Lunch
2804 recipes found

Mushrooms on Toast
Beloved by British and other Anglophone cooks, mushrooms on toast is a hearty savory dish that can be made quickly. It’s cheap and delicious if you use ordinary cultivated mushrooms, and suitable for any time of day: breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner or late snack. One pound of mushrooms is just right for two servings.

Todd Richards’s Grilled Peach Toast With Spicy Pimento Cheese
Pimento cheese is a Southern classic, but the combination of spicy, smoky pimento cheese — spiked with bacon and the adobo that comes in a can of chipotle chiles — and sweet, juicy peaches could only come from the mind of a chef. Todd Richards of Richards’ Southern Fried in Atlanta’s Krog Street Market and the author of “Soul: A Chef’s Culinary Evolution in 150 Recipes” (Oxmoor House, 2018) calls this his ideal summer breakfast, “along with a glass of champagne.” If you don’t want to use a grill, just toast the bread and use the peaches freshly sliced.

Turkish Pumpkin Soup
This is an intriguingly sweet winter squash soup, based on a recipe by Ghillie Basan from her wonderful book, “Classic Turkish Cooking.” The sweetness comes from the squash itself and the allspice and cinnamon, with the addition of only a teaspoon of honey or sugar. The sour and spicy yogurt and chile garnish make a great flavor contrast.

Farro Salad
Farro, an ancient grain, has long been a common ingredient in Italy, but it is now gaining in popularity in the United States. You can use farro to make a type of risotto or in soups, but dressed with a lemony vinaigrette, it makes a lovely grain salad, enhanced by a variety of green vegetables.

Burned Toast Soup
The cookbook author Jennifer McLagan developed this recipe for a simple toast soup, a rustic dish that stretches leftover bread into a comforting meal, after tasting an upscale version of it at a restaurant in Paris. She includes it in her 2014 cookbook, "Bitter: A Taste of the World's Most Dangerous Flavor." The recipe requires thorough and severe toasting: The bread should turn black along its edges and deep brown all over. Use thickly sliced bread, so it's not carbonized all the way through, and the ratio of burned bread to deeply toasted bread will work in your favor. Once the bread soaks up the bacon-infused stock and is blitzed with milk and mustard, all of its intense, smoky flavor will mellow.

Two Tofu Sandwiches
I was thrilled to find excellent packaged kimchi at my Trader Joe’s last week. I used it as part of the “vegetable build” in one of two tofu sandwiches. Kimchi – the one I used was mainly cabbage -- is a fermented food that, like yogurt, supplies your digestive system with probiotics. To have on hand: baked seasoned tofu.

Pecan-Crusted Chicken Cutlet Triple Decker

Roasted Tomato, Mozzarella and Pesto Calzones
The secret to crispy calzones: Bake them in a very hot oven, and use drier ingredients in the filling to prevent the dough from becoming soggy. Slow-roasting the tomatoes for the filling concentrates their flavor and pulls out their juices, while pesto adds punch without contributing too much moisture. Fresh mozzarella is just right for many things, but it’s too wet for a calzone, so use drier whole-milk mozzarella instead. If you prefer to use store-bought pizza dough, you’ll need three (8-ounce) balls for this recipe.

Crispy Grains and Halloumi With Smashed Cucumbers
This vegetarian sheet-pan meal is inspired by crispy rice dishes like tahdig, fried rice and pegao, but, instead of white rice, this recipe calls for whole grains like brown rice, wheat berries or farro. For best results, spread the grains and chickpeas on a sheet pan and pat lightly with a paper towel to remove moisture before cooking — the drier they are, the more they’ll crisp up. Then top everything with smashed cucumbers that have been combined with citrus and fresh herbs. As the whole grains cook, the cucumbers marinate, releasing sweet, grassy juices that are then used as a dressing. (You can also use the liquid on a simple panzanella or a baby-green salad.)

Sun-Dried Tomato and Goat Cheese Omelet
Sometimes the filling for my omelet is determined by something I find in my pantry. I don’t recall what led me to buy the jar of sun-dried tomatoes that went into this one, but they were very much at home in an omelet.

Farro Niçoise
There is one mistake many of us make, cooking grain salads: we play down everything but the grains. A pile of cold brown rice with a few chopped vegetables and some soy sauce or a mound of wheat berries with vinaigrette is about as one-dimensional as it gets. This niçoise salad turns that problem on its head, with tuna used in a powerful vinaigrette tossed with farro. Farro is interesting because it’s relatively fast-cooking for a whole grain, but any hearty grain could take its place: one of the many “brown” rices, spelt, kamut, wheat. Whichever you use, the results are nutty and sublime.

