Lunch
2804 recipes found
Farfalle With Roasted Peppers
For this dish, inspired by Greek and Turkish ways with pasta and yogurt, I combined peppers from the market, peas from my freezer and herbs from my garden.
Risotto With Milk
This intensely creamy Italian rice dish, called riso al latte, falls somewhere between rice pudding and risotto. The rice is cooked in vanilla- and lemon-infused milk, but barely sweetened, making it more appropriate for brunch than dessert. Crunchy bread crumbs and flaky sea salt add texture, while the optional drizzle of sweetened cappuccino (or regular milky coffee) lends bittersweet complexity. If you like, you can serve this with a juicy salad made from halved cherry tomatoes mixed with berries and pomegranate seeds, and seasoned with a few drops of balsamic vinegar. Or increase the sugar and serve it for dessert.
Pissaladière
Sweet, caramelized onions, briny anchovies and olives make the up the topping for this traditional Provençal tart. This version calls for a yeasted dough, which makes the tart somewhat like a pizza. But puff pastry, which Julia Child preferred, is also traditional, and quite a bit richer. If you’d rather use that, substitute a 12- to 16-ounce package for the yeast dough, and bake the tart at 375 degrees until the bottom and sides are golden brown, about 20 to 25 minutes. Pissaladière makes great picnic fare, in addition to being a terrific appetizer or lunch dish. This recipe is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, a guide to definitive dishes every modern cook should master.
Pasta Niçoise
Pasta With Morels, Peas and Parmesan
Morels are expensive, but a few go a long way and there is nothing quite like them for flavor and texture -- chewy, meaty and that aroma, earthy and exotic. Even at $30 a pound, $7 or $8 seems well worth the price.
Stewed Green Beans and Tomatoes With Trahana
The stewed green beans with tomatoes are typical of many Greek “olive oil dishes,” or “ladera,” though my version has about a quarter of the olive oil used in a traditional dish. I have bulked it up by adding trahana to the mix, which turns it into a stew that is suitable as a main dish. It is delicious hot or at room temperature.
Pre-Summer Greek Salad With Shaved Broccoli and Peppers or Beets
Classic Greek salad is a summer dish in my house; impossible to make if tomatoes are not in season and wonderful. But other vegetables take to the same treatment – a simple dressing with a high ratio of acid (in this case a combination of lemon juice and vinegar with olive oil), feta cheese and lots of mint and parsley. I don’t normally use uncooked broccoli flowers. But in this case, I slice the florets paper-thin, allowing the flower buds to crumble off when I cut the crowns. Cut like this the broccoli yields to the dressing and maintains its brightness for a much longer time than cooked broccoli does. I’ve made this salad combining broccoli with sweet red pepper and combining it with roasted Chioggia beets (yellow beets also work; red ones, however, bleed into the broccoli). I like both versions equally.
Roasted Artichokes With Anchovy Mayonnaise
You may see artichokes in the supermarket year-round, but in the spring, they are at their peak, freshly harvested and full of flavor. This is an easy method for roasted artichokes. After trimming and par-cooking them, they are drizzled with olive oil and roasted until crisp without and tender within. Serve them as a first course, or alongside a meaty piece of fish, such as monkfish, swordfish or halibut. The zesty, lemony anchovy mayonnaise is a perfect foil for the artichokes’ sweetness, and goes well with fish, too. You can use any size artichoke for this recipe, but medium is best.
Omelets With Roasted Vegetables and Feta
If you have roasted vegetables on hand an omelet is a wonderful vehicle for them. Omelets are so quick to make, and so satisfying, whether you make them for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. You can cut up your roasted vegetables into slightly smaller pieces if you want a less chunky omelet.
Simple Trahana Soup With Lemon and Olive Oil
This is just about the simplest dish to make with trahana, yet I find it incredibly satisfying and refreshing. I like it both hot and cold; it is cooling on a hot summer day and comforting on a cool one (we were in the middle of a bad heat wave when I was testing this week’s recipes). The soup is adapted from a recipe in Diane Kochilas’s new cookbook: “Ikaria: Lessons on Food, Life, and Longevity From the Greek Island Where People Forget to Die.” My favorite herb to use with the soup is fresh dill. If you want to add more ingredients, simmer vegetables of your choice in the broth, or add blanched or steamed vegetables to the soup when you serve it. Broccoli would be great, as would peas, beans, or sugar snap peas.
Mushroom and Dried Porcini Soup
This has such an intense flavor for such a simple soup. With virtually no fat in the soup, it has a tonic quality, and not only makes a great starter or light supper, but a delicious and effective between meal pick-me-up.
Corn Empanadas
Back in 2013, David Tanis learned to make several versions of empanadas from his friend Fernando Trocca, an Argentine chef, including one filled with sweet corn. Here, Mr. Tanis uses potatoes, peppers and ham, in addition to corn, to fill the handmade dough. It’s not a quick project, but it yields dividends and the satisfaction of pulling dozens of the small pies out of the oven.
Roasted Cauliflower Gratin With Tomatoes and Goat Cheese
Roasting is one of my favorite ways to prepare cauliflower, and I have always loved preparations that pair the vegetable with coriander seeds. I use coriander seeds and cinnamon to season the tomato sauce that I toss with the roasted cauliflower and sautéed red onions, then add a couple of eggs beaten with goat cheese.
