Lunch
2800 recipes found
Foolproof Tarte Tatin
Tarte Tatin isn't as American as apple pie, but it's a whole lot easier. With just four ingredients, it's all about the apples: the lovely taste and shape of the fruit are preserved by sugar and heat, with a buttery-salty crust underneath. This recipe from Gotham Bar and Grill in New York has a couple of tricks that make it easier to pull off than others: dry the apples out before baking; start by coating the pan with butter instead of making a caramel; use tall chunks of apple and hug them together in the pan to prevent overcooking.
Chicken Meatballs
These meatballs started out, funnily enough, as a meatloaf for a meal at home one night with our actual family. For the stewed-chicken-and-rice recipe, instead of forming a loaf, we made small, attractive meatballs, baked them briefly and then added them to the final stew with a chicken-skin garnish.
Tomato Salad With Cucumber and Ginger
The classic combination of tomatoes and cucumbers gets new life here from a lively dressing of lime zest and juice, fish sauce and serrano chile inspired by Thai papaya salad. It’s a study in contrasts: Bracing on its own, the salty-spicy vinaigrette is mellowed by fresh summer tomatoes and cucumbers. Large pieces of fresh ginger add a punch of spice without the heat, while cilantro and basil serve as fresh, cooling elements. Enjoy with red curry chicken, coconut rice and a nice crisp beer.
Crispy Feta With Lemon
When heat touches feta, its exterior crisps while its interior becomes surprisingly creamy and soft. Turning it into a dazzling appetizer takes very little: Dust the cheese with cornstarch and sesame seeds, sauté it in butter, then finish it with a squeeze of lemon. You can perch it atop a cracker, or eat it on its own, in awe of the sum of so few parts.
Lemony White Bean Soup With Turkey and Greens
Bright with lemon and herbs, and packed with hearty greens, this highly adaptable soup can be either light and brothy or thick and stewlike, depending on your preference. Smashing some of the beans to release their starch will give you a thicker soup that’s almost worthy of a fork. To keep it on the brothy side, add a little more liquid and leave the beans intact. Either way, it’s a warming, piquant, one-pot meal that’s perfect for winter.
Southern Broccoli Salad
A classic sweet and savory Southern broccoli salad combines raw (or barely cooked) broccoli with sweet dried fruit (typically raisins or cranberries), crunchy sunflower seeds and savory Cheddar in a creamy, tangy mayonnaise dressing. Briefly blanching the broccoli in boiling water ensures bright green veggies with a crisp-tender texture. The salad gets better with time, so make it a few hours ahead and refrigerate it. (Reserve the crispy bacon and sprinkle it on top right before serving.) And, if your tastes skew sweet, further increase the sugar by another tablespoon.
Mashed Potato Salad With Scallions and Herbs
Creamier than a classic potato salad, and chunkier and zestier than regular mashed potatoes, this hybrid dish can be served warm or at room temperature, when its texture is at its softest and best. (Never serve this cold; no one likes cold mashed potatoes.) The key to getting the right texture is to cook the potatoes a little more than you would for potato salad, but not so much that they completely fall apart. You are looking for chunks of potatoes coated in a fluffy layer of highly seasoned mashed potatoes. Potato salads tend to absorb their seasonings as they sit, so for the most flavorful dish, be prepared to add more salt, lemon juice and olive oil to taste just before serving.
Thai Rice Soup With Pork-Cilantro Meatballs
Jok, also called congee, is a rice porridge that’s like the oatmeal of Asia -- a soft, soothing, filling breakfast that can be sparked with add-ins and toppings for flavor and crunch. Before dawn in Bangkok, jok vendors begin the battle to make the juiciest meatballs, the tiniest ginger matchsticks and the liveliest pickled fresh chiles. This recipe, which also makes a great lunch on a chilly weekend morning, is adapted from two cooks: Leela Punyaratabandhu, author of Simple Thai Food, who makes a vendor-style, puddingy jok; and Chrissy Teigen, the Thai-American supermodel, who makes a simpler version, adapted from her mother Vilaluck’s home recipe.
Bacon and Shallot Potato Salad
The German-style potato salad doesn’t contain any mayonnaise, but is rich with bacon, whole-grain mustard and sweet fried shallots. It’s best served warm while the bacon still glistens with fat, but is also nice at room temperature. Make it as close to serving time as possible. Or if you do make it ahead, consider popping it into the microwave for a minute or so just before serving.
Egg Mayo
Egg mayo — or oeuf mayo, as it’s called in France — is simply hard-boiled eggs coated with seasoned mayonnaise, but it’s so beloved in France that it has a society to protect it: Association de sauvegarde de l’oeuf mayonnaise. You could season store-bought mayonnaise for this recipe from Priscilla Martel, but at least just once, you should make your own. It’ll be delicious, and you’ll feel like a magician. The dish is beautiful served plain, and tasty dressed with anchovies, capers, snipped chives or other herbs (choose one or more). It’s good as a starter, with a pouf of dressed greens, or as part of a platter of small salads (hors d’oeuvres variées), a picnic on a tray.
Summer Squash Fritters With Garlic Dipping Sauce
David Venable, the most popular host on QVC, has a reputation for comfort food in its most cheesy, porky forms. But he is also a son of the South, and loves his summer vegetables. This recipe shows off his appreciation of both and is a delicious way to use up summer squash. It might seem daunting to peel 20 cloves of garlic, but you can make quick work of it by smashing the unpeeled cloves lightly with the side of a knife. The papery part will be easy to remove, and the cloves will still roast up mellow and soft. The resulting sauce is also excellent on sandwiches.
