stories tell of how the timpsula point the forager from one plant to the next.) In Lakota homes, the turnips are often braided and dried for use throughout the winter. Unless you live in the region, fresh timpsula is difficult to come by, as it’s not sold commercially. It’s also milder and slightly denser than the garden turnips we’ve substituted in this traditional pairing. The agave glaze adds a touch of sweetness to the vegetables, and the toasted sunflower seeds add crunch. Serve this with bison pot roast with hominy or spooned over wild rice for a comforting vegetarian meal.
Sweet Potatoes With Cranberry Chutney
This is an easy and surprisingly delicious way to get a dramatic-looking sweet-potato dish on the table with little fuss. The heat of the jalapeños in the chutney, mixed with aromatic vegetables and the sweetness of the dried fruit, gives the cranberries depth. A dollop of sour cream goes on the halved sweet potato, followed by a generous spoonful of chutney. Make the chutney up to two weeks ahead and keep it in the refrigerator. It also freezes well. Assembly on Thanksgiving is an easy last-minute task.
Mashed Sweet Potatoes With Maple and Brown Butter
This recipe is a grown-up take on sweet potatoes with brown sugar and marshmallows. A generous swirl of browned butter and maple syrup give the potatoes an earthy sweetness and great depth of flavor, while salted, toasted pecans sprinkled on top add a savory crunch. To save time on Thanksgiving, toast the pecans and make the brown butter up to a day in advance. Simply store the pecans in an airtight container, and the brown butter in the refrigerator. (Gently melt the butter in the microwave before using.)
Edna Lewis's Corn Pudding
This buttery, fluffy dish comes from Edna Lewis, the African-American chef and cookbook author credited with preserving countless recipes from the old South. It serves as not only a seasonal bridge — a farewell to summer, with winter chill waiting in the wings — but also as a sweetly welcome blurring of the lines between a side dish and a dessert.
Mashed Potato and Cabbage Pancakes
Vegetable pancakes with a sweet and comforting flavor. These have a sweet, comforting flavor. They are quick to mix up, using either leftover mashed potatoes from your Thanksgiving dinner, or potatoes that you have cut up and steamed for 20 minutes.
Roasted Butternut Squash Salad With Green Goddess Dressing
This colorful salad of sweet, soft roasted squash and crisp, bitter greens finished with a creamy, tangy green goddess dressing is an elegant mix of contrasting flavors and textures. The squash is good both warm and at room temperature, so feel free to roast it ahead of time. Some bitterness is nice against the sweet winter squash, but if you want to mellow radicchio’s bite a bit, you can soak the pieces in ice water for 10 to 30 minutes, then drain and dry before adding to the salad. Just taste before you soak; you’ll want a little bit of its bitterness. The dressing will keep for at least three days in the fridge. Serve it over other salads, or as a dip for cut-up vegetables and chips.
Roasted Butternut Squash and Red Onions
Here is an easy, healthy addition to a Thanksgiving feast or weekday dinner from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, which was included in a Julia Moskin video feature in 2013. Chop up a few red onions and a butternut squash, roast them in high heat, and drizzle them with tahini sauce, herbs and pistachios. That’s it. (Keep an eye on the onions, though. They may cook faster than the squash.)
Three Sisters Bowl With Hominy, Beans and Squash
There are quite a few legends within various Indigenous communities involving the three sisters: corn, bean and squash. The ancient and advanced farming techniques from the Cherokee and so many other tribes throughout the East Coast yielded countless strains of these ingredients, in many sizes, colors and flavors. These diverse seeds are not only a direct connection to the past, but a symbol of resistance to the destruction of our cultures. This recipe showcases the simplicity of these flavors and can stand alone as a vegan meal or can accompany bison pot roast, roast turkey or salmon with crushed blackberries.
Potato Mousseline
Here is a riff on the classic side dish that calls for running the potatoes through a ricer (if you don't have one, a splatter screen over a bowl will work just as well), the addition of brown butter and a sprinkling of grated nutmeg. The result is something just as comforting, but a bit more complex and flavorful. (And for everything you need to know to make perfect potatoes, visit our potato guide.)
Braised Celery With Thyme and White Wine
Inspired by the French method of cooking duck or chicken confit, in which the meat stews slowly in its own fat, this recipe simmers celery in a classically French sauce, with white wine, stock, shallots and herbes de Provence. The celery is first blanched in heavily salted water, which jumpstarts the cooking process and seasons the stalks from the inside-out, then it’s roasted in liquid until submissive and silky, with a texture reminiscent of roasted fennel. Once the celery is tender, the liquid is reduced on the stovetop until just thick enough to coat a spoon. The resulting sauce bears an uncanny similarity to the jus underneath the Thanksgiving turkey, in both flavor and mouthfeel, and the dish is equally at home at the Thanksgiving table as paired with a store-bought rotisserie chicken and some mashed potatoes. Like classic confit, you can prepare it in advance and simply reheat before serving.
Turkish-Style Braised Green Beans
In this Turkish method, vegetables (and sometimes beans) are cooked in plenty of olive oil — usually with tomatoes, onions and one or two other ingredients — until they have almost lost their shape. Then they are cooled and served at room temperature, when their flavors are at their fullest. Very often an herb or citrus juice is added just before serving for a little spark; thick yogurt and lemon wedges are standard accompaniments. It’s probably obvious that these dishes are pretty much ideal for warm-weather meals. They not only can be made in advance, but also must be, so they can cool down. Even a day or two ahead is fine; just take them out of the refrigerator about 45 minutes before serving.
