Main Course
8665 recipes found
Cashew Chicken
Cashew chicken dishes have long been a classic of American Chinese cuisine. But Andrew Chiou and Tim Ma, the co-owners of Lucky Danger in Washington, D.C., have noticed it fading from menus in the area. According to Mr. Chiou, the dish is all about textural contrast: the crisp, battered chicken that’s been tossed in a thin, sweet-and-savory sauce; crisp-tender vegetables like celery, as well as softer straw mushrooms; and, of course, the satisfying crunch of cashews. Their version is similar to the famous, deep-fried cashew chicken dish popularized by the chef David Leong in Springfield, Mo., in the 1960s. Enjoy it alongside other dishes as part of a multicourse meal, or just with steamed rice.
Fruit-Stuffed Loin of Pork
Yogurt-Marinated Fried Chicken With Saffron and Paprika
Here is a fried chicken recipe that is the best kind of weeknight cooking, with ingredients found quickly at most local grocery stores, whirled in a food processor and then left overnight to turn into something delicious the next evening. A yogurt marinade helps tenderize the boneless, skinless chicken thighs, infusing them with saffron and paprika, and a quick frying lends the meat a crispy, minty coating. You can marinate the chicken for 3 hours or overnight, but you set the timetable depending on whatever else is going on. This chicken will adapt. Make one night, finish the next. That’s living.
Meal in a Bowl With Chicken, Rice Noodles and Spinach
This comforting soup is a simplified version of a Vietnamese phô or a Japanese ramen (using rice sticks instead of somen).
Cabbage Packets Stuffed With Shrimp And Salmon
Stir-Fried Chicken With Ketchup
I learned about the genesis of this dish from Suvir Saran, an Indian chef in New York. Loosely inspired by chicken Manchurian, this dish is based on an ingredient that is in almost every refrigerator. It's ketchup, here, stir-fried with chicken. Before you turn your nose up, think how good ketchup can taste. In the dish he cooked for me, Mr. Saran tossed cauliflower in a slurry of cornstarch and egg, then deep-fried it. The crust was exquisite, and the cauliflower perfectly cooked. But it was what happened next that really got my attention: He finished the cauliflower in a sauce, made in about three minutes, containing nothing more than ketchup, garlic and cayenne pepper.
Baby Back Ribs With Sweet and Sour Glaze
This sticky baby back ribs recipe needs just two things: time in the oven and a jammy, savory sauce. Inspired by old-fashioned cocktail meatball recipes from the 1960s and ’70s, this sweet and sour glaze — a shellac of Concord grape jelly, soy sauce and rice vinegar — lacquers tender baby back ribs that cook from start to finish in the oven. Whether you serve these with beer at a party or with white rice as a fun dinner, you’ll probably need napkins.
Chicken Tikka
Traditionally, Indian chicken tikka — skewered boneless chicken pieces that have been marinated in assertive spices and cooling yogurt — is cooked in a clay tandoor oven, stacking layers of smoke upon layers of spice. But this murgh tikka recipe from Chintan Pandya, the chef and a partner at Unapologetic Foods, a New York restaurant group that runs Masalawala & Sons, Dhamaka, Semma and Adda Indian Canteen, captures the essence of the dish with the convenience of an oven. Juicy chicken thighs are marinated twice: The first marinade is a quick 10-minute rest in salt, vinegar and ginger-garlic paste, while the second is a 3- to 4-hour dip in yogurt punctuated with deggi mirch (a vibrant red chile powder), garam masala and turmeric. Don’t expect the yogurt to mute the flavors: It adds a level of creaminess, but the spices dominate this dish. — Alexa Weibel
Steak Haché
Salisbury steak is an instance of an old recipe with enduring value. It is a good idea and a good name, though its reputation as a TV dinner has stained the prettiness somewhat. All that the old recipe — and its many variations — needed was a little updating. Here is a Frenchier and more contemporary version — rich with porcini butter, piquant with salsa verde. It is old-fashioned enough to be fun and elegant enough for a dinner party — and most definitely does not need a hamburger bun.
Scrambled Eggs With Caviar
Japanese-Style Beef Stew
This beef stew is loaded with the warmth of soy, ginger, sweetness (best provided by mirin, the sweet Japanese cooking wine, but sugar or honey will do, too), winter squash and the peel and juice of a lemon. These simple and delicious counterpoints make a great stew.
Roasted Chicken Thighs With Winter Squash
Roasted chicken thighs can be the juicy, meaty center of many weeknight meals. Add delicata squash, quickly tossed in a maple syrup-butter glaze, along with slices of lemon and sage, and you have a something more unusual, an interplay of flavors that don’t generally meet on the same sheet pan. This recipe is a little too fussy to count as a fast weeknight dish, but there is nothing difficult about any of the steps. And it’s a fine introduction to delicata squash, if you haven’t cooked with them yet. Unlike many other winter squash varieties, they have a thin skin and don’t need to be peeled (just cut them in half and remove the seeds), making them as easy to prepare as they are sweet.
Rao’s Chicken Scarpariello (Shoemaker’s Chicken)
Chicken scarpariello, also known as shoemaker's chicken, is a classic Italian-American dish of chicken, sausage, vinegar, onions and peppers that has all the flavors and textures: Tangy and rich, spicy and sweet, tender and crunchy. Our version is adapted from one found on the menu at Rao's, the reservations-impossible Southern Italian restaurant and celebrity hangout in Harlem. It starts with pan-frying chicken pieces and Italian sausage in a little olive oil until golden brown. Bell peppers, jalapeños, onion and garlic go into the pan and are sautéed until soft. All of that – plus hot peppers, potatoes, vinegar and wine – goes into a roasting pan and into a hot oven until the sauce thickens and the chicken is cooked through. (The potatoes are totally optional, by the way, but they are a nice, pillowy counterpoint to the prickly heat of the peppers.) Serve with a hunk of good bread to mop up the sauce.
