Main Course
8665 recipes found
Sautéed Salmon With Leeks and Tomatoes
Here is a fresh and simple way to prepare salmon that is ready in about 20 minutes. Most of that time will be spent preparing the vegetables. You do have to blanch, core and chop the tomatoes, but that is quick work. (We won't tell if you use the canned, diced sort instead. Just drain them first.) Once that's done, sauté the fish and set aside. Throw tomatoes, leeks, lemon juice and freshly ground pepper into the pan and sauté for a quick minute. Spoon over the fish and serve.
Salt-and-Pepper Roast Turkey Breast
A bone-in turkey breast is significantly easier to cook than a whole bird, it takes a fraction of the time, and it still feeds a group comfortably. To ensure succulence, you could apply a dry brine the night before, but when you’re cooking just a breast, the greatest insurance against dryness is pulling it out of the oven the moment it’s done, and no later. (For that, rely on an electric instant-read meat thermometer; it’s the only way to get a truly accurate read on the internal temperature of your meat.) I like to roast turkey the way I roast chicken: unbrined but slathered in butter, showered with salt and pepper and popped into a moderately hot oven to get crispy skin. Once the slices are fanned out on a platter tumbled with lemon wedges, it looks like a veritable feast.
Roasted Salmon With Miso Rice and Ginger-Scallion Vinaigrette
This simple weeknight meal makes great use of pantry staples to create complex flavors with minimal work. Miso is often used to flavor soups or sauces, and here, it is added to raw rice before cooking, which results in a delightfully sticky, savory steamed rice. Fragrant and nutty basmati is called for, but any long-grain rice will work. Shredded cabbage brings freshness and crunch to the finished dish, but use whatever crispy vegetable you have on hand: shredded brussels sprouts, carrots, snap peas, radishes and iceberg lettuce are all great options. For a heftier meal, add some canned chickpeas, white beans or black beans. To finish, the vibrant tang of the bright ginger-scallion vinaigrette balances the richness of the roasted salmon.
Curried Lentil, Squash and Apple Stew
Infused with curry spices and chock-full of wilted spinach, butternut squash and sweet chunks of apple, this unique lentil stew is fragrant and flavorful beyond belief.
Fried Fish Sandwich
This fried fish sandwich doesn’t stray far from the classic fast-food staple: breaded fish, a soft bun, a slice of cheese and tangy tartar sauce. The best part is you can put it together in just about the amount of time it would take to stand in line and order it at the counter. Capers, shallots and fresh dill make this tartar sauce feel a little fancy, but a splash of soy sauce adds the umami that takes it to a very familiar place. Flounder is an affordable choice for the recipe, but if you can’t find it, substitute with sole or any mild flat fish.
Grilled Flounder
A Montauk fishing guide named Bryan Goulart was the first person I saw brine thin fillets of porgy and sea bass, and the Brooklyn chef Josh Cohen taught me how to do it with flounder, though the recipe would work on any flat fish. A mere 10 minutes in the bath will tighten the flesh nicely, and then three or four minutes of cooking the fish need follow, over a medium flame. Cook only that one side, then flip the fish onto a serving platter or plate, and top with a little bit of butter, chopped parsley and a spray of lemon.
Cardamom-Scented Oatmeal Pancakes With Apricots and Almonds
Oatmeal, always underrated, is the foundation of this pancake. But the ingredient that really makes this recipe shine is the cardamom, a spice that has been treasured in Europe for centuries and has been subtly employed since then in pastries throughout the northern part of the continent. These pancakes are incredibly tender, with a little chew from the grain and the dried fruit, but beyond that they’re exotic. Here are flavors and textures that ordinary pancakes could never approach.
Ham and Cheese Pasta With a Handful of Peas
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Pick up a box of large shells — the ones the size of a knuckle, so they hold a little pasta water in them. Pick up a ham steak from the butcher or the corner of the supermarket meat display, and dice it. Pick up a bag of frozen organic peas as well — they’re sweeter. You’ll need a block of good Swiss if you can find it, or some Jarlsberg if you can’t. (Hey, it melts like a dream.) Set a large pot of salted water to boil, and prepare your pasta. While it cooks, get to work on the next burner, browning the ham in a pat of good unsalted butter in a skillet. Offstage, grate about a cup of cheese into a large serving bowl. When the pasta has been cooked for just shy of the time called for on its packaging, throw in a handful of peas, cook another minute, then drain, reserving a little cooking water. Toss the whole mess into the cheese, along with the hot ham, another pat or two of butter and a splash of the pasta water. Watch as the cheese goes soft and ribbony in the heat, and the fat of the ham mingles with the butter and the pasta water, and the shells pick up some of it and grab peas in their valves. Shave some Parmesan over the top. Don’t you want to eat that right now? Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Linguine With Lobster and Avocado
The summer season was beginning, whetting the appetite for a copious seafood salad or a tangy ceviche. But instead, I tore a page from ceviche’s playbook and assembled a pasta dish with the avocado, tomato, jalapeño, scallion, cilantro and citrus juice, along with lobster, to mingle with pasta. The result was brightly fresh-tasting, a warm-weather charmer with a touch of spice. Even during the brief cooking, some of the avocado will melt into the mixture, suavely coating the strands of linguine. But be sure that some of the avocado is still intact. The dish is satisfying as the main event yet light enough to serve as a first course followed by chicken or sausages hot off the grill.
