Lunch
2848 recipes found
Chicken Ragù Hand Pies
Leftover chicken ragù — or really any savory filling that is not too liquid — can be tucked inside this tender dough to make baked hand pies. They can be frozen before or after baking, then tucked into lunches and eaten at room temperature. A couple of rounds of prepared pie dough from the grocery store would make a quick and easy substitution.
Tagliatelle With Prosciutto and Butter
Like cacio e pepe, this prosciutto-studded pasta — coated in emulsified butter, starchy pasta cooking water and Parmesan — requires repetition to master, but it's not at all difficult. Adapted from Evan Funke’s pasta cookbook, “American Sfoglino,” this dish comes together with just a few ingredients, but you’ll need to work fast: Add the pasta, pasta water and cheese to the butter and prosciutto quickly, then stir vigorously while gently jostling the pan back and forth with the other hand. Serve immediately, as the pasta can lose its luster within minutes as it soaks up the sauce.
Pan-Seared Gyoza
Gyoza are plump, Japanese dumplings typically filled with a mixture of ground pork, cabbage, chives, ginger and garlic. They originated as a spin-off of Chinese jiaozi, but they differ in many ways, particularly in how they are wrapped: Gyoza have very thin wrappers sealed with signature pleats, while Chinese jiaozi have thick wrappers that vary in how they are sealed. Throughout Japan, you can find gyoza steamed, pan-fried and deep-fried, and in recent years, lattice-edged dumplings have become popular. Made by pouring a slurry of flour and water into the pan with the dumplings, the water evaporates and the batter creates a crisp, lacy net. This pan-fried version is adapted from “The Gaijin Cookbook: Japanese Recipes from a Chef, Father, Eater, and Lifelong Outsider,” a collection of Japanese recipes from the chef Ivan Orkin, an owner of two ramen shops in New York. (Instructions for creating a lattice are below the recipe.)
Spiced Olive Oil Cake With Orange Glaze
This golden cake makes a persuasive case for baking with olive oil; it is fragrant, peppery and not overly sweet, with an orange glaze that brings all the flavors together. The recipe is from Lior Lev Sercarz, a high-end spice vendor in New York City who says that oil is even better than butter, the favorite of American bakers, at amplifying flavors like citrus and spice. See Tip for his instructions on using whole spices.
Corn, Bacon and Cheddar Pie With Pickled Jalapeños
Corn kernels make this quiche-like pie juicy-sweet. Bacon, jalapeño and quick-pickled onions make it deeply savory, and a custard of sour cream, eggs and Cheddar adds a delightfully gooey texture. A touch of cornmeal in the dough makes the crust extra crunchy, and its corn flavor echoes the filling. You can bake this in the height of corn season with fresh kernels, or in the depths of winter with frozen. It will be just as richly satisfying any time of the year.
New Shrimp Louie (Poached Shrimp Salad)
In this spirit of classics like shrimp Louie or niçoise salad, this is a fairly basic, highly customizable salad-for-dinner deal, in which the nonnegotiables are fresh seafood (shrimp or salmon), crunchy lettuce (romaine or Little Gems) and tons of lemon (which comes in a tangy vinaigrette made with shallot and tarragon). From there, you can add any number of raw or lightly blanched vegetables, like shaved radish, sliced avocado or blanched green beans. To make things easy and efficient, the shrimp, eggs and green beans can all be cooked in the same pot of boiling water, so it’s not much of a fuss.
Spiced Chickpea Salad With Tahini and Pita Chips
This main-course salad has all the fresh flavors of a great falafel sandwich — tahini, mint, paprika, cucumber, cumin, garlic — plus the crunch of pita and the satisfying heft of chickpeas. The vegetarian cookbook writer Hetty McKinnon created this recipe, and the amount of olive oil she calls for might seem excessive. Don’t hold back: After cooking the chickpeas, the oil becomes part of the garlicky, paprika-warmed dressing for the finished dish. You could make her recipe even easier by using salad greens instead of cooked greens as the base.