Chicken Thighs Stuffed With Chard
Stuffing boneless chicken has long been reserved for breasts, but most chicken breasts have so little flavor that you almost have to stuff them with fat. Thighs, however, are fattier and more flavorful, so a stuffing can be leaner and brighter. And now that boneless thighs are sold in many supermarkets, the only issues are flattening and rolling. But if you pound a thigh as you would a breast, it becomes large enough to stuff and roll (Because thighs are irregularly shaped, you’ll need to skewer them closed with a couple of toothpicks). Almost any stuffing will work; just don’t overfill. My current favorite uses a light, leafy green, along with pine nuts and raisins. The result is nicely browned meat and a lean stuffing with acidity, crunch and sweetness. For more flavor, I like to finish with a splash of sherry; with the liquid spooned over the thighs and a sprinkle of parsley, the dish becomes downright impressive.
Doenjang Jjigae
A well-executed doenjang jjigae, or fermented soybean paste stew, can be a quiet but powerful exercise in restraint. This simple recipe allows the umami-rich flavor of the doenjang (DWEN-jahng) and the natural sweetness of onion, zucchini and radish to shine. The oil-packed anchovies here may not be as traditional as dried, but they are an effective substitute that I learned from my friend James Park. You can make this dish vegan by skipping the anchovies and swapping the slightly lily-gilding rib-eye steak for cubed medium-firm tofu.
Chicken Chop Suey
Chop suey may sound like something your grandmother ate in the 1950s, but this version from China Café in L.A.'s Grand Central Market — a chicken stir-fry enlivened with plenty of bright bok choy — is honest, simple and plainly delicious.
Kasha Varnishkes
Kasha, toasted hulled buckwheat, is not what you would call versatile. But kasha varnishkes — kasha, noodles (typically bow ties), loads of slow-cooked onions and fat — is an amazing dish, one I used to beg my grandmother and mother to make for me, one that shows kasha in a light that does not shine on it elsewhere, at least in my repertory.
Roasted Duck With Figs
Chicken Soup With Lime and Avocado
When I lived in France, in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, I hardly ever ate avocados. Those sold in the markets were smooth, thin-skinned varieties grown mostly in Israel. They were watery, not as creamy or nutty-tasting as Haas avocados, the dark, pebbly-skinned variety that we get in California. “Poor man’s butter,” they used to call avocados when my father was a child. (Now they would more aptly be described as “rich man’s butter.”) Simple Mexican soups like this one often include avocado, which is diced or sliced and added to the soup when it’s ladled into bowls.
Grilled Salmon on Spinach
Crispy Chicken Thighs With Peppers, Capers and Olives
The Italian technique employed here — sautéing chicken with a weighted pan on top — is called al mattone. It yields a crisp, burnished skin and very juicy meat. Instead of the usual spatchcocked bird, this recipe calls for large bone-in, skin-on thighs. Cook them in a cast iron pan, if you can, for even heat, but any heavy skillet will do. For a bit of smokiness, the chicken may be cooked (in the cast iron pan) over a charcoal grill. The accompanying sweet pepper stew can be made up to a day in advance and reheated, and starting your seasoning early — an hour ahead or up to 24 — will result in the tastiest chicken.
Chicken and Mango Soba Salad With Peanut Dressing
Japanese buckwheat noodles are usually served cold or in a hot soup, but here, they’re given a bright jolt of color and texture. Delightfully chewy soba noodles are combined with chicken, mango, snap peas, cucumber and a spicy peanut dressing for a great warm-weather lunch that’s also picnic-friendly. Serve it alongside any grilled meat or fish, or leave the chicken out to make it vegetarian. To make this ahead, prepare all the salad components in advance, but wait until serving time to combine to keep flavors and textures vibrant.
Braised Ligurian Chicken
This dish came to The Times in a 2003 article about Jamie Oliver: "What I found quite interesting with this dish, being English," Mr. Oliver said, "is that when you eat this, it's quite delicately flavored. It's perfumed with the wine and the rosemary. You get this kind of meaty kind of saltiness from the olives, and what's really interesting is if an English housewife got hold of the recipe, she'd probably stone the olives and have quite a lot of them. But in Italy, literally for eight people they put that much and they leave the pits in." In his hand, he cradled about two dozen olives. Mr. Oliver continued: "When you cook olives whole like this, it's almost like an anchovy. The salt comes out of the olives, and the olive becomes more like a vegetable. And the salt from the olive flavors the chicken really wonderfully." This is an adaptation of his recipe.
Suprême de Volaille Fermière à la Crème (Chicken Breast in Cream)
The author Bill Buford adapted this recipe, which he learned while working with the chef Mathieu Viannay at La Mère Brazier in Lyon, France. (Mr. Buford worked with the chef while researching his book “Dirt.”) If you just made a batch of chicken stock, there are few better things to do with it than poaching chicken breasts in it. You get two benefits: white meat that is about as moist and tender as possible, and stock that is stronger than when you started, particularly if you poach the entire bird and save the legs for another night. The goal is to keep the liquid well below boiling; it’s a stove-top approximation of the sous vide technique.