Labor Day
306 recipes found
Salty Peanut-Pretzel Ice Cream Cake
Grab a couple quarts of your favorite vanilla ice cream, crush up some peanuts and pretzels, and invite the neighborhood over for this sweet, salty, satisfying summer treat. For the most robust peanut flavor, use well-stirred natural, unsweetened peanut butter. You can also use a sweetened variety, if that’s what you have on hand, but bear in mind that the ice cream and honey lend this cake enough sweetness. The savory dry-roasted peanuts add a wonderful depth of flavor, but make sure to look for a brand without onion or garlic powder listed among the ingredients.
Berry Blitz Torte
Blitz means “lightning” in German, referring to the lightning-quick way this old-fashioned cake comes together, at least compared with the more ornately frosted tortes popular a century ago. Buttery, nutmeg-scented batter is swirled with meringue and sprinkled with pecans before baking. The meringue, which browns on top but stays soft inside, takes the place of icing while the nuts add flavor and crunch. A whipped cream and berry filling makes the whole thing incredibly soft and rich. You can bake the cake layers up to 12 hours ahead, but it’s best to fill them with cream and berries within 3 hours of serving so they don’t get soggy. This recipe is adapted from my friend’s mother, Patricia O’Neal, who got it from her mother, Genevieve Lehmont.
Berry Apple-Butter Pie
The deliciously tart apple butter filling in this pie has a deep rosy color, bolstered by raspberries and blackberries. Apples with darker red skins will produce a filling that contrasts beautifully with the decorative golden brown crust: We opted to top the pie with triangle cutouts, but you could use any shape, or even substitute a woven lattice. You can make the apple butter up to 5 days ahead and refrigerate it in an airtight container, but the pie itself is best the day it is made. Store leftovers at room temperature, tightly covered with plastic wrap.
Black-and-White Cookies
There is no reason to settle for a stale shrink-wrapped cookie from the produce market. This classic New York cookie is easy to make.
Smoky Lobster Salad With Potatoes
This salad is a riff on a traditional Spanish dish, pulpo a la gallega, a favorite item on tapas bar menus all over the country. It is essentially boiled octopus and potatoes, sliced and served with a good drizzle of olive oil and a dusting of smoky pimentón. This version uses lobster instead, and adds strips of roasted pepper and cherry tomatoes.
Mustard-Glazed Pork Tenderloin
This savory-sweet treatment for pork tenderloin was brought to The Times in 1989 by the inimitable Marian Burros. With just five ingredients — pork, brown sugar, whole-grain mustard, rosemary and sherry — you have an extremely simple though supremely satisfying dish. We like ours served with mashed sweet potatoes and a pile of sautéed greens, and the leftovers make great sandwiches.
Chocolate Extremes (Double Chocolate Cookies)
These provocatively named cookies came to The Times in a 1999 Sunday Magazine article about Mrs. London's Bake Shop, a husband and wife owned bakery in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., known for their sweets. While the name suggests these cookies might veer into the too sweet and too rich category, they do not. Shiny and crackly on top while tender and deeply chocolaty in the center, they're like an ideal brownie in cookie form. They're kind of perfect. (One note: The recipe calls for bittersweet chocolate, but feel free to use semisweet or a combination of the two. Also, a sprinkle of flaky sea salt before baking would not be a bad idea.)
Smoky Chimichurri
You'll need a medium-hot charcoal fire to make this Argentine sauce. Either start cooking when your main grilled item comes off the fire or, if making this sauce separately, light a charcoal fire in your grill, putting all the coals on one side, and wait until it has died down to medium. Remove some or all of the pith and seeds from the jalapeños if you prefer a milder sauce. This relish is particularly good with beef.
Blueberry Rhubarb Pie
The baker and pie coach Kate McDermott has many tricks to figure out when a pie is done, but her favorite is what she calls “the heartbeat of the pie.” She listens for a sizzle that tells her that the fat in the crust is cooking the flour, and for a thumping sound that indicates that the simmering liquid is bumping up against the top crust. Also, watch for bubbling: This will tell you that the temperature is high enough that the thickeners have dissolved into the filling. All-berry pies can be too sweet and soft, so the tart crunch of rhubarb makes an ideal complement, especially in early spring. This glowing purple-magenta filling is quite spectacular.
