Lunch
2801 recipes found
Hasselback Potatoes With Garlic-Paprika Oil
There may never be a better book title than “Aristocrat in Burlap,” a dramatic biography of the Idaho potato, from the first seedlings cultivated by Presbyterian missionaries in the 1840s (with considerable help from Native Americans) to the brown-skinned Burbanks that built today’s $2.7 billion industry. The large size of Idaho potatoes — often 3 to 4 pounds each in the 19th century, nourished by volcanic soil and Snake River water — is the source of the mystique. The Hasselback potato, named for the hotel in Stockholm where the recipe was invented in the 1950s, shows off the sheer mass of the Idaho potato like nothing else. In the original, the potato is wrapped in bacon, but you can get good smoky flavor and a gorgeous ruddy color by using smoked paprika.
Cauliflower and Tomato Frittata With Feta
Cauliflower, tomatoes and feta are always a good combination. This being a winter frittata, I used canned tomatoes for the sauce, but in summer the same dish can be made with fresh tomatoes. Make sure to cook the sauce down until it is quite pasty. If it is too watery it will dilute the eggs and the texture of the frittata will be a bit watery. Even better, make the tomato sauce a day ahead and keep uncovered in the refrigerator.
Sesame-Miso Chicken Salad
There’s always room for another chicken salad recipe, especially if the assembly is quick. This one calls for a whole cooked chicken, which you can roast or boil gently several hours ahead or up to 2 days in advance. (Some may choose to buy a precooked rotisserie chicken, but it can sometimes be hard to find one that is seasoned or cooked properly. If you can find a good one, go for it.) The creamy miso dressing can also be used to dress a green salad, or to replace mayonnaise on a sandwich. It also makes a great dip for vegetables.
Chicken Wings With Guajillo Anchovy Sauce
At Ducks Eatery in the East Village, the chef, Will Horowitz, believes in the bar snack as a maximum-detonation flavor bomb. And he’ll go to great lengths to achieve that: Many of the dishes at Ducks, including the restaurant's wings, shown here, depend on labor-intensive rounds of fermenting and smoking. For our version of the recipe, though, we asked him to reel in the effort without cutting back on the flavor. Think of the result (which involves anchovy fillets, Thai fish sauce, guajillo chiles, ancho chiles and ground chamomile) as a stealth way to sneak ambitious gastronomy into your next Super Bowl party.
Salmon Rillettes
A light but rich tasting spread made with fresh and smoked salmon. This is my adaptation of David Lebovitz’s adaptation of Susan Loomis’s salmon rillettes, a recipe that I have been wanting to make for years. A more buttery version is in Susan Loomis’s wonderful book “Cooking at Home on Rue Tatin,” and on David Lebovitz’s eponymous website. David uses a mixture of steamed fresh salmon and smoked salmon, and I have followed suit, changing the proportions slightly. I used much less butter – 1 tablespoon, and a tablespoon each of olive oil and crème fraîche, as well as some Greek yogurt, and I still came up with a mixture that I can call rillettes. You can serve the spread with sliced bread or crackers, spoon onto endive leaves, cucumber rounds or squares of red and green pepper, or use as a filling for miniature bell peppers. You can also substitute these salmon rillettes for the smoked trout rillettes in the recipe for “Lentils With Smoked Trout Rillettes” from earlier this week. As always, use a fork, not a food processor, to make this.
Black Grape, Blue Cheese and Thyme Flatbread
Black grapes, such as Concords, come into season in the fall. The combination of grapes, sweet spices and blue cheese is an unusual one, yet utterly delicious -- especially for the kind of person who loves ending a meal on a sweet and cheesy note. I serve this for brunch, or before dinner with drinks. For even more flavor and substance, add a scattering of arugula and prosciutto on top.
BLT Tacos
Without the bread muffling the crunch of bacon and crisp lettuce, BLT tacos are a lot more texturally exciting than the usual sandwich. Here, hot sauce-spiked mayonnaise adds spice; avocado adds creaminess; and chopping the tomatoes into a salsa with jalapeño, lime juice and cilantro makes everything juicy and bright. You can serve these for brunch, lunch or a light, fast dinner.