BBQ Shrimp
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. In New Orleans, barbecued shrimp aren’t cooked on a grill. They’re sautéed with salt and pepper, then tossed in butter-mounted Worcestershire sauce with lemon, sometimes with a splash of cream. I crank the oven to 450 degrees and make the sauce on the stovetop: diced shallots sautéed in butter, a healthy quarter-cup or so of Worcestershire, a little thyme, paprika and cayenne, some salt and then a whole lot more butter, cut into the pan a knob at a time and whisked into velvet. I add to that a splash of cream and a few more healthy cranks of black pepper. Then I roast the shrimp on a greased pan in the oven under a shower of salt and yet more pepper, and serve it on a warm platter with the sauce spooned over the top. Rice, green beans and plenty of good, crusty bread for mopping up make it an ambrosial meal. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Gochugaru Salmon With Crispy Rice
Gochugaru, a mild, fragrant red-pepper powder, bedazzles this quick salmon dinner. As a key ingredient in Korean home cooking, gochugaru proves that some chiles provide not only heat but fruity sweetness as well. Here, that’s especially true once it’s bloomed in maple syrup, vinegar and butter. If you like shiny things, you may find great pleasure in watching this pan sauce transform into a mirrored, crimson glaze. Try to get long center-cut salmon fillets for uniform thickness and even cooking. Their crispy skin tastes wonderful with white rice, which toasts in the rendered salmon fat. To balance the richness of the fish, serve it with fresh, crunchy things, like cucumbers or pickles, or a big green salad.
Oven-Steamed Fish With Mixed-Nut Salsa
This recipe pairs two elements you can incorporate into many meals: a steaming method that accommodates any size of fillet and a nut salsa that’s good on more than just fish. This recipe fashions a steamer using a baking dish, boiling water and the heat of the oven (see Tip for stovetop instructions), and steaming shows off the delicate flavor of mild fish and ensures tenderness even if things end up slightly overcooked. A crunchy and bright salsa made with salted mixed nuts — the kind usually served as bar snacks — balances the lightness of the fish, but it's also great on roasted chicken, winter squash, salad greens and more.
Creamy Pasta With Smoked Salmon, Arugula and Lemon
One selling point of smoked salmon is that you don't need to do much to it to get it on the table. Fold it on top of toast and dab it with sour cream and you have the lazy man's cocktail party. But take the salmon one or two steps further and you break out of the cliché. Salmon's buttery fat and smoke serve as useful flavoring elements. In this easy 15-minute meal, it's chopped up and used as a counterweight in pasta tossed with full-fat Greek yogurt, arugula, fresh dill, lemon zest and juice. It is, at once, lively and comforting.
Spring Onion and Cheese Potato Cake, Two Ways
This potato cake is a great recipe to build on when seeking to feed a hungry crowd resourcefully, pulling whatever cheese, vegetables or spices might need using up. Here, I’ve included two variations, one using frozen peas and thyme, and the other using jarred peppers and harissa. You can get as thrifty as you like by making use of what you have: frozen spinach instead of the peas, for example, or some shredded mozzarella to replace the Parmesan. The recipe is yours: Make what you want of it! Serve this potato cake warm with crème fraîche, a squeeze of lemon and a side salad, if you like.
Salmon Burgers
For this recipe, you’ll want to grind part of the salmon in a food processor: It’ll bind the rest, which can be coarsely chopped to retain moisture during cooking. Some bread crumbs keep the burger from becoming as densely packed as (bad) meatloaf. This approach, along with a few simple seasonings, produces delicious burgers in not much more time than it takes to make one from ground chuck. The only real trick is to avoid overcooking. Whether you sauté, broil or grill this burger, it's best when the center remains the color of … salmon. Two or three minutes a side usually does the trick.
Smoky Fish Chowder
This chowder is a more complex and smoky interpretation of a classic New England fish chowder. Made with hot smoked paprika and a little Vermouth or white wine, it’s got more spunk than a simpler, more authentic recipe, without losing the spirit of the sea. If you can’t find fish stock, you can substitute bottled clam juice, or even a good, flavorful vegetable stock. Either way, you’ll end up with perfectly balanced bowl of soup that needs nothing more than perhaps a few crackers on the side to make it shine.
