Main Course
8665 recipes found
Tomato-Poached Fish With Chile Oil and Herbs
Poaching boneless, skinless fish fillets in a brothy sauce is a foolproof (and undeniably delicious) method for cooking fish. Here, go for meaty, mild-flavored, firm-fleshed varieties like cod, haddock, pollack, halibut or flounder. This flavorful sauce, made from burst cherry (or other small) tomatoes, sizzled shallots and toasted garlic, definitely has a summery vibe; feel free to substitute a can of peeled tomatoes if the real deal isn’t in season.
Anytime Fish and Shellfish Stew
This is a sort of ad-lib fish stew, inspired by the kind of stew you’d find served in the South of France: Its exact proportions and quantities aren’t set in stone. Use whatever white-fleshed fish and shellfish you like. Potatoes make the dish more substantial, and the slices really absorb all the lovely flavors of the stew.
Amatriciana on the Fly
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Here’s a half-hour challenge that’s no challenge at all. Set a large pot of salted water on the stove, over high heat. In a pan, sauté chopped bacon — slab bacon, if you can get it — in a glug or two of olive oil until it’s crisp. Remove the bacon and add chopped onion to the fat, cooking until it’s soft and fragrant. Figure the equivalent of a slice of bacon and half an onion per person. Meanwhile, boil water for enough pasta to feed your crowd, and cook it until it is just shy of tender. While it cooks, add some canned chopped tomatoes and the cooked bacon to the onions, and stir it to make a sauce. Drain the pasta, then toss it with a knob of butter, and add the pasta to the sauce. Slide all that into a warm serving bowl, then top with grated pecorino. A scattering of chopped parsley is never going to be a bad idea here, but you can omit it if the clock’s ticking. Serve with red-pepper flakes and extra cheese 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.
Salmon in Fig Leaves
While this salmon dish evokes pure summer in California, it’s easily done almost anywhere. The salmon is king salmon, and its season is summer, which coincides perfectly with the ripening of figs in all but the northernmost parts of the country. There is nothing better than a good fig, but for this recipe, incorporate the underused leaves, which make a perfect package for the fish, contributing a kind of nutty flavor to it.
Dolly Sinatra's Marinara Sauce
Pan-Seared Salmon With Celery, Olives and Capers
The salsa that I spoon over the salmon here is an explosion of contrasting flavors – sweet, salty and sharp – common in Sicilian cooking. I like serving this with sautéed greens and some bread.
Ziti With Sausage, Sweet Corn, Broccoli and Tomatoes
When your body craves vegetables, but your mind craves pasta and meat, this 30-minute pasta dish is a happy compromise. It's loaded with fresh cherry tomatoes, corn and broccoli, and the Italian sausage (hot or sweet) adds flavor and heft. Whatever you do, don't feel wed to the recipe. Use cauliflower in the place of broccoli, chicken sausage instead of pork, chopped plum tomatoes instead of cherry. It's the kind of recipe that can be a little different (in a good way) every time you make it depending on what's in your vegetable drawer or C.S.A. box. Also, don't forget taste and season well with salt and pepper as you go. The vegetables need a little seasoning to stand up to the assertive flavors of the sausage and garlic.
Rocky Mountain Rainbow Trout With Trout Roe
Whole trout makes for a stunning presentation, especially when it is topped with delicate pink roe, which sparkles like gems on top of the fish and imparts a salty, mineral flavor. Trout from the icy Rocky Mountain streams are at their best in late spring, when the ice has just melted. Cooks from the Shoshone tribe, among many others, make delicious meals using the entire fish, wasting nothing: Cheeks and eyes are considered a delicacy, as is the roe harvested from the females, which is prized for its distinct flavor and its relationship to renewal.
Mackerel With Lemon Olive Oil and Tomatoes
Mackerel is a sustainable, velvety, sweet-tasting fish that deserves more attention than it usually gets. Here, the pale fillets are roasted on a bed of fragrant basil leaves with a lemon zest-infused olive oil, chopped olives and juicy cherry tomatoes. If you have a bottle of cold-pressed lemon olive oil on hand, you can use it here in place of making your own. If infusing your own oil, feel free to use either a regular lemon or a Meyer lemon. Leftover lemon oil is great on salads, tossed with vegetables, or drizzled over avocado toast.
James Beard’s Pleasant Pasta
Here's an absolutely lovely weeknight pasta dish that's a triple threat: It's easy, it's quick and it's delicious. Here's what you do: As the spaghetti boils, simmer some green peas with a little water until they're hot (or just dump the frozen peas in with the boiling pasta a couple minutes before the timer is set to ding). Drain the pasta and return to the pot with a button of butter. Add peas, prosciutto and cream and toss to coat. Season well with salt, pepper and grated Parmesan. Toss some more. Serve and swoon.
Clam Pasta With Basil and Hot Pepper
The beauty of this dish is that the clams can be steamed in the time it takes to cook the pasta, so the whole affair can be put together quite rapidly. High heat and a covered pot will have the shells open in minutes.
Fish Pie With a Sourdough Crust
This British fish pie deviates from the traditional potato topping by using sourdough bread as a crust. The result leaves you with a happy balance of crispy bread bits on top and softer bits where the bread has absorbed some of the creamy sauce. You can easily make this pie your own by swapping out the sourdough for any other good-quality white loaf, using other cuts of fish or seafood, such as cod, trout or baby squid, and playing around with whatever herbs you might have on hand. The English mustard is quite a dominant flavor here, and cuts through the richness of the pie itself. If mustard isn’t your thing, feel free to reduce the amount to 2 tablespoons.