Roasted Tomatillo-Poblano-Avocado Salsa
One of my favorite new cookbooks of this season is “A Mouthful of Stars” (Andrews McMeel), by Kim Sunée. The book is a memoir, travelogue and cookbook all rolled into one, written by an author who earlier published another compelling memoir with recipes, “Trail of Crumbs.” Kim is a poetic world traveler who loves many cuisines. She is a big fan of taco trucks and loves salsa, the spicier the better. This salsa is based on her recipe for roasted tomatillo-poblano salsa. I love its balance of char, heat, acid and creamy. I’m a moderate when it comes to heat, but you can make this hotter by adding more chiles.
Venetian Cauliflower
Give commonplace cauliflower an upgrade and it becomes holiday fare. Take a classic Venetian approach by using a mixture of sweet spices. Caramelized onions, saffron and cinnamon build the fragrant foundation, along with fennel and coriander seeds. Currants, golden raisins and pine nuts add complexity.
Tuna, Cauliflower and White Bean Salad
Cauliflower is very happy in a pungent marinade, so I added it to one of my favorite stand-bys, tuna and bean salad. I liked this salad even more with the cauliflower added, as the tuna flavor infuses the cauliflower along with the vinegar and olive oil. You can use canned white beans, or cook up some delicious giant white beans and some of their broth in the dressing. The salad tastes even better if it has a few hours or a day to sit, and it keeps well.
St. Anselm’s Iceberg Wedge Salad
This wedge salad, adorned with blue cheese and warm bacon vinaigrette, is served at the restaurant St. Anselm in Brooklyn. The revelatory vinaigrette is actually a roux made with bacon fat, then thinned with cider vinegar and water, a hit of sugar and another of Dijon mustard. It is superb, and it would not be out of place drizzled over grilled asparagus, accompanied by chopped hard-boiled eggs.
Maple-Glazed Fresh Ham With Hard Cider Sauce
Roasted Mushroom Base
At this year’s Worlds of Health Flavors conference in Napa, Calif., Pam Smith, a culinary nutritionist, presented delicious recipes by the chef Clifford Pleau featuring a finely chopped roasted mushroom mix (chefs refer to it as simply “The Mix”), that she combined with beef for a delicious burger with half the meat, and with tuna for a wonderful tuna burger. Inspired, I made up a big batch of my own version of the mushroom base when I got home and had a lot of fun using it all week in adaptations of classic meat or fish dishes with the animal protein cut by half or more and replaced with the mushroom base. I recommend using pre-sliced mushrooms for this – then the mix goes very quickly. It is very easy to make and keeps well for several days in the refrigerator.
Green and White Pizza
Topping a freshly cooked pizza with a freshly dressed salad of baby greens is a marvelous weeknight meal even if you order the pizza from down the street. But making your own, as The Times learned from the pizza mavens at Roberta’s in Brooklyn, from whom we acquired this recipe, delivers even greater pleasures. Any young greens may be substituted for the arugula.
Cauliflower and Red Onion Tacos
Vegetables bathed in vinegar are typical condiments in Mexico, but you can bring them to the center of the plate as a filling for a taco. If you want spice, add the chipotle, or garnish with some salsa. If salt is an issue, use ranchero rather than cotija cheese.
Warm Lentil Salad With Goat Cheese
Even people who swear they don’t abide beans find pleasure in the distinctive, profound flavor of lentils. They also cook quickly, and you want them on the al dente side for this salad. That means they’ll be ready in 25 minutes, still a long enough simmering time to yield a savory broth. Goat cheese and lentils make a particularly good pairing; the little earthy-sweet legumes love a salty-umami complement (that’s why you so often see them paired with sausage and other cured pork products), and goat cheese fits the bill. Here the combination is especially cozy, as the cheese melts into the warm lentils, bathing them in a creamy dressing. Lentils and vinegar also marry well. The key here is to add the dressing while the lentils are still warm, even if you don’t plan on serving the salad warm. I spoon the mixture onto a bed of wild arugula, though regular will do if you can’t find the sharper tasting, wispy wild variety.
