Kosher
984 recipes found
Italian Meat Sauce With Half the Meat
It’s been a long time since I have made tomato sauce with meat, and this one transported me back to the first recipe I learned to make. I called it spaghetti sauce, and it was a simple tomato sauce with ground beef. It didn’t taste that much different from this sauce, which has only a quarter pound of meat in it – but that is all it needs to have a rich flavor and a meaty texture. The mushroom base is a perfect stand-in for half the meat; you could double the amount for a vegetarian sauce.
Simple Pencil Cob Breakfast Grits
Sometimes the taste of a humble, simple food can be a life-changing event. This recipe, courtesy of Kay Rentschler, creative director of Anson Mills, is a fail-safe method for making the mill’s luxuriously flavored heirloom grits. When properly cooked – over very low heat after an overnight soak – the resulting grits are incredibly creamy and almost as sweet as fresh corn. It is important to understand why you must cook these grits over the lowest possible heat: these are coarse grits, and if they are over-hydrated or boiled after they begin to thicken they will take forever to cook. (In technical terms, thickening is the point at which the first starch takes hold, or the point after continuous gentle stirring when the grits particles remain suspended in the liquid and you no longer have to stir continuously). Moreover, as Anson Mills founder Glenn Roberts explained to me, if the heat is too high the new crop flavors of the corn will be blown out, in the same way that the flavor of fresh herbs is diminished by high heat.
Cracked Farro Risotto (Farrotto) With Parsley and Marjoram
Finally, a way to make something as comforting as an Italian rice risotto using farro. The chef Barry Maiden revealed this ingenious method to me. Soak the farro, drain and then crack the grains slightly in a food processor. This allows the thickly hulled wheat berries to release their starch, creating the creamy sauce that defines the dish. Farro has so much flavor and the resulting farrotto is much more robust than a rice risotto. It needs little more than fresh herbs as embellishment, but of course you could add any vegetable you like to use in risotto.
Strata With Mushrooms and Chard
I make stratas — savory bread puddings — when I find myself with a stale baguette on hand, even if it’s so hard that the only way to slice it is to saw it. A strata is as comforting as macaroni and cheese, and it makes a great one-dish meal.
Penne With Peas, Pea Greens and Parmesan
Many farmers who sell peas also sell the shoots and tendrils that grow with them. They’re sweet, light and nourishing, especially when you serve them along with peas.
Long-Simmered Eggplant Stuffed with Farro or Spelt
This is a riff on imam bayildi, the long-cooking eggplant dish bathed in tomatoes and onions that is one of the great achievements of Turkish cuisine. I added cooked farro to the tomato-onion mix, making this more like a stuffed eggplant dish. The active cooking time is minimal, but the smothered eggplant must simmer for about 1 1/2 hours to achieve the intense, syrupy sauce and deep, rich flavor that make this dish such a wonder. Make it a day ahead for best results, and serve at room temperature on a hot night.
Grilled Peppers with Garlic Yogurt
This dish is very much in the Turkish spirit of mixing warm vegetables with cool, garlicky yogurt. Various types of peppers will work. This is a typical Turkish way to use grilled peppers. Turkish cuisine features cool, garlicky yogurt with warm vegetables. You can use a mix of peppers for this (in Turkey, longish, thin-skinned green peppers are the norm), and you don’t have to stick to sweet peppers, though I prefer the sweet against the pungent yogurt. Roasted peppers will keep for a week in the refrigerator. They will continue to release liquid, which they can marinate in. Warm the peppers before serving, or serve them at room temperature with the topping.
Turkish Spinach with Tomatoes and Rice
Not every tradition allows rice during Passover; in this fragrant dish there’s just enough of it to add substance to the vegetables. Some Sephardic Jews have traditionally allowed rice during Passover, whereas many Ashkenazi Jews do not. There isn’t much of it in this Turkish spinach dish, adapted from a recipe in Clifford A. Wright’s “A Mediterranean Feast,” just enough to add substance to the vegetables.
Stir-Fried Chicken With Greens
The chicken is not the centerpiece of this stir-fry, and you can leave it out, or use tofu instead, for a vegetarian version. It adds flavor and some substance, but this stir-fry is mostly about antioxidant-rich cruciferous vegetables, with a red pepper thrown in for color, adding its own set of nutrients (anthocyanins, beta carotene, vitamin C).
Risotto with Tomatoes and Corn
This colorful risotto serves as a luxurious showcase for summer’s bounty of tomatoes and corn. This is about as colorful and summery a risotto as you can get. The tomatoes and broth team up as a rich medium for the rice. Don’t add the corn too soon, or it will develop a starchy texture like the rice. But cook it long enough to bring out its sweet flavor. Simmer the corn cobs for about 20 minutes in your broth to get a great sweet corn flavor.
Farfalle With Roasted Peppers
For this dish, inspired by Greek and Turkish ways with pasta and yogurt, I combined peppers from the market, peas from my freezer and herbs from my garden.
Turkish Yogurt and Spinach Dip
Known in Turkey as caçik, this garlicky mixture of green vegetables, fresh herbs and yogurt can be served as a salad or as a dip with pita and raw vegetables. Traditionally, caçik is made with a number of vegetables, including cucumbers, cabbage and beets.