Irish Tacos
You can certainly eat corned beef with boiled cabbage and carrots, but it can be a great deal more exciting to pile the shredded meat — ruddy pink, salty, fatty and meltingly sweet — into warm flour tortillas, then top it with a bright, crunchy, slightly fiery cabbage slaw. The contrast between the soft and the crisp, the salt and the sweet, is fantastic — particularly if you adorn each taco with a few pickled jalapeños and, perhaps, an additional swipe of mayonnaise. It’s not fusion cooking, nor appropriation. It’s just the fact that everything tastes good on a warm tortilla.
Pan Pizza
The pizza authority Anthony Falco, once czar of the oven at Roberta’s in Brooklyn and now (literally!) an international pizza consultant, grew up in Austin, Tex., eating his great-grandmother’s Sicilian grandma pies, which he liked a great deal, and personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut, which he loved unreservedly. This recipe, he told me in 2018, pays homage to that buttery, high-lofted pie, with a crisp bottom crust, a slightly sweet sauce and an enormous amount of cheese. Slices of pepperoni make a beautiful topping, cupping in the heat of the oven and drizzling crimson oil across the edges of the pie. The dough takes a long time to proof and the recipe delivers a lot of it, so making the recipe is a great excuse for planning a pizza party. Cast-iron pans are best for the baking, but square or rectangular baking pans with high sides will do nicely in a pinch.
Rigatoni Alla Zozzona
Rigatoni alla zozzona combines the ingredients of the four pasta dishes for which Romans are famous: amatriciana, cacio e pepe, carbonara and gricia. While many Italian meals are typically the result of simple flavors — “neat” preparations where only a few ingredients shine — rigatoni alla zozzona (which loosely translates to a big mess) is more of a kitchen sink approach, marrying the ingredients of the four pastas (tomato sauce, black pepper, egg yolks, cheese and guanciale) with sausage. Rigatoni’s sturdy tube shape provides the perfect vehicle to carry — and stand up to — the many components of the sauce.
Enfrijoladas
This is one simple dish you can make if you have corn tortillas in the freezer and black beans in the pantry. Enfrijoladas are comforting enchiladas made by drenching corn tortillas in creamy, coarsely pureed black beans, folding them into quarters, and serving them in more of the black bean sauce. The authentic ones are garnished with Mexican queso fresco, but they are delicious without cheese. Cilantro or epazote is optional – I didn’t have any; it is the black beans that make this dish what it is.
Shredded Roast Duck
Some say roasting a duck is difficult work. It is not. It can be messy, though, so make sure you have a roasting pan that can accommodate the enormous amount that renders out of the bird during its roughly four and a half hours in the oven. (Save it for roasting potatoes!) When the meat has cooked, use a couple of forks to shred it, then moisten it with your favorite barbecue sauce, hoisin sauce, gochujang sauce or gravy, and serve with rice or noodles, on potato rolls or Chinese wheat-flour pancakes, or as the final topping of this maniacal recipe for scallops with hollandaise sauce and shredded duck.
Greek Fisherman’s Stew
It's summer, and no matter what you choose to drink, your plate should be bright with ripe beefsteak tomatoes and basil. If those treasures of the season complement a piece of fish, so much the better. Consider a kakavia, something Greek fishermen may assemble right on their boats, adding ingredients in fairly quick order as they cook in a round-bottomed pot also called a kakavia. It's a dish that welcomes wines that are clean-cut but with lip-smacking acidity balanced by sunny suggestions of melon and tropical fruit, like Austrian rieslings.
Freestyle Roasted Chicken Parm
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. You don’t need much for this easy dinner: bone-in chicken thighs, canned crushed tomatoes, mozzarella, a little Parmesan or pecorino, zest from a lemon, olive oil and red-pepper flakes, maybe a few snips of basil if you can find any. (If you can’t, don’t worry, it will still kill.) Toss the chicken in salt, pepper, zest, red-pepper flakes and a few glugs of olive oil, then get them on a greased sheet pan or two in a 425-degree oven, skin-side up, spreading them out as much as you can manage. While the chicken roasts, warm the tomatoes on the stove with a splash of olive oil and a little black pepper. Watch the chicken get well and truly crisped — it’ll take around 35 or 40 minutes — and then place a nice slice of mozzarella on each one to melt. (Activate the broiler, if you like, but I prefer the gentle style.) Spoon warm tomato sauce onto each plate, then top with a cheese-covered chicken thigh, some sprinkled Parmesan and a few torn pieces of basil. Sautéed greens would go nicely on the side. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Oatmeal and Teff With Cinnamon and Dried Fruit
I wanted to make a porridge with teff alone, but I just didn’t like the flavor enough. So I added some of those tiny high-protein, high-calcium, gluten-free seeds to oatmeal, along with chopped dried apricots, golden raisins and cinnamon. Chopped toasted hazelnuts are my first choice for topping.