Chopped Salad With Seasoned Tofu Strips
I like to serve baked seasoned tofu strips warm on top of the salad. They are delicious cold, too; it is worth making up a separate batch for the refrigerator. If you have an assortment of leftover vegetables, throw them in here!
Seared Scallops With Hot Sauce Beurre Blanc
This dish mixes a lot of things I love, including butter and the taste of New Orleans's Crystal hot sauce. The scallops need to be dry, a term that refers to how they are processed. It's best to sear with a very hot, heavy nonstick pan, though you can sear a scallop in stainless or cast iron. Patience and a smoking hot pan are key. Really get a good sear on the scallop before you flip it. The salsa provides a way to use the feathery tops of a fennel bulb, but tarragon or other herbs can be substituted.
Lemony Roasted Chicken Wings
These meaty out-of-the-ordinary roasted wings are infused with lots of lemon, garlic and rosemary, then roasted on a bed of fingerling potatoes. Use a large roasting pan that's at least 3 inches deep, or a big earthenware gratin dish, or a couple of Pyrex lasagna pans side by side. The lemony chicken and potatoes are delicious hot and crisp, but just as good at cool room temperature.
Maine Coast Lobster Rolls
Here is the simplest of recipes, brought to The Times in 2001 by Jason Epstein in the low, dispiriting weeks that followed the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He was inspired, he wrote, by the food writer M.F.K. Fisher’s account of a disastrous love affair, and quoted her in his article about cooking for friends at that time: “We returned to the life that had been so real, like fog or smoke, caught in the current of air. We were two ghosts [but] very live ghosts, and drank and ate and saw and felt and made love better than ever before, with an intensity that seemed to detach us utterly from life.” Thus, of course, lobster rolls.
Schmaltz and Gribenes
Schmaltz is rendered poultry fat, in this case made from chicken, while gribenes are its crispy, crackling-like byproduct that comes from bits of chicken skin. The key to this recipe is to go low and slow: You want the fat to cook gently and thoroughly so it renders completely without burning. Some would argue that the onion is mandatory and not optional, but if you plan to use the schmaltz for very delicate recipes, or sweet recipes (chilled schmaltz works wonderfully as the fat in pastry dough), feel free to leave it out. Your schmaltz won’t have as deep a flavor, but it will be more versatile. Schmaltz will last for at least a week in the refrigerator and up to six months in the freezer. If your butcher won’t sell it to you, the best way to obtain chicken skin and fat is to collect trimmings in the freezer every time you buy a whole bird. Or you can strip the skin and fat from chicken thighs and save the skinless meat to use in other recipes.
Avocado and Roasted Tomatillo Salsa
I have been making tomatillo and avocado salsa for years, but I usually simmer the tomatillos rather than roasting them. Roasting the tomatillos, chiles and garlic – toasting really, as I use a skillet for this, on top of the flame – produces a salsa with a delicious charred flavor. I learned something recently from the chef Iliana de la Vega, who demonstrated the recipe at the “Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives” conference in Napa Valley in March: she says, in no uncertain terms, that you should not add water to tomatillo salsas. Without the water, this is a more intense salsa with pleasing density.You can use it as a sauce to serve with chicken or fish, or as a dip with chips or other vegetables.
Brined Pork Chops With Fennel
Pork and fennel — both fennel seed and the bulb-shaped vegetable — are often companions, and the combination of flavors is quite delicious. For best results, let the chops soak for at least a few hours, preferably overnight, in a quickly made brine.
Sosis Bandari (Spicy Sausages and Onion)
Sosis bandari means “port sausage” and refers to the ports in the south of Iran, home of this delicious street food. The classic preparation combines fragrant sausages and onion cooked in a rich tomato sauce with a couple of key spices, including some type of heat. You can use any dried or fresh chile that you have on hand. This recipe calls for beef hot dogs, or franks, which are a suitable substitute for the fragrant sosis, the sausages traditionally used in this sandwich. Other versions, like this one, include creamy potatoes and green bell pepper to add bulk and to flavor the spicy and savory sausages. Serve sosis bandari as a sandwich filling on a French bun or similar type of sandwich bread, or eat it straight from the pan with bread on the side for scooping. Either way, you’ll want plenty of napkins and something cold to wash it all down.