Garlic Aioli Potato Salad
Homemade garlic aioli gives this otherwise classic potato salad a pungent kick. If you don’t want to add the hard-cooked eggs, use another 1/2 pound of potatoes instead. This is best served at least an hour or so after making to allow the flavors to mellow. Or make it the day before and store it in the refrigerator; bring it to room temperature before serving. If you can find garlic chives, there’s no better place for them than here.
Shrimp-Stuffed Mirlitons
The mirliton is a pale green squash with an end puckered up like a toothless granny. They are native to Louisiana, but if you grew up eating from certain Latin American culinary canons, you might know them as chayote. In New Orleans, mirliton stuffed with shrimp is a dish both common and fancy. The chef David Guas, who grew up in Louisiana and now runs the Bayou Bakery in Washington, D.C., ate this version at his Granny Lilly’s holiday table in Amite, La. His recipe is a version of her original, but with a touch of heat from cayenne pepper as influenced by Justin Wilson, a relative who had a long-running cooking show on New Orleans public television that he punctuated with the tagline “I guaranteeeeee!” Use the freshest shrimp you can find. Something from the Gulf of Mexico would lend authenticity. And be careful scooping the flesh from the mirlitons. The skin is thin and can break easily.
Mango-Avocado Salad With Lime Vinaigrette
Inspired by Vietnamese green papaya salad, this salad stars ripe, juicy mangoes and dresses them in the classic punchy lime-fish sauce dressing. Tender torn greens, crunchy sweet snap peas and creamy avocado round out this dish with both crispy and creamy bites. The cooling salad is the perfect side to accompany grilled or roasted fish, chicken, or steak. If mangoes are unavailable, tomatoes or sweet stone fruit like peaches are tasty options.
Spinach and Pea Fritters
As a vegetable-forward weeknight meal, these spinach fritters have it all: sweet peas, gooey cheese and crispy bits. Made from thawed, frozen peas and spinach, the work is minimal. If you’d like to use fresh peas and spinach, you’ll need to quickly blanch and drain them first. Fresh mozzarella adds a pleasant creaminess, but goat cheese or feta would work, too. Serve these over quinoa or rice, or top with a poached or fried egg for brunch.
Spicy Kimchi Potato Salad
A spicy take on the usual pink potato salad recipe (which is made with Russian dressing instead of straight mayonnaise), this unusual mix also includes sriracha and kimchi to liven things up.
Warm Potato Salad with Goat Cheese
You can use Yukon golds, fingerlings or red bliss potatoes for this warm, creamy salad. The goat cheese melts into the dressing when you toss it with the hot potatoes.
Melon and Avocado Salad With Fennel and Chile
This sweet-savory, crunchy-creamy dish nods to California summers, when a drive to the market can often end with avocados and melons buckled in the back seat. The recipe is simple, and instantly impressive: It involves little more than scooping out the fresh fruit and topping it with a spicy-sweet pinch of sugar and a drizzle of dressing. Rubbing toasted fennel seeds, red-pepper flakes and lemon zest into sugar and salt helps their floral kick travel far. The salad’s balance depends on your melon and avocado, so rely on taste more than measurements here. Adjust the ingredients as needed, until the salad is rich, punchy and bright, bite after bite.
Tomato Fruit Salad
Because tomatoes are technically fruit, they work very well in this colorful and savory take on fruit salad. Try to find interesting grape varieties (like Concord, Himrod and Niagara), which have spicy skins and a more complex flavor than regular red and green seedless. Then go lightly on the vinegar and pepper — you want just enough to bring out the flavors of the fruits, but not enough to take over the bowl.
Good for Almost Everything Pie Dough
Sweet Potatoes With Cranberry Chutney
This is an easy and surprisingly delicious way to get a dramatic-looking sweet-potato dish on the table with little fuss. The heat of the jalapeños in the chutney, mixed with aromatic vegetables and the sweetness of the dried fruit, gives the cranberries depth. A dollop of sour cream goes on the halved sweet potato, followed by a generous spoonful of chutney. Make the chutney up to two weeks ahead and keep it in the refrigerator. It also freezes well. Assembly on Thanksgiving is an easy last-minute task.
Mushroom-Parmesan Tart
Cremini mushrooms and Parmesan star in this hearty tart, a comforting winter brunch or lunch when paired with a vibrant salad. Make the crust from scratch, and you’ll have two tart shells for the work of one — one for now, and another for later. Chances are you’ll want to make this tart again and again: It’s a relatively easy, make-ahead crowd-pleaser. But if you don’t have time (or energy) to make the dough, a store-bought pie crust will serve you well.
Edna Lewis's Corn Pudding
This buttery, fluffy dish comes from Edna Lewis, the African-American chef and cookbook author credited with preserving countless recipes from the old South. It serves as not only a seasonal bridge — a farewell to summer, with winter chill waiting in the wings — but also as a sweetly welcome blurring of the lines between a side dish and a dessert.
Roasted Butternut Squash Salad With Green Goddess Dressing
This colorful salad of sweet, soft roasted squash and crisp, bitter greens finished with a creamy, tangy green goddess dressing is an elegant mix of contrasting flavors and textures. The squash is good both warm and at room temperature, so feel free to roast it ahead of time. Some bitterness is nice against the sweet winter squash, but if you want to mellow radicchio’s bite a bit, you can soak the pieces in ice water for 10 to 30 minutes, then drain and dry before adding to the salad. Just taste before you soak; you’ll want a little bit of its bitterness. The dressing will keep for at least three days in the fridge. Serve it over other salads, or as a dip for cut-up vegetables and chips.