Marcella Hazan’s Semifreddo di Cioccolato
Semifreddo, which means "half-cold" in Italian, is a more elegant version of the traditional ice cream cake (think frozen mousse), and it's the ideal dessert for a summer party as it can be done in advance, then sliced and plated at the table. This recipe, an adaptation of one found in Marcella Hazan's "Marcella's Italian Kitchen," is light yet luxurious. It calls for just four ingredients – heavy cream, confectioners' sugar, grated chocolate and egg whites – and it's dead simple to make. Just whip the cream, add the sugar, fold in the beaten egg whites and chocolate, and then freeze. Unmold, slice and serve. To gild the lily, garnish with fresh summer berries.
Rhubarb Oat Shortcakes
Roasting rhubarb with Demarara sugar until the stalks caramelize and soften enough to collapse gives you a heady and intense jamlike compote with a molasses edge. Here, it’s paired with tender, biscuitlike shortcakes made with a little oat flour for complexity and plenty of whipped cream. It’s important to let the rhubarb juices truly caramelize at the edges of the pan; they should turn deep mahogany brown before you pull it from the oven. Then mix those syrupy juices with the rest of the rhubarb for the deepest flavor. You can make the biscuits and rhubarb up to eight hours in advance. Store them at room temperature until ready to serve.
Chicken With Nectarine-Tomato Salsa
Creamy Coconut Popsicles
Cream of coconut, not to be confused with coconut milk or coconut cream, is a thick syrupy confection made by blending coconut and sugar and is most often used in piña coladas. Mixed with cream, coconut milk and shredded coconut, it gives these pops that classic tropical flair. One note: Coconut milk and cream of coconut naturally separate, so be sure to stir well before measuring.
Corn Fritters
Corn is the One True Vegetable of American summer. Vine-ripened tomatoes are thrilling, but not ours alone. And zucchini, while pleasant, does not make anyone’s toes curl. But the crunch and suck of ripe local corn on the cob is, so far, confined to the Here and Now. Once you’ve tired of piled-high platters of cobs, turn to corn fritters, which are always greeted with surprise — joy, even. And they are forgiving, because they can be made with fresh, or leftover cooked, kernels. Frying on a hot day isn’t anyone’s idea of fun, so my recipe has evolved into a hybrid of fritter and pancake, cooked in shallow oil. It goes with everything on the August table and, with maple syrup, peaches and bacon, is an ideal breakfast for dinner.
Grilled Swordfish With Smoky Tomato-Anchovy Salsa
This is a simple summer fish dish with robust flavors. Swordfish would be the first choice, for its meatiness and ease of grilling, but any firm-fleshed white fish, such as halibut, monkfish, corvina or snapper, is a suitable option. Tuna would also work, but for that matter, so would chicken breast, for those at your gathering who don’t eat fish. Topped with an easily made salsa of cherry tomatoes, anchovy, hot pepper and smoky pimentón, the whole affair is rather salad-like, best accompanied by arugula or lettuce leaves. Serve with roasted potatoes or garlic toast for a casual picnic-style summer supper.
Tomatoes With Basil and Anchovies
A great tomato salad starts with great tomatoes. Buy ripe tomatoes in season from the market or farm stand, or, even better, pick them straight from the garden. The anchovies (they are rinsed briefly to tame them) are an important feature, the perfect counterpoint to the tomatoes’ sweetness. Add a large handful of aromatic basil leaves just before serving.
Green Beans With Herbs and Olives
A salad of freshly picked green beans is a true treat. Whatever the color — green, purple or pale yellow — choose smaller beans, which are naturally more tender.
Beef Tenderloin Stuffed With Herb Pesto
Stuffed beef tenderloin is always an impressive main course. This one is summery, with a zesty, garlicky herb pesto, ideal for grilling over coals. It is delicious served at room temperature for an elegant summer buffet. Ask your butcher for a nice center-cut piece of tenderloin. If you aren’t comfortable with butterflying the meat yourself, ask the butcher to do that too, but it’s really not very difficult.
Fruit Gazpacho
Barley, Corn And Lobster Salad
Honeydew Sorbet With Vanilla And Honey
Grilled Pork Loin With Herbs, Cumin and Garlic
Pork loin is an excellent cut to grill for a crowd. The cut is larger and more marbled with fat than a lean tenderloin, which is entirely different and should not be used as a substitute in this recipe. The pork loin has a richer flavor and meatier texture. Butterflying a loin helps it cook quickly and relatively evenly over direct heat, which is the easiest way to go on the grill. If you’d rather cook this in the oven, you can broil the meat: Place the pork, opened and flat, on a rimmed baking sheet, and broil it on low for 7 to 12 minutes per side, until done to taste.
North Carolina-Style Pulled Pork