Dandelion or Chard Colcannon
There are two choices here for the greens. Dandelion greens are bitter and chard is not, or only slightly so. I think the potatoes taste particularly sweet against the bitter dandelion greens, but if you don’t want such a profound contrast, use chard. Make sure to remove the stringy stems from the dandelion greens (which, Jennifer McLagan writes in her book “Bitter,” is really dandelion chicory and not the wild greens that like to take over your lawn and garden). The dandelion greens will retain their tough texture even when cooked, which also contrasts nicely with the soft, comforting potatoes, but it is a good idea to chop them finely. I don’t peel the potatoes; I like to mash them skins and all. Bunches of either red or green dandelion greens will work here.
Endive Tarte Tatin With Burrata
A savory take on the classic apple tarte Tatin, this version features unexpected bitter endive, which mellows and sweetens as it cooks. The tart slices are served topped with milky burrata to complement the caramelized endive and buttery pastry, but they’re equally as lovely without it. The tart can be enjoyed warm or at room temperature, making it a perfect make-ahead entree or side for entertaining.
French Onion Macaroni and Cheese
This outrageously good macaroni and cheese fuses two classic comfort foods into one dish. Caramelizing onions can be a time-consuming affair, but here, the process is sped up by using high heat and and a little water to prevent scorching. The sauce is made with a combination of Gruyère, to remind you of French onion soup, and white Cheddar, to make it melty and smooth. Instead of topping the dish with a dusting of diminutive bread crumbs, it’s dotted with Gruyère toasts that become melty and crisp after a few minutes under the broiler. (You’ll want to slide a sheet pan underneath before baking, in case some of the sauce bubbles over.) This is over-the-top richness at its best.
Shrimp Risotto
Risotto can often be an intimidating dish, but this recipe, adapted from Rick Moonen and Roy Finamore’s “Fish Without a Doubt,” doesn’t have to be. It came to The Times in 2009, part of Emily Weinstein’s column on learning to cook. It worked for her, even though she didn’t prepare any of the ingredients ahead of time — or stir constantly as so many risotto recipes demand. Feel free to adapt the recipe as she did, substituting packaged seafood stock for the homemade shrimp stock, and chopped basil for the basil-infused oil.
Liberian Peanut Soup
This Liberian peanut soup, recipe courtesy of Helene Cooper, should satisfy peanut butter lovers, as well as anyone who wants a thick, rich, meaty dish.
Mushroom Ragoût
I like to use this as a gravy at Thanksgiving, instead of actual gravy, but that is far from its only use. I serve it on its own, as a side dish, as the base for a risotto and a filling for a pie, taco and quesadilla, as a sauce for pasta and an omelet filling. You can make it with all wild mushrooms for a splurge, with some wild mushrooms, or with a mix of cultivated oyster mushrooms (much less expensive than wild mushrooms like chanterelles) and button or creminis. Make this big batch and use it for lots of other dishes throughout the week.
Creamy Chard With Ricotta, Parmesan and Bread Crumbs
A substantial vegetable casserole, this recipe can be a green vegetable side dish or a vegetarian main course. Though a bit of a job to put together, it is a crowd-pleaser.
Celery Root, Red Cabbage and Potato Colcannon
Celery root, or celeriac, is an under-appreciated vegetable that always pleases. I love it shredded, in a creamy salad called celery remoulade, but I think cooking brings out the best in this vegetable. It develops some sweetness, as does the red cabbage, which also contributes texture to this comforting colcannon. The purée will take on a pinkish hue from the cabbage.
Schmaltz-Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Roasting brussels sprouts in schmaltz — rendered poultry fat —gives them an incredibly nutty richness that you can’t get from any other fat. If you are making the schmaltz from scratch for this recipe (and you should if you want the gribenes), do use the onion, which lends an incomparable browned sweetness to the mix. The gribenes, which are the crispy bits of chicken skin that fry in the rendered fat, make an excellent garnish. (They may be strained out of store-bought schmaltz; if you don’t have them, just omit them here.) This recipe goes particularly well with a nice roasted chicken, whose flavor underscores the schmaltz.
Slow-Roasted Turkish Lamb
This lamb must be cooked until completely tender and succulent, but if time is a concern, it may also be prepared well in advance and reheated in the pan juices to serve. Shoulder is the best cut to use, or lamb shanks. It’s finished with a bright garnish of pomegranate seeds and sliced persimmons. Small Fuyu persimmons are delicious eaten firm and raw, like an apple, unlike the larger Hachiya type, which must be ripe and soft to be palatable (and would not be suitable here). Lacking persimmons, use more pomegranate. Serve it with rice pilaf, if desired.
Brussels Sprouts With Peanut Vinaigrette
This recipe came to The Times from Karen Van Guilder Little, an owner of Josephine, a restaurant in Nashville, along with her husband, the chef Andrew Little. These succulent brussels sprouts are served there and at her Thanksgiving table every year. “I started playing around with peanut butter — it’s rich and salty like bacon — and it just clicked," Mr. Little said.
Rice Pilaf With Pumpkin, Currants and Pine Nuts
A well-made rice pilaf may be prepared in advance and reheated, covered, in a medium-hot oven. In Turkey, short-grain Bomba rice is preferred, but you may substitute Arborio, or long-grained white rice if you wish. Be sure to rinse the rice well, which will help the grains to remain separate, not clumped together.