Konbi’s Egg Salad Sandwich
This famous egg salad sandwich comes from Konbi, the tiny Los Angeles cafe run by the co-chefs Akira Akuto and Nick Montgomery. It’s not always the case that sensational, Instagram-famous dishes are carefully calibrated to taste so good, but this one breaks the mold: It’s as pretty as it is delicious. The egg salad is brightened with a touch of rice wine vinegar and mustard and bound with Kewpie mayonnaise. When making it at home, be careful not to undercook the eggs or you’ll cross that fine line between jammy and runny. At the heart of the sandwich is a perfect hard-boiled egg, and we suggest cooking a couple extra in case they break or you have trouble peeling them. Extra eggs, still warm, with a touch of salt and pepper, make for a great snack while you're assembling.
Ginger-Cauliflower Soup
This simple soup, steeped with ginger and lemongrass, features a bright relish of lime zest, fresh ginger and scallions. The topping offsets the subtle, sensible cauliflower, and the soup is deceptively luxurious thanks to the addition of potato, which adds a natural creaminess. Serve with a crusty sourdough loaf or some thick slices of buttered toast.
Classic Baked Macaroni and Cheese
Think Stouffer's without the freezer. While it can be enjoyed straight from the pot, this macaroni and cheese has a slightly looser sauce than the stovetop variety to allow for thickening in the oven. Bread crumbs, while optional, make it truly spectacular.
Fabrizia Lanza’s Sicilian Pizza (Sfincione)
Palermo, the capital of Sicily, is street-food paradise, and among its many offerings is sfincione, a hearty pizza that’s baked in a rimmed sheet pan, allowing the dough to rise to a chewy thickness, and cut into large square slices. Sfincione is smeared with a frugal tomato sauce enhanced with umami from sheep’s milk cheese, onions and anchovy, along with olive oil and a handful of bread crumbs to make the cheese go further. When baked, the top is juicy, while the bottom is crisp from the generously oiled pan. Despite its origins as a street food, it is the perfect pizza to make at home. This easy and authentic recipe is from Fabrizia Lanza, proprietor of the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School, on the family’s country estate near Palermo.
Migas Breakfast Tacos
Tortilla chips in tacos may seem like overkill, but they’re not. Set into scrambled eggs that are loaded with onions and poblanos, they soften and enrich the mix while keeping some crispiness. A slice of avocado on top — along with melted cheese — adds a nice creaminess to the mix. These tacos work well with red or green salsa, so use your favorite. While these would impress at a weekend brunch, they also come together quickly on weekday mornings, and can be wrapped in foil to be eaten out of hand.
Couscous Salad With Turmeric, Chickpeas and Tomato
Turmeric highlights the golden hue of couscous while adding a welcome bit of flavor. The grains are paired with tomatoes, which have been left to sit in red wine and vinegar, infusing them with flavor and making the dressing even more juicy for the couscous-chickpea mix. If you want the onion to be nice and crisp and to take its raw edge off, put the slices in a bowl of ice and water before you cook the couscous. Drain them right before tossing them in. You can add even more crunch by topping the salad with sliced celery or chiles, if you like your food spicy. Either thinly sliced fresh chiles, such as fresno or jalapeños, or preserved ones, like peppadews or hot cherry, work well.
Roasted Eggplant and Buffalo Mozzarella Pizza
In Italy, when high-quality buffalo mozzarella is used to top a pizza, it’s often added after baking instead of before. The heat of the just-cooked pizza softens but doesn’t melt the cheese, which retains its milky, sweet flavor and stays supple instead of becoming stretchy. Here, the cheese crowns a pizza topped with tomato, roasted eggplant, chile flakes and fresh basil leaves. If you can’t get good buffalo mozzarella, substitute dollops of fresh ricotta. Or, you could experiment with burrata, draining it first. Save the cream, mix it with olive oil and salt, then use it to top ripe tomatoes instead of dressing. And if you are in a rush, substitute store-bought pizza dough.
Creamy Weeknight Macaroni and Cheese
Just as quick as the boxed variety, this creamy macaroni and cheese skirts the traditional butter and flour roux with assistance from cream cheese. While the cream cheese adds an important lusciousness, it doesn’t do the macaroni and cheese any favors when it comes to its flavor, so it’s important to use the sharpest, tangiest Cheddar you can get your hands on. For perfectly coated noodles, make sure to cook the pasta in the sauce for a minute or two.
