Lunch
2801 recipes found

Mediterranean Cucumber and Yogurt Salad With Red or Black Quinoa
The idea of embellishing a yogurt soup or salad with quinoa comes from Deborah Madison, who uses black quinoa in a brilliant recipe for a soup in her book “Vegetable Literacy.” I used red quinoa to add texture, color and substance to this typical Mediterranean combination – finely diced cucumber, garlic, and thick plain yogurt. Use mint or dill, or a combination, and make sure to dice the cucumber very small.

Onion Tart
The chef André Soltner served this classic warm onion tart almost every day for 43 years at Lutèce, his world-famous restaurant in New York City. It was for a whole generation the pinnacle of elegant French cuisine in the United States, and yet the tart is straightforward and uncomplicated, rustic and refined all at once. Let the onions slowly caramelize — don’t hasten the cooking by jacking up the heat — and you will be rewarded with a haunting savory-sweet tart in the end that is still irresistible decades later, the very definition of an enduring classic.

Cabbage and Mushroom “Lasagna”

Chicken and Orzo With Sun-Dried Tomato and Basil Vinaigrette
A sun-dried tomato vinaigrette uses both the tomatoes and the aromatic oil in which they are stored for a deeply savory pasta meal. The vinaigrette serves double duty here as both a marinade for the tender chicken thigh morsels and a sauce for the orzo and feta. This dish tastes lovely warm, right off the heat, but it also makes for a wonderful cold lunch, like something you might find at an Italian American deli or salad bar.

Classic Coronation Chicken
To celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, a dish of cold poached chicken with a curry cream sauce was served at a banquet luncheon for 350 of the queen’s guests. That dish, originally called “Poulet Reine Elizabeth,” became known as coronation chicken, spurring a thousand variations in Britain and beyond. This one, from Tea & Sympathy in New York City, is closely based on the original recipe, and includes a mix of curry powder, red wine and tomato purée folded into a mayonnaise dressing. At the luncheon, the chicken was served alongside a rice salad studded with peas. But it’s also excellent piled on lettuce leaves or stuffed into sandwiches. For a meatless version, you can try these cauliflower salad sandwiches.

Lobster Stew

Bacon Cornbread With Cheddar and Scallions
This cornbread hits all the notes, but skews particularly salty and savory, thanks to sautéed scallions, extra-sharp Cheddar, and bacon, folded into the batter and crowning the top of the cornbread. You can use fancy, thick-cut bacon or flimsier thin-cut varieties. Each has its benefits: Thinner bacon slices form a light, crunchy layer on the crust, while thick-cut slices have more presence in the cornbread. This cornbread belongs at brunch, where it pairs well with eggs cooked in any style, sautéed vegetables and even breakfast sausages, but it would also be at home next to a bowl of chili. If preparing for a crowd, you can bake this off a day in advance and reheat it in the oven just before serving.

Galettes Complètes (Buckwheat Crepes)
If you can make pancakes for breakfast, you can certainly make crepes for dinner. These savory ones from Brittany — which use buckwheat flour and are filled with Gruyère cheese, ham and egg — are nutty, earthy and incredibly satisfying any time of day. Loosen the batter, if needed, using beer, water or hard cider; it all works equally well. Once you get the hang of the tilt and swirl, you can have your family fed in minutes, and unlike those nerve-shredded times when you brightly declare “It’s breakfast for dinner, kids!” — which children everywhere know is a sign that something is wrong for Mom — this is one instance where you can announce it, and mean it: Everything is actually alright. Galettes complètes are meant to be a meal.

Fungi
A staple on dinner tables in the Virgin Islands, this filling, earthy side dish goes well with fish or any stewed protein. In St. Thomas, you can find it accompanying tender stewed snapper or butter-braised conch, acting as a sponge for luscious sauces. Here, chef Julius Jackson, author of “My Modern Caribbean Kitchen” (Page Street Publishing, 2018) and native Virgin Islander, offers a simple, traditional version. This dish isn’t an exact science; some people like it so thick it stands up on its own, while others prefer it thinner, with runny lines of butter. Find which way works best for you by tasting and tweaking as needed. Chilled leftover fungi can be cut into squares and pan-fried in a bit of oil until golden, making a great base for scrambled or poached eggs with bacon on the side.

Lasagna With Pistou and Mushrooms
There will be a day when the weather suddenly cools and my basil plants and those at your farmers’ market stop thriving, but that day hasn’t come yet. So I’m making lots of pesto and pistou (pesto without the nuts), putting some of it in the freezer (I just blend the basil and olive oil together for the freezer and add the other ingredients when I thaw the mixture) and using the rest in all manner of pastas. This is the first time I’ve used it in a lasagna.

Stock-and-Cider-Brined Chicken Over Stuffing
This one-pan dinner is ugly — rustic, if we’re being kind — but good. Or as the Italians say, “brutta ma buona.” Truly, though, it’s everything you could ask for in a rich, comforting meal. As it cooks, the chicken, brined in stock and cider, drips its flavorful juices onto the bread. The bread absorbs every drop, turning into a chewy, savory nest cradling the tender, perfectly browned chicken. Each bit of stuffing offers a different surprise — sometimes the sweet-and-sour zing of a prune, other times the faint rumor of Thanksgiving whispered by celery and thyme. It’s as satisfying as you could ever hope, even if it isn’t particularly attractive.