Stewed Green Beans and Tomatoes With Trahana
The stewed green beans with tomatoes are typical of many Greek “olive oil dishes,” or “ladera,” though my version has about a quarter of the olive oil used in a traditional dish. I have bulked it up by adding trahana to the mix, which turns it into a stew that is suitable as a main dish. It is delicious hot or at room temperature.
Pre-Summer Greek Salad With Shaved Broccoli and Peppers or Beets
Classic Greek salad is a summer dish in my house; impossible to make if tomatoes are not in season and wonderful. But other vegetables take to the same treatment – a simple dressing with a high ratio of acid (in this case a combination of lemon juice and vinegar with olive oil), feta cheese and lots of mint and parsley. I don’t normally use uncooked broccoli flowers. But in this case, I slice the florets paper-thin, allowing the flower buds to crumble off when I cut the crowns. Cut like this the broccoli yields to the dressing and maintains its brightness for a much longer time than cooked broccoli does. I’ve made this salad combining broccoli with sweet red pepper and combining it with roasted Chioggia beets (yellow beets also work; red ones, however, bleed into the broccoli). I like both versions equally.
Omelets With Roasted Vegetables and Feta
If you have roasted vegetables on hand an omelet is a wonderful vehicle for them. Omelets are so quick to make, and so satisfying, whether you make them for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. You can cut up your roasted vegetables into slightly smaller pieces if you want a less chunky omelet.
Corn and Vegetable Gratin With Cumin
This pretty gratin is not as rich as it tastes. I blend the kernels from one of the ears of corn with eggs and milk for a sweet, rich custard that holds it all together. Cumin seeds accent the mixture and give it a Southwestern twist.
Tomato, Cucumber and Corn Salad
You can serve this refreshing mixture as a salad, as a topping for whole grains or as a salsa with grilled fish or chicken.
Simple Trahana Soup With Lemon and Olive Oil
This is just about the simplest dish to make with trahana, yet I find it incredibly satisfying and refreshing. I like it both hot and cold; it is cooling on a hot summer day and comforting on a cool one (we were in the middle of a bad heat wave when I was testing this week’s recipes). The soup is adapted from a recipe in Diane Kochilas’s new cookbook: “Ikaria: Lessons on Food, Life, and Longevity From the Greek Island Where People Forget to Die.” My favorite herb to use with the soup is fresh dill. If you want to add more ingredients, simmer vegetables of your choice in the broth, or add blanched or steamed vegetables to the soup when you serve it. Broccoli would be great, as would peas, beans, or sugar snap peas.
Spinach Salad With Mushrooms and Hibiscus Flower Vinaigrette
Roasted Cauliflower Gratin With Tomatoes and Goat Cheese
Roasting is one of my favorite ways to prepare cauliflower, and I have always loved preparations that pair the vegetable with coriander seeds. I use coriander seeds and cinnamon to season the tomato sauce that I toss with the roasted cauliflower and sautéed red onions, then add a couple of eggs beaten with goat cheese.
Collard Greens Stuffed With Quinoa and Turkey
It takes some time, but I love filling collard greens. Bigger than grape leaves (so you don’t have to make as many), the large flat leaves are great stuffers. I used a combination of quinoa and leftover turkey for this slightly sweet Middle Eastern filling spiced with cinnamon and allspice; rice would work just as well.
Refried Bean, Zucchini and Corn Gratin
This is my own interpretation of a traditional Southwestern dish (that has many interpretations) called Three Sisters Casserole. Three Sisters refers to the Native American practice of growing corn, beans and squash in the same field. I’ve seen many different recipes for Three Sisters Casserole and Three Sisters Gratin, some using winter squash, more using summer squash. Sometimes the vegetables are combined and topped with a layer of polenta. In this version, each element gets its own flavorful layer. Although you can use canned beans for the dish, I urge you to use simmered beans because the refried beans will taste best if you reduce them in their flavorful broth.
Homemade Sour Bulgur Trahana From Ikaria
Trahana is a wheat product that is eaten throughout Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean. There are many versions, some made with milk, usually from goats or sheep that is called sweet trahana, some with a combination of milk and yogurt, called sour trahana, and even a lenten version made with vegetable pulp. The liquid is combined with wheat – bulgur, semolina, or a mix of semolina and flour – and made into a dry dough (if using flour) or simmered until it is a thick porridge. Then it is spread out on netting and dried in the sun. Once thoroughly dry it is broken up into granules that can range in size from bulgurlike morsels to small pellets. You can find imported Greek trahana in Greek markets. I found five different types in my local Greek market in Los Angeles and each one behaves a little bit differently when you cook it. It is easy to make yourself, as I found when I made this recipe from Diane Kochilas’s wonderful new cookbook “Ikaria: Lessons on Food, Life, and Longevity From the Greek Island Where People Forget to Die.” This is the trahana that I used for all of this week’s Recipes for Health. I am happy to have this new staple on hand in my pantry.
Grilled Pepper Omelet
Roasted peppers, chopped herbs and a little bit of Parmesan make for a quick omelet in the spirit of a pipérade. I often make the classic Basque pipérade, eggs scrambled with stewed peppers and tomatoes. This time, I kept it a little simpler and used my roasted peppers to fill an omelet. I added chopped, fresh herbs and a little bit of Parmesan to the mix. If your peppers are already roasted (I had plenty on hand as I’d been working with roasted peppers all week) this is a 2- to 5-minute dinner. As always, the better the eggs (farm-fresh, pastured), the better the omelet.