Main Course
8665 recipes found
Braised Eggplant, Pork and Mushrooms
The honest, straightforward cuisine of the Hakkas, a nomadic people dispersed all over China, may be thought of as a country cousin of Cantonese. Dishes from the Hakka diaspora may not have the distinction or impact of those from Sichuan, but because they’re interpreted broadly (note the addition of ketchup in many versions of pork and pineapple in the United States), they’re fun, and they’re easy to cook. This simple recipe for braised eggplant with pork and mushrooms, adapted from "The Hakka Cookbook: Chinese Soul Food From Around the World" by the food writer Linda Lau Anusasananan, is one such dish. Be sure to use small Asian or globe eggplants as they're more likely to keep their color and shape, and if you like more sauce, double it up.
Pasta With Eggplant and Zucchini
This timeless summer pasta dish was brought to The Times in 1991 by Pierre Franey in one of his 60-Minute Gourmet columns. Like so many of his dishes, it is at once elegant and easy, and no trouble to put together on a weeknight. Sauté the sliced eggplant and zucchini until golden while you make a quick sauce of canned crushed tomatoes, olive oil, garlic and herbs in another pot. Throw everything together, and simmer for about 15 minutes. Toss with cooked pasta and a shower of Parmesan. Dig in.
Eggplant Parmesan Pasta
The unassuming eggplant is the star of this comforting weeknight pasta that manages to capture the flavors of traditional eggplant Parmigiana without the fuss of frying, layering and baking. Cubed eggplant is browned with onion and garlic until golden, then simmered in a quick pantry-friendly tomato sauce until meltingly tender. Mezze rigatoni, fusilli and shells all do great jobs of capturing the thick sauce. The pasta is finished with slivers of fresh mozzarella that soften and offer cool, creamy bites, and a final sprinkling of a Parmesan bread-crumb topping offers familiar moments of crunch to contrast the creamy sauce.
Sweet and Sour Eggplant With Garlic Chips
This vibrant eggplant dish relies heavily on simple pantry staples, but gets its complex flavor from the clever use of garlic: First, you make garlic chips, then you fry eggplant in the remaining garlic-infused oil. Since garlic chips can burn easily, the key here is to combine the garlic and oil in an unheated pan for even cooking. As the oil heats up, the garlic will sizzle rapidly as the moisture cooks off. When it slows down, the garlic slices should be crisp. Be sure to remove the chips just as they begin to turn golden, as they will continue to cook after being removed from the oil. The rest is easy: Sauté the eggplant, create a quick soy sauce glaze, sprinkle with herbs and garlic chips, and serve.
Cheesy Eggplant and Rigatoni Bake
Put on your cozy pants and get comfortable with a giant bowl of this cheesy, eggplant-studded pasta. Don’t be shy about adding plenty of reserved pasta cooking water to the sauce; it's the magical ingredient that creates a silky sauce and keeps the pasta moist while baking. A little grated ricotta salata to finish adds a slight tangy bite that rounds everything out — but, truthfully, more Parmesan or any firm, salted cheese will do.
Spiced Eggplant and Tomatoes With Runny Eggs
A little like an eggplant version of shakshuka, this velvety skillet meal features sautéed eggplant and tomatoes seasoned with garlic, spices and lemon zest. It’s topped with runny eggs and a crunchy garnish of toasted nuts. The yogurt and hot sauce simultaneously heat things up and cool things down, and really add a lot to this hearty, meltingly soft dish. Serve it for brunch or dinner, with a crisp green salad and some flatbread on the side.
Red Curry Mussels and Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Moules-frites, a hearty bowl of mussels served with fries on the side, is very popular in Belgium and France. This version is seasoned with Thai spices and paired with sweet potatoes — not traditional at all, but totally satisfying. The recipe calls for commercially made red curry paste, which makes this dish quick to prepare. It shouldn't be hard to find at Asian grocers and online, but do try to obtain makrut lime leaves, which impart a lovely floral note.