Lemony Mashed Potatoes With Asparagus, Almonds and Mint
Sautéing asparagus in butter and oil, rather than boiling it in water, locks much of the flavor inside. The asparagus could be served without the lemony mashed potatoes, or the other way around, but together they make a glorious side dish to roasted chicken, fish or spring lamb. Alternatively, adding a poached egg or two to each plate will turn this into a substantial vegetarian meal.
A Perfect Hard-Boiled Egg
Master this simple technique and every hard-boiled egg you make from here on out will have a perfectly-cooked, creamy sunshine center. Here are loads of recipes to make with them.
Best Black Bean Soup
This American classic can be a perfect dish: big-tasting, filling, nutritious, easy and very possibly vegetarian. With their rich natural broth, turtle beans do not need bacon, ham or any meat ingredient to make a satisfying soup. Black bean soup recipes have a tendency to turn out sludgy or bland, but the trick here is to season generously, and purée sparingly. The beans should be swimming in liquid, not sitting in sludge: The more beans are puréed, the more starch is released into the soup. For flavor, this recipe deploys marinated chipotle chiles, but a tablespoon each of ground cumin and ground coriander make a good heat-free substitute. (A note: Since there is acid from the wine here, if your tap water is hard there might be a reaction that will prevent the beans from softening. To be safe, add the wine later, along with the stock. And if there is any question about the hardness of your water, use distilled.)
Grilled Steak Tacos With Cherry Tomato-Avocado Salsa
In this supremely summery taco recipe, chile-rubbed grilled steak is topped with a spicy tomato-avocado salsa before being rolled into warm corn tortillas. Grilling the onions, garlic and jalapeño for the salsa adds a concentrated sweetness, while lime zest keeps everything sharp and bright. If you don’t have access to a grill, feel free to use your broiler.
Cobb Salad
While the origins of a Cobb salad are still up for debate, what goes into one is fairly absolute: tender chicken breast, tangy tomatoes, perfectly hard-boiled egg and, perhaps most important, crispy bacon. This classic version relies on crumbled blue cheese and ripe avocado for creaminess, rather than a cheese or buttermilk-based dressing, making way for a mustardy shallot vinaigrette. The way each of the ingredients is prepared will depend on personal preference: Are you a chunky, chopped salad kind of person? Or do you prefer your lettuce torn and tomatoes sliced? Here, the torn and sliced approach is taken for a more elegant visual, but feel free to make it your own. It also halves nicely if you're cooking for two.
Mario Batali's Snappy Celery and White Bean Salad
This White Bean Celery Salad recipe is not groundbreaking or experimental. But it’s healthy and available in most bodegas. Serve salad at room temperature.
Ratatouille
In this classic Provençal dish, summer vegetables, like eggplant, onions, peppers, tomatoes and zucchini, are covered in olive oil and roasted separately, then all together, until they become a soft, harmonious stew. This recipe calls for seeding and peeling the tomatoes, which is a bit of work. But it’s worth it for the intensity of flavor and the velvety texture. Ratatouille takes some time to make, and tastes better the next day, so plan ahead. The upside is that it’s a perfect make-ahead dish for a party. You can store it in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, then gently reheat it, or bring it to room temperature before serving. This recipe is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, a guide to definitive dishes every modern cook should master.
Lamb Tagine
The word "tagine" refers to both a North African cooking pot with a conical lid, and the aromatic stew traditionally cooked inside. Tagine, the stew, classically incorporates savory and sweet ingredients to make a complex dish with a richly spiced sauce. Here, dried apricots, cinnamon, nutmeg and a sprinkling of almonds toasted in butter provide the sweetness, while lamb, saffron, turmeric, tomato paste and a bright garnish of scallions, herbs and lemon juice make it deeply savory. If you have a tagine, the pot, feel free to use it here. Otherwise, a Dutch oven or a different large pot with a tightfitting lid will work well. This recipe is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, a guide to definitive dishes every modern cook should master.
Sole Meunière
The dish that made Julia Child fall in love with French cuisine, sole meunière highlights the simple flavors of fresh fish, butter, lemon and parsley. Fish is the center of the dish, so using a quality fillet is important: A true English Dover sole is preferred. Clarified butter, which takes a few extra minutes to prepare, can take on heat without browning, making it ideal for pan-frying fish. A classic sole meunière is made with a bone-in fillet, but boneless sole is faster and easier. You'll find a recipe for clarified butter here. This recipe is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, a guide to definitive dishes every modern cook should master.