Endive Salad With Egg and Anchovy
For a cool-weather salad, pale green Belgian endive dressed with an assertive anchovy vinaigrette is a refreshing beginning to a meal — or a nice light lunch. For more color, try adding other endive relatives: the red-leafed variety, frisée, different types of radicchio or speckled Castelfranco chicory. All of these winter salad greens have sweetness and a pleasant hint of bitterness. Belgian endive is the mildest of the bunch. As for anchovies, look for good fat meaty ones. Rinse and blot, then coat with a little good extra-virgin olive oil.
Collard Greens Stuffed With Quinoa and Turkey
It takes some time, but I love filling collard greens. Bigger than grape leaves (so you don’t have to make as many), the large flat leaves are great stuffers. I used a combination of quinoa and leftover turkey for this slightly sweet Middle Eastern filling spiced with cinnamon and allspice; rice would work just as well.
Homemade Sour Bulgur Trahana From Ikaria
Trahana is a wheat product that is eaten throughout Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean. There are many versions, some made with milk, usually from goats or sheep that is called sweet trahana, some with a combination of milk and yogurt, called sour trahana, and even a lenten version made with vegetable pulp. The liquid is combined with wheat – bulgur, semolina, or a mix of semolina and flour – and made into a dry dough (if using flour) or simmered until it is a thick porridge. Then it is spread out on netting and dried in the sun. Once thoroughly dry it is broken up into granules that can range in size from bulgurlike morsels to small pellets. You can find imported Greek trahana in Greek markets. I found five different types in my local Greek market in Los Angeles and each one behaves a little bit differently when you cook it. It is easy to make yourself, as I found when I made this recipe from Diane Kochilas’s wonderful new cookbook “Ikaria: Lessons on Food, Life, and Longevity From the Greek Island Where People Forget to Die.” This is the trahana that I used for all of this week’s Recipes for Health. I am happy to have this new staple on hand in my pantry.
Grilled Pepper Omelet
Roasted peppers, chopped herbs and a little bit of Parmesan make for a quick omelet in the spirit of a pipérade. I often make the classic Basque pipérade, eggs scrambled with stewed peppers and tomatoes. This time, I kept it a little simpler and used my roasted peppers to fill an omelet. I added chopped, fresh herbs and a little bit of Parmesan to the mix. If your peppers are already roasted (I had plenty on hand as I’d been working with roasted peppers all week) this is a 2- to 5-minute dinner. As always, the better the eggs (farm-fresh, pastured), the better the omelet.
Spring Salad With Bagna Cauda Dressing
Bagna cauda is a traditional Italian sauce that prominently features anchovy and garlic, often used as a dip for raw vegetables. Here it dresses a fresh spring salad. Use the quantities given and suggested vegetables as a guide, choosing whatever crisp offerings are available. Serve with a crusty baguette or hearth-baked loaf.
Puréed Trahana and Vegetable Soup
Sweet and tart flavors marry in this thick, comforting soup made with leeks, carrots, onion and trahana. I like to blend the soup with an immersion blender, which results in a purée with a fair amount of texture. You can make a smoother, more elegant soup if you use a blender and then strain the purée. Trahana has a rustic flavor that goes well here. If you use semolina or flour trahana the mixture will be considerably thicker, so use less; half as much should be fine.
Holy Bean Soup
Brown Rice and Barley Salad with Sprouted Red Lentils and Green Beans
This hearty salad, dressed with a creamy, spicy dressing, can be made with a number of different grains. I’ve been making iterations of this hearty whole grain salad tossed with a creamy, curry-spiced dressing since my earliest days of vegetarian cooking. My choice of grains for this version was a function of what I found in my pantry and my refrigerator: -- enough brown rice and barley to combine for a salad but not enough for a more substantial dish. Farro or spelt would also work. The split red lentils, soaked just long enough to soften and begin to sprout, contribute color and texture along with their grassy flavor. Tossing the grains with lemon juice while they’re still warm intensifies the flavors in the salad.
Beef Empanadas
Filipinos take snacking seriously, so much so that we devote an entire meal to it: merienda, which may take place midmorning or midafternoon, if not both. Empanadas are a great treat for this in-between time, but also keep well at room temperature — the grace of food built for a warm climate — so you can graze all day. (My family used to buy these by the tray for parties, but it’s nice to make your own and store them in the freezer for later.) In these, a ground-beef filling is tucked inside sturdy but flaky dough, with raisins added early in the cooking to plump with the beef juices. There are variations on empanadas all over Latin America; ours rely on the potency of onion and garlic, and exploit it to the hilt.
Curried Lentil Soup With Ham
Spicy Calamari With Fregola
In Sardinia, rustic saucy fish stews are commonly served with fregola, simmered golden nuggets of toasted semolina, hearty and satisfying. A relative of couscous, fregola arrived by ship from nearby Tunisia, became popular and melded into the local cuisine long ago. The little round pellets are the size of a peppercorn, or a bit larger. When cooked, they have a pleasant, slightly chewy texture. Traditionally, fregola is used in vegetable soups as a way to add substance; prepared like a juicy risotto with the concentrated flavor of clams or other shellfish; or served as part of a room-temperature salad. Most Italian stores in the United States carry it, but you may substitute Israeli-style pearl couscous, which has a similar flavor.