Swordfish With Caramelized Eggplant and Capers
Soft, caramelized eggplant and chunks of meaty swordfish vie for your attention in this complexly flavored main course. The eggplant, first broiled, then simmered with wine, diced fresh tomatoes, olives and capers, collapses into a silky caponata-like sauce. The swordfish, enriched with butter and spiked with garlic and herbs, becomes meltingly tender. If you’d rather not use swordfish, you can substitute fresh tuna or even chunks of boneless, skinless chicken breast. Serve it with rice, polenta or crusty bread to sop up every last, tender morsel.
Pasta Alla Norma Sorta
Say “ciao” to your new pasta alla Norma. This updated version of the Sicilian classic includes prosciutto, which is fried until golden. Its rendered fat is used to start the dish and provide a rich, nuanced flavor, and the cooked bits are used to finish it for a salty crunch. To save on time, the eggplant roasts while a quick sauce of cherry and canned tomatoes, shallots, garlic and chile comes together on the stovetop. Just before serving, the eggplant, pasta and mozzarella (in place of the traditional ricotta salata) are tossed together until melty and delicious. Some rules are worth breaking.
Eggplant, Lamb and Yogurt Casserole
This hearty dish is inspired by moussaka, but simpler to prepare. Everything is baked in one roasting pan, with the different elements added in stages. Made with yogurt, cheese and egg, the topping cuts wonderfully through the richness of the eggplant and lamb, even though it lacks the body of béchamel. If you can get them, sweet and properly ripened tomatoes would be better than the canned ones. This is best served with a piece of pita or a slice of white bread to scoop it all up.
Eggplant Focaccia With Ricotta and Olives
A generous amount of olive oil in the dough gives this flatbread its especially crisp edges, and a soft, bready crumb. The topping, a mix of thinly sliced eggplant slathered with garlic-imbued olive oil and minced olives, is silky, rich and very flavorful — even without the optional (but excellent) anchovies. Just as good devoured warm from the oven and as it is at room temperature, this makes perfect picnic fare. Or serve it with a leafy salad for a light but satisfying dinner.
Donald Link's Eggplant Casserole
Donald Link is a New Orleans restaurateur with a passion for the Cajun food of his youth and a restaurant, Cochon, devoted to its delicious execution. His eggplant casserole is warmed with the spicy North African sausage known as merguez. But it works extremely well with lamb sausage, too, or with fresh chorizo.
Eggplant and Bean Chili
This rich vegetarian chili is made with meaty eggplant, red kidney beans (which create a hearty texture) and lentils (which create creaminess). Caramelized eggplant and sweet carrots simmer in a garlic-infused tomato sauce with classic chili spices until the eggplant breaks down into a saucy, savory ragù. The kidney beans retain some of their bite to balance the silky eggplant. Serve the chili with a toppings bar for a festive spread. Leftovers transform into a terrific meal with pasta the next day, reheated and tossed with spaghetti and grated Parmesan.
Summer Vegetable Skewers
Of all the possible vegetables to grill on skewers, zucchini and eggplant are some of the best, turning velvety soft and richly flavored as they sear over the flames. In this recipe, they’re quickly marinated in oregano, garlic and olive oil while the grill heats, then brightened with plenty of fresh lemon juice just before serving. Salting them for 10 or so minutes before grilling helps season them through and through, but you can skip that step if you’re short on time. To get vegetarian recipes like this one delivered to your inbox, sign up for The Veggie newsletter.
Crunchy Eggplant Parmesan
In most eggplant Parmesan recipes, crusty slices of fried eggplant go into a casserole with sauce and cheese -- where they quickly turn to sludge. This recipe holds on to the crunch by transforming each whole eggplant into a crisp cutlet. You can make one eggplant per person to serve this as an appetizer, or add a bed of pasta to make it more substantial. There's no Parmesan cheese in this recipe, but that's not a mistake: in Italian the phrase "alla Parmigiana" refers to a style of dish. It doesn't refer to Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
Shortcut Moussaka
Like a moussaka meets shepherd's pie, this cheater's version of the Greek spiced lamb casserole was born, Melissa Clark wrote, "out of a combination of hunger, ingenuity and a lack of time." Instead of a fussy béchamel, it is made with a creamy layer of mashed potatoes laced with kefalotiri or Parmesan cheese, and instead of frying the eggplant, it is cut into cubes and roasted. It isn't exactly a quick recipe, but it's far easier than the classic dish and equally satisfying.
