Dinner
8856 recipes found
Spinach Salad With Pancetta and Fried Eggs
Laced with nuggets of pancetta and crisp-edged fried eggs, there’s a lot going on in this hearty salad, and you need a green that can stand up to it all. With its thick, ruffled leaves and almost mineral flavor, mature spinach (as opposed to those ubiquitous baby leaves) does the job well. If you can’t find it, you can substitute baby spinach, though it will wilt when it makes contact with the hot eggs. Or try kale, which also holds up nicely. Serve this for a light dinner or a hearty brunch with some good bread and olive oil for dipping on the side.
Whole Roasted Breast of Veal
A whole breast of veal is a succulent, fatty, tender magnificence to enjoy, at any time, but especially so when you have holiday turkey and ham fatigue. It doesn’t make immediate sense that I consider the veal — with its fat and cartilage and bone and sinew and silver skin — a light meal, but in my experience, the few bites of sticky tender meat you end up with are so outrageously succulent and hit the spot so hard you don’t need more. The long, slow, low overnight cooking is perfect for both the meat and your schedule if you are trying to pull off a real, civilian party — and sit down at it.
Cal Peternell’s Fried Herb Salsa
Cal Peternell’s 4-ingredient herb salsa recipe--a smart way to dispense with herbs in the crisper, and a last-minute dinner savior in one.
Roasted Chicken With Figs and Rosemary
This is truly one of the easiest company-worthy chicken dishes out there. Marinated with citrus zest and rosemary then quickly roasted at high heat, the chicken turns golden, juicy and richly flavored, while the figs cook down into sweet jammy puddles. Use your favorite bone-in chicken parts here, or a mix of pieces. Or if you’re starting with a cut up small whole bird (here's a video demonstrating how to do that), add a couple of drumsticks or thighs to reach the 4 1/2 pounds you’ll need.
Simplest Grilled Salmon
For those who love seafood but don’t like to cook it, fearing that the scent will overpower their kitchens, the grill is among the greatest of gifts. And cooking salmon on the grill couldn't be easier. You can use a charcoal or a gas grill, and you only need olive oil, salt and pepper to bring out the salmon's rich flavor. A clean grill is crucial for cooking fish, which doesn’t have a lot of fat, meaning it’s more liable to stick to the grate. Scrape and oil, always.
Grilled Roast Chicken With Spinach-Ricotta Crostini
This whole chicken cooked on the grill is truly a best-of-both-worlds recipe: You get the incredibly succulent meat and brittle-crisp, burnished skin of a roast chicken, combined with the deep smoky flavor of the grill. To make it, you essentially use your grill like an outdoor oven, cooking a whole splayed chicken in a skillet instead of directly on the grill grate. Splaying the bird first — that is, flattening the legs so they lay flat in the skillet — helps the dark meat cook quickly and evenly. The skillet helps to distribute the heat and captures the juices, which would otherwise incinerate in the fire. Those juices are then put to good use as a cooking medium for dill-flecked, garlicky spinach. The greens absorb all of the chicken drippings before being heaped upon ricotta-smeared crostini. Added bonus: You don’t have to worry about setting off your smoke detector. Here, the smoke stays in the grill with the bird, which is exactly where you want it.
Kimchi Fried Rice
Not the high-heat stir-fry you might expect, Grace Lee’s home-style fried-rice recipe uses a simple technique — make an easy, flavorful kimchi sauce, mellowed out with butter, and sauté leftover rice in it. It's perfect for a snack or a quick, simple meal. The Spam, though optional, reflects many Koreans’ love of foods introduced by the American military.
Beer-Brined Roast Chicken
This recipe, from the chef Adrienne Cheatham of Red Rooster Harlem in New York, pairs a whole roast chicken, brined overnight in lager, with roasted potatoes, brussels sprouts, pearl onions and sage. The resulting bird is crisp-skinned, with juicy, flavorful meat.
Chicken Paprikash
Spices lose their flavor over time but few as quickly as paprika, which starts out tasting of pepper and sunshine but deteriorates in but a few months to sawdust and bitterness. For this recipe, get some new at the market: sweet or hot Hungarian paprika is best, but the generic article isn’t terrible and the smoky Spanish varieties known as pimentón de La Vera would not be out of place either, lending a deep, woodsy aroma reminiscent of cooking over an open fire. It’s a dish that pairs beautifully with butter-slicked egg noodles.
Springtime Spaghetti Carbonara
This lighter, brighter version of the classic Italian pasta dish is adapted from one found in “Almost Meatless: Recipes That Are Better for Your Health and the Planet” by Joy Manning and Tara Mataraza Desmond. It is incredibly simple – if you can chop vegetables, boil water and whisk eggs, you can make this dish – but it's also indubitably luxurious. Everyone will think you slaved for hours when, really, you slaved for about 20 minutes. Timing is everything in this recipe, so be sure to bring your eggs to room temperature before you start, and have all of the ingredients ready before you toss the pasta in the water.
Winter Citrus Salad With Belgian Endive
Late winter really is the time for the best citrus. Produce markets have piles of blood oranges, as well as navel and cara cara oranges and grapefruit, the flesh of each in different vivid brilliant colors. For this salad, use as many kinds of citrus as possible. If you can find pomelos, they add their own kind of sweet tanginess. The combined flavor of sweet and sour citrus, fruity olive oil and coarse salt is seductive.
