Lunch
2782 recipes found

Sheet-Pan Chicken With Potatoes, Arugula and Garlic Yogurt
Your typical sheet-pan chicken recipe roasts everything together on a pan at once. This version pairs potatoes with the poultry, and tops everything off with fresh herbs and arugula, making it a true one-pan meal, salad included. A savory yogurt sauce adds a creamy touch, but it’s optional if you’re not a yogurt sauce fan. Feel free to double the recipe if you’re feeding a crowd, though make sure to use two sheet pans so that everything is spread out in one layer, which is critical for browning.

Simple Steak au Poivre
Steak au poivre sounds as if it would be difficult, but it is actually quite simple to prepare, and makes an easy and elegant (perhaps somewhat pricy) meal. Essentially it is a sautéed steak, with a quick pan sauce. This version made with black peppercorns and Sichuan pepper tastes bright but not overpoweringly peppery or boozy. If you serve it with scallion-mashed potatoes, your home cooked steak au poivre will put the best neighborhood bistro to shame.

Radish and Herb Salad with Meyer Lemon Dressing
Thinly slicing radishes, celery and fennel, preferably on a mandoline, makes for a salad as ethereally light as the usual baby lettuce, but with a more interesting mix of colors and textures. If you can find watermelon radishes, use them here — they turn a good-looking mix into something truly stunning, with a piquant bite. If you can’t find Meyer lemons, substitute regular lemon juice spiked with a touch of orange or tangerine to compensate for the missing sweetness.

Great South Bay Duck Ragù
This is a home cook's version of a wild-shot brant ragù cooked by Dave Pasternack of Esca in Manhattan. He served it thick and dark, a kind of tomato jam knit together with heavy shreds of meat, riding a polenta raft: poultry that looked like pork and tasted of fish, a combination to reel the mind. It was food of deep intensity and flavor, and it led to crazy, vivid dreams. Made with farmed duck amped up with anchovies, juniper, and vinegar it becomes a dish of domestic heritage, though with a feral streak, absolutely delicious.

Billi Bi
Craig Claiborne, who brought this amazing cream of mussels soup to The Times in the 1960s and refined it over the years with his longtime kitchen collaborator Pierre Franey, once called it "the most elegant and delicious soup ever created." It is also one of the easiest to make. Use wine to steam open some mussels beneath a blanket of aromatics and use the resulting stock as a base for cream. Add the mussels and perhaps a grind of pepper. "One of the sublime creations on Earth," Claiborne wrote. Find more Times classic recipes.

Beet, Mushroom and Beef Burgers
I incorporated a roasted beet into the beef and roasted mushroom mix, allowing me to shave another couple of ounces of beef off the formula, and the resulting burger is a winner. The beet contributes moisture, texture and great color – almost a rare meaty look – to these almost-veggie burgers (I tried the grated roasted beets and mushrooms as a mix without the meat and it didn’t hold together; I plan to work on a vegetarian version at a later date.) Meanwhile I love the texture of this patty and the herbal flavors of the mint and chives. If you want to splurge a little (after all there are only 2 ounces of beef in each patty), melt a little blue cheese or gorgonzola on top. I like to serve this with a spicy green, like baby arugula or mizuna.

Roasted Salmon Glazed With Brown Sugar and Mustard
This is what we call around here a no-recipe recipe, the sort of meal you can cook once off a card and you'll know it by heart: salmon glazed with brown sugar and mustard. The preparation could not be simpler. Heat your oven to 400. Make a mixture of Dijon mustard and brown sugar to the degree of spicy-sweetness that pleases you. Salt and pepper the salmon fillets. Place them skin-side down on a lightly oiled, foil-lined baking sheet, slather the tops with the mustard and brown sugar glaze and slide them into the top half of your oven. They ought to be done in 12 minutes or so, and they pair beautifully with simple braised greens.

Moroccan Chickpeas With Chard
An array of aromatic spices, along with chopped dried apricots and preserved lemons give this chickpea stew a complex, deep flavor, while chard stems and leaves lighten and freshen it up. Served with couscous or flatbread, it’s a satisfying meatless meal on its own. Or serve it with roasted chicken, beef or lamb as a hearty side dish. If you can find rainbow chard, you’ll get the best color here, but any chard variety (red, Swiss, yellow) will work well.

Ed Levine’s Matzo Ball Soup
A recipe for the classic Jewish dish.

Cauliflower Parmesan
Think of cauliflower Parmesan as the winter analogue to eggplant Parmesan. This fried cauliflower is worth making all on its own, with golden, crisp florets that are impossible to stop eating. But they’re even better when given the parm treatment — baked with marinara sauce, mozzarella and grated Parmesan cheese until bubbling and browned. If you’re not a cauliflower fan, this recipe also works with broccoli.

Lentil Salad With Roasted Vegetables
This lentil salad looks and tastes bright, thanks to a combination of tangerine juice, sherry vinegar and colorful caramelized roasted root vegetables. It works either as a main course, served with good bread and butter, or as side dish with roasted meat or fish. For the maximum visual impact, use both golden and red beets. Vegetarians can feel free to leave out the bacon. Leftovers will keep for at least five days, though try to pack it up without the radicchio, which gets soggy in the fridge.

Tortilla Soup With Roasted Cauliflower 'Rice'
This is not exactly authentic, but I wanted to add a vegetable to my tortilla soup, to make it more of a dinner in a bowl, so I decided to shave cauliflower, toss the ricelike pieces with oil and chili powder, and roast it. I loved the addition of the spicy roasted cauliflower to each bowl of soup, along with the tortilla crisps that I toasted in the microwave rather than frying. You can make this soup even more substantial by adding eggs (see the variation that follows the recipe).