Eggplant and Squash Alla Parmigiana
This parmigiana is well suited to red wine and the brisk weather of late September, when eggplant, zucchini and summer squash are still in the farmers' market. The dish can be prepared in advance and reheated.
Thieboudienne
Thieboudienne holds a special place within the cuisines of West Africa. This elegant one-pot rice masterpiece is often referred to as the national dish of Senegal, yet its presence and popularity extend beyond any national borders. Rof, an herb-heavy marinade, perfumes and seasons fish steaks; nokoss — a blend of onions, bell peppers, chiles and fresh tomatoes — thickens a rich tomato broth. The end result is one pot of tender vegetables and fish layered over fluffed broken rice. Your choice of vegetables can be flexible; cabbage, okra and cassava are traditional, but squash, pumpkin, cauliflower or eggplants will all make adequate substitutes. Use what’s in season and freshest. Serve this warm, family style from a large platter, garnished with xońe or xoñe, those bits of crunchy rice grains that, by proximity to the heat, stick to the bottom of the pot.
Haluski (Buttery Cabbage and Noodles)
If you ask 100 people about haluski, there will be many different answers — and some might know it by another name. Simple to prepare, economical and more than the sum of its parts, haluski typically refers to a Central and Eastern European dish of sweet, buttery cabbage and onions tossed with dumplings or noodles. In the United States, haluski is often made with store-bought egg noodles, which are more convenient but no less lovable than homemade. The strands of caramelized cabbage become happily tangled in the noodle’s twirls. This version includes a final step of tossing the cooked cabbage and pasta with some pasta water and a final pat of butter, so each bite is as comforting as can be.
Eggplant Caponata Pasta With Ricotta and Basil
This weeknight pasta is inspired by traditional caponata, a tangy, salty-sweet Italian dish made with sautéed eggplant, tomatoes, caramelized onions, capers, anchovies, olives and vinegar. Though caponata is often served as a side, salad or relish, this eggplant sauté forms the foundation of a hearty vegetarian pasta. For the best results, taste and season your eggplant mixture with salt and pepper as you cook little by little. It should taste quite salty and tangy on its own, but will mellow when tossed with pasta, pasta water and creamy ricotta.
Sumac-Scented Eggplant and Chickpeas
The cookbook author Cathy Barrow always finds creative ways to make use of ingredients. She created this recipe as a savory pie filling for her book “Pie Squared: Irresistibly Easy Sweet & Savory Slab Pies,” but it also makes a good vegetarian supper when served over rice, and a nice side dish too. (Make it vegan by omitting the yogurt to serve.) Pomegranate molasses can be found in Middle Eastern markets and health-food stores and adds bright, tangy sweetness to this hearty dish.
Charred Cabbage and Lentil Soup
To make a soup that is different and perhaps more interesting than the last, play with how your usual soup ingredients are put to work. Instead of layering ingredients in the pot, build the foundational flavor in the oven. Here, cabbage is roasted until mostly charred and chip-like, while lentils, cubed carrots and onions simmer on the stove. When the smoky cabbage, sweet vegetables and earthy lentils meet in the bowl, they offer a range of textures you’d never achieve if everything boiled away together. (And once you roast cabbage, it’ll be hard to think of it as drab again.) As with most soups, this one’s adaptable: Roast sausage with the cabbage, use cauliflower instead of cabbage, or finish with lemon and so on.
Spiced Seared Eggplant With Pearl Couscous
This is a great weeknight one-dish dinner, and vegetarian (or vegan if you like) to boot. It is from the cook Adeena Sussman, who divides her time between New York and Tel Aviv, where pearl (or Israeli) couscous is called “p’titim,” meaning flakes.
Braised Short Ribs With Peanuts and Anchovies
This is an adaptation of the tangy, rich Filipino meat stew kare-kare, which itself is adapted from the Indian-influenced massaman curries of Southeast Asia. The Indian American chef Floyd Cardoz brought it full circle when he recreated it for American home cooks in his 2016 book “Floyd Cardoz: Flavorwalla” (Artisan). It’s an excellent illustration of how a great stew can fuse flavors that might seem incompatible, like peanuts, cabbage and anchovies.