Saffron Fish With Red Peppers and Preserved Lemon
This very flexible recipe is often served by Moroccan Jews and their descendants. Many who moved to France, for example, tend to prepare it with preserved lemons and olives. Others living in Jerusalem, like Danielle Renov, author of “Peas, Love & Carrots” (Mesorah Publications, 2020), might incorporate more spice. (Ms. Renov omits the saffron for Passover.) With the addition of red peppers and tomatoes coming from the Americas, it became the rich Moroccan dish it is today. Traditionally made with white fish, it also works with salmon or shad. Serve this as an appetizer, symbolic of the wish for abundance. Assemble it in the morning and cook it just before serving, or eat the fish at room temperature. For a main course, add quinoa or couscous to soak up the flavorful juices.
Bobby Flay’s Double-Chocolate Pancakes
Few adults would want this meal for breakfast, but it is an excellent recipe for parents to make the morning after a sleepover that had the children and their friends up late watching horror films and unfathomable YouTube comedy. I adapted it slightly from Bobby Flay’s “Brunch at Bobby’s” cookbook, released in 2015. Watching the effect of the sugar and chocolate on a sleepy child is its own sort of joy – and you can hustle the guests home before the inevitable crash. Serve with raspberries for reasons of taste and elegance (though strawberries or bananas would do in a pinch), and salted caramel sauce. Yes, you could insist on eating muesli and almond milk instead. But in Mr. Flay’s words, “If you’re going to cave, you might as well go all out.”
Sourdough Pancake or Waffle Batter
If you have a sourdough starter, you will need to feed it to keep it alive. Many recipes call for doing so after discarding a cup or so of the starter you have, so as to maintain its equilibrium and prevent it from growing too large. This recipe takes advantage of that excess starter, using it as the base of a pancake or waffle batter that ferments overnight and yields a remarkably flavorful breakfast the next day, with minimal effort.
Whole-Grain Pancakes
Using a combination of different grains, these hearty pancakes have a deeper, more interesting flavor, along with more fiber and nutrients, than those made from only white flour. If you want to add fruit, like blueberries or sliced peaches, or chocolate chips, sprinkle them on top of the pancakes just before flipping. Serve these straight out of the pan; pancakes don’t like to wait.
Seafood Chowder
This chowder of root-cellar vegetables, clams and fish is one of the easiest and best things to cook for a weekend dinner with family and friends. Use a mixture of butter and the powdered dried seaweed called dulse as the flavored fat in which you sauté the vegetables before deglazing them, and each individual flavor in the resulting stew will pop — from carrot to leek, parsnip to potato, bacon to clam to scallop to fish. The seaweed is a powerful flavor enhancer. You can omit it if you want, but really, you shouldn't.
Lobster Pasta With Yellow Tomatoes and Basil
This is an uncomplicated dish for warm weather and sunny days. Olive oil, garlic, hot pepper, barely warmed tomatoes and tons of fresh basil are the only ingredients besides lobster and dried pasta, preferably a variety with a bit of texture, like frilly edged reginette, cooked perfectly al dente. The only real work is cooking the lobsters and chopping the meat. Once that’s done, go out and enjoy the sunshine while it lasts.
Creamy One-Pot Mushroom and Leek Pasta
This deeply satisfying pasta, brimming with rich umami, is made in just one pot, an approach that bolsters its flavors. Once the leek and mushrooms are caramelized and sticking to the pot, they’re deglazed to lift all the extra depth from the bottom of the pan. (Use any liquid for deglazing, whether water, wine, stock, vinegar or tomato juice.) This recipe leaves the choice of mushrooms up to you: Cremini and shiitake are a good combination, but you could even use rehydrated porcinis. If you are craving greens to cut through the richness, stir a few handfuls of baby spinach into the pasta just before you turn off the heat.
Mark Bittman's Pasta With Clams
Here is a simple, elegant take on pasta with clam sauce that serves as a beautiful, light dinner with salad, perfect in advance of a movie night or reading session on the couch with family or friends. The key to its success is using less pasta that you generally might, which helps place the focus of the dish squarely on the meaty clams.
Bulgur-Ricotta Pancakes
Saffron Salmon Kababs
Buttery, saffron-stained and gently spiced, these Iranian kababs come together in no time and make for a beautiful, flavorful meal. The warming spice mix of oregano, coriander, black pepper and turmeric balances and lifts the sweet notes from the saffron and salmon. To keep the fish in place when turning the kababs on the grill, use 1/2-inch-wide flat skewers or two thin, round skewers. You can entertain with these skewers or enjoy them on a quiet weeknight, along with dill rice and a side of fresh herbs, or cucumber, tomato and onion salad.
Soft Scrambled Eggs With Pesto and Fresh Ricotta
Whole Roasted Fish With Wild Mushrooms
A very large whole roasted fish brought to the table with head and tail intact is a visually dramatic and incredibly tasty dinner party main course. Even better is that it's both a breeze to cook (season it up, throw it in the oven and wait), and to serve (big fish have big bones, which makes it easy to scoop the flesh off the skeleton). Do not forget to call your fishmonger ahead to order a large fish. This recipe, with lemons, herbs and crisp wild mushrooms, will work with any 4- to 6-pounder, from delicate black sea bass to salmon-colored arctic char. The variety of fish here is less important than the size. Generally speaking, you'll need about a pound of fish per person, though three-quarters of a pound will do if you're serving it in the context of a multi-course meal. Also, if you can't find one very large fish, you can use two smaller ones, 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 pounds each. In that case, feel free to squeeze them into one roasting pan.