Mushroom Soup Gratinée
This hearty soup takes its cue from the classic soupe à l’oignon gratinée. I swapped out the onions for mushrooms and served the hearty soup paved with a layer of toast and cheese as a cold-weather first course. For an informal supper, it could be the main event, especially with additions like potatoes or other root vegetables, shredded cabbage, cooked lentils, buckwheat pasta or even chunks of duck confit, sausage or boneless short ribs or veal shank. As for the finishing glaze of cheese, I suggest Gruyère, though the Bitto of the region, a firm cow’s milk cheese made with a funky touch of goat milk, would be lovely if you can find it.
Maria Speck's Shortcut Polenta
Cooking polenta the traditional way will lock you down for the better part of an hour, standing and stirring and pawing at the film on the bottom of the pot, trying to keep it from scorching and adhering there forever. This simple make-ahead method shaves of at least 2/3 of the active cooking time, so that you can get creamy, no-sacrifice polenta on the table on a weeknight in 15 minutes. Adapted slightly from Simply Ancient Grains.
Fragrant Chicken Soup with Chickpeas and Vegetables
This substantial soup is zippier than the usual matzo-ball-type golden chicken soup. It has a rich tomato base that is laced with fragrant spices – turmeric, cinnamon, paprika, ginger, nutmeg and cayenne – and it's loaded with hearty vegetables.
Oven-Roasted Chicken Shawarma
Here is a recipe for an oven-roasted version of the flavorful street-side classic usually cooked on a rotisserie. It is perfect for an evening with family and friends. Serve with pita and tahini, chopped cucumbers and tomatoes, some olives, chopped parsley, some feta, fried eggplant, hummus swirled with harissa, rice or rice pilaf. You can make the white sauce that traditionally accompanies it by cutting plain yogurt with mayonnaise and lemon juice, and flecking it with garlic. For a red to offset it, simmer ketchup with crushed red pepper and a hit of red-wine vinegar until it goes syrupy and thick, or just use your favorite hot sauce instead.
Mashed Potatoes
Mashed potatoes are very forgiving, and with a good masher, hot potatoes and enough butter and salt, cooks can accommodate religionists of the fluffy style and partisans of the creamy and dense. Be openhanded with salt and butter but stingy with milk, which will flatten out the bright, earthy potato taste. You might also enjoy this video of the recipe that walks through a few variations. (And for everything you need to know to make perfect potatoes, visit our potato guide.)
Festive Thanksgiving Torte
As a transplanted American living in Paris, Ann Schreifels had the task of hosting Thanksgiving, a holiday the locals didn't celebrate, in a city that is arguably the culinary capital of the world, to a guest list that included meat eaters and vegans. Her solution: Try to please everyone. "The result was accolades from around the table," says Ms. Schreifels. "And every time I serve it (and I mean every) someone asks for the recipe and says, 'I'm going to serve this to my family and see if they can tell it doesn't have meat in it.'"
Spaghetti Frittata
This spaghetti frittata recipe is a great way to use up leftover pasta. You can make this recipe with any pasta (even one that's been sauced!) of any shape.
Miso Chicken
Making a compound of unsalted butter and the salty, fungal deliciousness of Japanese miso paste is a surefire way of adding immense flavor to a simple weeknight meal. Here the mixture is spread over chicken thighs, which are then roasted to golden perfection. But you could easily use it on salmon or flounder, on corn or potatoes. The recipe calls for white miso, which is more mild than the aged version known as red miso. But you could certainly use red for a more intense result.
Meatballs With Any Meat
Making great meatballs is all about memorizing a basic ratio that you can adjust to suit your taste. Start with a pound of ground meat — any kind will work, even fish if you want to take it in that direction. Add 1/2 cup bread crumbs for lightness, a teaspoon of salt, and an egg to bind it together. That’s all you need. Pepper and other spices, chopped herbs and minced allium (garlic, onion, scallions or shallot) can be added to taste. Then broil or fry as you like. Why You Should Trust This Recipe Melissa Clark, a food writer for more than 25 years, creates her fresh takes on classic recipes by trying at least half a dozen different approaches. A professional recipe tester then makes her recipe a minimum of three times (and sometimes more than 12) to ensure it’ll come out perfectly for all home cooks. For these meatballs, Melissa tinkered with ratios of seasonings to breadcrumbs to ensure the formula works with any type of ground meat.
Roast Chickens With Plums
This recipe, which roasts two chickens at the same time, has been engineered to feed a crowd. It's no harder than roasting one chicken. The birds get rubbed down with a garlicky sumac spice rub brightened with lemon zest. Then, as they cook, their fragrant drippings season sliced plums roasting in the pan underneath them, which caramelize into a fruity, chutney-like sauce. Feel free to halve the recipe if you’d rather, but be sure to reduce the oven temperature to 425 degrees. For two chickens you need the higher heat so they both crisp properly, but for only one chicken, slightly lower heat keeps the plums from burning.
Caramelized Tomato Tarte Tatin
This tart is a stunning mosaic of red, orange and yellow tomatoes so shiny and candied that the tart really looks like dessert. But it's safely on the savory side thanks to a splash of vinegar and a sprinkling of briny olives.
Best Gazpacho
More of a drink than a soup, served in frosted glasses or chilled tumblers, gazpacho is perfect when it is too hot to eat but you need cold, salt and lunch all at the same time. Gazpacho is everywhere in Seville, Spain, where this recipe comes from, but it's not the watered-down salsa or grainy vegetable purée often served in the United States. This version has no bread and is a creamy orange-pink rather than a lipstick red. That is because a large quantity of olive oil is required for making delicious gazpacho, rather than take-it-or-leave it gazpacho. The emulsion of red tomato juice, palest green cucumber juice and golden olive oil produces the right color and a smooth, almost fluffy texture.
Marinated Zucchini, Kalamata Olive, & Mozzarella Salad
The perfect no-cook dish for last-minute summer dinners.