Chirashi (Scattered) Sushi

Vegetable Fried Rice
Amanda Cohen, the chef at Dirt Candy in Manhattan, loves how easy it is to make fried rice. “If you’re a chef, the idea of cooking at home on your one night off is like some kind of terrible nightmare,” she said. “Takeout becomes your best friend. but before long half your fridge is taken up by those little white cartons of rice.” At home, she digs into those cartons to make fast batches of vegetable fried rice, and she combats the threat of blandness by stocking her freezer in advance with her Secret-Weapon Stir-Fry Sauce: small, dark green ice blocks of puréed garlic, ginger, cilantro, parsley and other ingredients, which she freezes in ice-cube trays (they can be slipped directly into the hot pan). She uses brussels sprouts, fennel, chard and mushrooms, but this dish is the definition of flexibility. “As long as you maintain the proportions, this recipe can take any vegetable you throw at it,” she said. “Think of it as a chance to clean out your crisper drawer.”

Miso-Glazed Sea Bass
Fish baked in miso is quintessentially Japanese, but I first learned about it years ago from the very American James Beard. Miso marries well with oily fish like salmon, mackerel or black cod, but mild firm-fleshed fish like sea bass or halibut also make fine candidates. Simply coat fish fillets or steaks with a mixture of miso, sake, mirin and a little ginger. An egg yolk may be added to help burnish and glaze the fish under the broiler. Serve with a pile of wilted greens dabbed with sesame oil.

Smoked Mozzarella And Sun-Dried Tomato Pizza

Roasted Cauliflower, Raisins and Anchovy Vinaigrette
Roasting toughens cauliflower and dries it out a bit. With many foods, this description may not sound that appealing, but because cauliflower is often mushy and watery, roasting is beneficial. Here, a (rather strong) vinaigrette is tossed with the cauliflower immediately after roasting, along with the raisins, whose sweetness counters the anchovies beautifully.

Pickled Mushroom Salad
This recipe for roasted mushrooms dressed with sherry vinegar and spices is an adaptation of Patch Troffer’s delicious pickled mushrooms at Marlow & Sons, where it’s served simply as it is, with a drizzle of chile oil. Mixed with some sliced vegetables and roughly picked herbs, it makes for an excellent snack with a glass of wine, or a fall salad. Or serve it with a spoonful of something creamy, like crème fraîche or mascarpone, and pile everything up on thickly cut toasts.

Eggplant Sandwiches With Fontina Cheese And Sun-Dried Tomatoes

Cheesy Cabbage Tteokbokki
A dish of royalty, tteokbokki consists of chewy Korean rice cakes (tteok) that are stir-fried (bokki) and slicked in a savory-sweet sauce. Sometimes the sauce is soy-sauce-based, as the kings of the Joseon dynasty enjoyed in the royal court dish gungjung tteokbokki. But more commonly today, as it is here, the sauce is gloriously red, spicy and gochujang-based. Traditional versions might include fish cakes and whole hard-boiled eggs, but this one leans into a base of butter-fried shallots and a layer of melted cheese covered in a crunchy blanket of raw cabbage. A parade of halved, molten-centered soft-boiled eggs bedecks the top.

Brie Sandwiches On Croissants

Chicken And Sun-Dried Tomato Sandwiches

Farro Broccoli Bowl With Lemony Tahini
A hearty vegetarian dinner-in-a-bowl, farro is dressed in a lemony tahini sauce spiked with garlic, and topped with charred broccoli florets, thin slices of turnip or radish, and a soft-yolked egg. To streamline the cooking process here, the eggs are simmered in the same pot as the farro. But if you want to substitute leftover grains for the farro (brown or white rice, for example), cook the egg separately using the same timing. Or leave off the egg altogether for a vegan variation. The flavors here are mellow enough for kids, but a squirt of chile sauce or a sliced green chile garnish adds a smack of grown-up heat.

Salmon, Arugula And Avocado Maki

Tomato Pie With Pimento Cheese Topping
Tomato pie is just the kind of supper a Southern cook might serve in the summer: savory and rich, but vibrant with super-fresh vegetables and herbs. Virginia Willis, a Georgia native and food writer, had the inspired idea to add a topping of pimento cheese, another Southern classic. There are multiple steps here because of the scratch-made crust, but everything can be baked in the cooler parts of the day, and the pie can be served warm or at room temperature.