Whole Pot-Roasted Cauliflower With Tomatoes and Anchovies
The English chef April Bloomfield is known for her love of meat, but her vegetable-centric cookbook “A Girl and Her Greens” is stuffed with the produce she discovered while cooking in Mediterranean-influenced kitchens like Chez Panisse and London’s River Cafe. Often, she simply treats a vegetable as if it were meat, like this whole head of cauliflower. Braising it in tomato and anchovies, as if making an Italian pot roast, produces a richly satisfying entree. Ms. Bloomfield is unabashedly fussy about every component of her dishes, and inspires us to be equally careful. She gives a $2 can of plum tomatoes the same treatment she’d give an $80 whole lobe of foie gras: Each one must be closely examined, its tough bits trimmed off, and any substandard specimens discarded.

Tian
The tian is both a vessel and the name of what’s cooked in it: summer vegetables, sliced quite thin, arranged in careful layers, drenched in quality olive oil and then cooked in a slow oven until each individual vegetable surrenders to the others, becoming one. The true and complete melding of earthy zucchini, sweet onion, waxy potato, juicy and acidic tomatoes is the great achievement of a well-made tian, and resting the finished dish after cooking is no small part of that success. By using a cast-iron pan and starting on the stovetop during the build, covering with a lid along the way, you speed up the cooking significantly. Season every layer and generously drizzle each with olive oil to bring out tremendous flavor and aroma. The Sungold tomatoes are beautiful and bright and quite acidic — perfect against the other flavors — but I find the skins unpleasantly leathery-papery when they are cooked, so simply peel them first. Dropping the tomatoes for 30 seconds into seasoned boiling water splits their skins readily and they slip off effortlessly. I would even say it’s kind of fun.

Rainbow Quinoa Salad
Dr. David Eisenberg of the Harvard School of Public Health demonstrated along with his daughter, Naomi, a whole- wheat couscous salad that is the inspiration for this one at the “Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives” medical education conference in Napa Valley this year. You can use a variety of dried fruits and nuts, as well as a mix of herbs. Chop the larger dried fruits small so that the pieces are uniform.

Stir-Fried Vegetarian Glass Noodles, Malaysian Hawker Style

Chopped Herb Salad With Farro
This dish is modeled on a Middle Eastern tabouli. Add just one cup of cooked farro or spelt to a generous mix of chopped parsley, mint, arugula and other herbs like basil or dill. Notice that I’m calling this dish a chopped herb salad with farro and not a farro salad with chopped herbs. It’s modeled on an authentic Middle Eastern tabouli, which should be all about the parsley, with just a small amount of bulgur. I add just one cup of cooked farro or spelt to a generous mix of chopped parsley, mint, arugula and other herbs like basil or dill. There are also chopped tomatoes in the mix, all of it tossed with lemon juice and olive oil.

Nashville-Style Hot Fried Chicken
This version of Nashville hot fried chicken, adapted from Peaches HotHouse in Brooklyn, will make your tongue sizzle and fill your eyes with tears from a combination of cayenne and ghost chile powders. (The latter is one of the hottest chiles in the world, reaching 1,000,000 on the Scoville heat scale.) Note that the recipe calls for both granulated and powdered onion and garlic. Try to use both. The powdered stuff is stronger in flavor while the granulated has a little more texture to it. (However if you can’t find both, either kind will work throughout the recipe.) The traditional way to serve this is on top of a piece or two of soft white bread, which helps mitigate the heat. A cold beer wouldn’t hurt, either.

Toast Au Roquefort

Whole Roasted Cauliflower With Romesco
In this recipe, a whole head of cauliflower is boiled and then roasted until gloriously browned. It is served with a rich romesco sauce, resulting in a dish that is meaty and filling. It could even command center stage, but it also makes a nice accompaniment.

Marinated Cauliflower and Carrots With Mint
This is an elaboration of one of my favorite carrot dishes. That dish couldn’t be simpler – steamed carrots tossed with sherry vinegar, olive oil, salt and fresh mint. It is good at room temperature or warm, as a starter or a side dish. I added steamed cauliflower to the mix but made no other changes to the formula. The cauliflower, which always loves a vinegar marinade, is a wonderful addition, very compatible with the carrots and pretty, too. The dish is great for a buffet as it only gets better as it sits. The dish is particularly beautiful if you use different colored carrots.

Easy Roast Chicken
A 3 1/2 pound bird should roast in 55 to 60 minutes, while a 4 1/2 pound bird requires 60 to 65 minutes. If using a basket or a V-rack, be sure to grease it so the chicken does not stick to it. If you don't have a basket or V-rack, set the bird on a regular rack and use balls of aluminum foil to keep the roasting chicken propped up on its side.

Risotto al Salto
The Italian kitchen is famous for superior ingredients, and for letting nothing go to waste. This recipe for risotto al salto, which uses leftover, day-old risotto, is a perfect example: You start with a creamy, well-made saffron risotto, then make a crispy delicious cake from it the next day. I’m not the first to notice that many people make more risotto than they need just so they can have extras for this golden perfection the next day.

Fish Chowder, Bermuda Style

Cauliflower, Potato and Quinoa Patties
Cauliflower is a great vegetable to use in a burger, because it breaks down nicely so that it can be mashed along with potatoes to form a burger that stays together. I have always loved seasoning this vegetable with Indian spices, which is what I do here, with Aleppo pepper thrown into the mix. Black quinoa contributes texture, color and protein. Sriracha sauce is the perfect “ketchup” for this burger.