Noodle Bowl With Soba, Enoki Mushrooms, Sugar Snap Peas and Tofu
Fresh enoki mushrooms are small thin-stemmed mushrooms with a small cap. They are widely available now in supermarkets and very nice in a noodle bowl. A noodle bowl makes for a comforting, filling winter meal and is easily put together. The broth only requires 20 minutes; make it your go-to vegetarian broth because it freezes well. I have found sliced dried shiitake mushrooms in specialty stores, and dried shiitakes in the Asian foods aisle of my local supermarket.

Orange-Scented Winter Squash and Carrot Soup
I was looking around for new approaches to winter squash and found a wonderful looking recipe in “Plenty More,” the latest collection from Yotam Ottolenghi, for roasted butternut squash with buckwheat polenta. The squash was seasoned with allspice, cardamom, and orange peel, among other things, and I was inspired to try these seasonings in a soup. I tied the spices, herbs and orange peel into a cheesecloth bag and simmered them in the soup to great effect. The essence of orange is especially appealing.

Minestrone With Giant White Beans and Winter Squash
The inspiration for this minestrone was a bag of Rancho Gordo Royal Corona beans that I have had in my pantry for a while. Royal Coronas are large white European runner beans that are similar to Greek gigandes but bigger, richer and sturdier. They are about twice the size of a lima bean and, unlike many other large white beans, the skin doesn’t slip off when you soak them. If you substitute limas I would not soak the beans, but if you use the Royal Coronas, do soak them to shorten the cooking time. The beans are downright meaty and the soup is a hearty one. I didn’t even feel the need to add pasta or rice to this substantial minestrone.

Chard Stalk, Celeriac and Leek Soup
Hold onto your chard stalks! Recently I came upon a recipe in a Provençal cookbook for a gratin made with chard stalks and celeriac. I used the combination for a purée, which I served at Thanksgiving dinner to great acclaim. I took the same idea and made it into a blended soup, this time adding a potato and a bunch of leeks for added flavor and body. The soup is incredibly satisfying, but quite light.

Banana Croque-Monsieur

Seared Broccoli and Potato Soup
This is not your average broccoli soup. Instead of merely boiling the broccoli to cook it, here, the florets are seared until deeply browned on one side while remaining bright green on the other. This gives the soup a layer of caramelized flavor while also preserving the fresh green taste of the broccoli itself. It’s a technique inspired by Andrew Feinberg of Franny’s restaurant in Brooklyn, who also uses it for zucchini soup. In this version, we’ve added potato for body, chile flakes for spice and lemon zest to heighten the citrus tang at the end.

Bacon and Gruyère Green Bean Casserole
This version pays tribute to the classic green bean casserole but upgrades its components. The cream of mushroom soup is replaced with crème fraîche and sautéed mushrooms; bacon and Gruyère are added to the mix; fresh green beans stand in for frozen (though you could use frozen in a pinch); and bread crumbs swap in for the Ritz crackers.

Aioli With Roasted Vegetables
In Provence, the garlic-infused mayonnaise called aioli is typically served with a platter of raw and boiled vegetables and sometimes fish. With its intense creamy texture and deep garlic flavor, it turns a humble meal into a spectacular one. In this recipe, an assortment of colorful roasted vegetables stand in for the raw and boiled ones. It makes a very elegant side dish to an entrée of roasted fish or meat, or can be the main event of a vegetable-focused meal. The aioli can be made up to three days ahead and stored in the refrigerator. The vegetables are best roasted right before serving.

Rigatoni and Cauliflower al Forno
Cauliflower is perhaps the least appreciated member of the large family of cruciferous vegetables, no doubt due to memories of encountering it boiled, flabby and timidly seasoned, if seasoned at all. When cooked properly, it is a delight. Cauliflower can stand up to rather bold seasoning, in fact. In this recipe, it gets garlic, sage, red pepper and capers. And it is browned in olive oil, which further enhances the flavor. If you want a terrific side vegetable, just serve the sautéed cauliflower and skip the rigatoni. But combining the cauliflower with large-format pasta, pecorino cheese and bread crumbs, then baking it until crisply golden, makes for a splendid meal.

Sweet and Spicy Roast Chicken
A chile-flecked, honey-imbued marinade spiked with fresh citrus juice gives this chicken its fiery, syrupy character. Dates and carrots give the sauce texture and additional sweetness while a garnish of fresh herbs and pistachio nuts lends freshness and crunch. It’s dinner party food at its most flavorful and convenient; its honey marinade makes it a particularly wonderful main course for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. The ingredients can be assembled up to 24 hours in advance, then all you need to do is pop it in the oven just before your guests arrive, and garnish it at the last minute. Serve it with couscous, polenta, rice or another soft grain to soak up the sauce.

Chacarero -The Chilean National Lunch Solution
Although the most traditional Chilean dish is probably empanadas, more popular and more widely available are chacareros, a type of sandwich that Chileans eat for breakfast, lunch, or any other time they feel a bit peckish. Chileans buy these sandwiches – the most famous ones are the chacarero, the barros luco (meat and cheese) and the barros jarpa (ham and cheese) – in schoperías, little corner restaurants. They use 'French' bread for these, often in the form of buns, but you can use baguettes, hamburger buns or similar. As for most South American recipes, the important ingredient is the meat - everything else is decoration, mostly.

Green Beans With Lemon Vinaigrette
Grab-and-go offerings of picnicky food are almost universally mediocre and exasperatingly expensive. Resist the temptation to outsource and make your own. This recipe is built to last. You can make it a day or two ahead of time, or leave it out on the counter if you're going to eat these green beans within a few hours of making it.