Main Course
8665 recipes found
Lasagna With Pistou and Mushrooms
There will be a day when the weather suddenly cools and my basil plants and those at your farmers’ market stop thriving, but that day hasn’t come yet. So I’m making lots of pesto and pistou (pesto without the nuts), putting some of it in the freezer (I just blend the basil and olive oil together for the freezer and add the other ingredients when I thaw the mixture) and using the rest in all manner of pastas. This is the first time I’ve used it in a lasagna.
Shrimp in Salsa Verde
Stock-and-Cider-Brined Chicken Over Stuffing
This one-pan dinner is ugly — rustic, if we’re being kind — but good. Or as the Italians say, “brutta ma buona.” Truly, though, it’s everything you could ask for in a rich, comforting meal. As it cooks, the chicken, brined in stock and cider, drips its flavorful juices onto the bread. The bread absorbs every drop, turning into a chewy, savory nest cradling the tender, perfectly browned chicken. Each bit of stuffing offers a different surprise — sometimes the sweet-and-sour zing of a prune, other times the faint rumor of Thanksgiving whispered by celery and thyme. It’s as satisfying as you could ever hope, even if it isn’t particularly attractive.
Pan-Seared Chicken Thighs With Parsley and Lemon
This recipe will make you think, “Oh, that’s what parsley tastes like.” Bright and herbaceous, one bunch of flat-leaf parsley does a lot of work in this relaxed chicken dinner. First, the tough stems are puréed in a bold and garlicky buttermilk marinade that tenderizes boneless, skinless thighs, then the leaves and their tender stems are sautéed like spinach and spritzed with fresh lemon. Serve these juicy chicken thighs with rice, beans, bread or generously buttered noodles.
Tian
The tian is both a vessel and the name of what’s cooked in it: summer vegetables, sliced quite thin, arranged in careful layers, drenched in quality olive oil and then cooked in a slow oven until each individual vegetable surrenders to the others, becoming one. The true and complete melding of earthy zucchini, sweet onion, waxy potato, juicy and acidic tomatoes is the great achievement of a well-made tian, and resting the finished dish after cooking is no small part of that success. By using a cast-iron pan and starting on the stovetop during the build, covering with a lid along the way, you speed up the cooking significantly. Season every layer and generously drizzle each with olive oil to bring out tremendous flavor and aroma. The Sungold tomatoes are beautiful and bright and quite acidic — perfect against the other flavors — but I find the skins unpleasantly leathery-papery when they are cooked, so simply peel them first. Dropping the tomatoes for 30 seconds into seasoned boiling water splits their skins readily and they slip off effortlessly. I would even say it’s kind of fun.
Whole Pot-Roasted Cauliflower With Tomatoes and Anchovies
The English chef April Bloomfield is known for her love of meat, but her vegetable-centric cookbook “A Girl and Her Greens” is stuffed with the produce she discovered while cooking in Mediterranean-influenced kitchens like Chez Panisse and London’s River Cafe. Often, she simply treats a vegetable as if it were meat, like this whole head of cauliflower. Braising it in tomato and anchovies, as if making an Italian pot roast, produces a richly satisfying entree. Ms. Bloomfield is unabashedly fussy about every component of her dishes, and inspires us to be equally careful. She gives a $2 can of plum tomatoes the same treatment she’d give an $80 whole lobe of foie gras: Each one must be closely examined, its tough bits trimmed off, and any substandard specimens discarded.
Butternut Squash Pasta With Bacon and Parmesan
In this cozy weeknight meal, roasted butternut squash and Parmesan are combined for a dish that’s flavorful but not too heavy. A bit of thick-cut bacon adds crunch and smokiness. If you don’t have thick-cut on hand, you can certainly use thin-cut, but keep an eye on it, as it will cook through faster. Be prepared to pluck it from the oven once crisp and allow the vegetables to finish cooking at their own pace. A handful of chopped fresh herbs added just before serving gives this comforting dish a bit of brightness.
Rainbow Quinoa Salad
Dr. David Eisenberg of the Harvard School of Public Health demonstrated along with his daughter, Naomi, a whole- wheat couscous salad that is the inspiration for this one at the “Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives” medical education conference in Napa Valley this year. You can use a variety of dried fruits and nuts, as well as a mix of herbs. Chop the larger dried fruits small so that the pieces are uniform.
New Mexican Pozole
In New Mexico, there is abundance and generosity and plenty of comfort food at holiday parties. Posole, the savory and hearty, rather soupy stew made from dried large white corn kernels simmered for hours, is traditional and easy to prepare. Stir in a ruddy red purée of dried New Mexico chiles to give the stew its requisite kick. This is satisfying, nourishing, fortifying fare. The corn stays a little bit chewy in a wonderful way (canned hominy never does), and the spicy broth is beguiling.
Spicy Stewed Tripe With Scallions
This spicy, slippery tripe begs to be slurped like a bowl of noodles, so you may want a roll of paper towels nearby. Slicing the tripe as thinly as possible provides a soft, tender texture, and the collagen that yields from the calf’s foot makes the broth itself slick and full-bodied. The mix of chiles creates a great and powerful warmth that spreads across your chest and leaves a bold, pleasant zing on the tongue, but it is not the kind of sharp or angry spicy that makes your eyes water or your nose run. The paper towels are for tidying up around your enthusiasm, not for dabbing your tears.
Butternut Squash, Caramelized Onion and Spinach Lasagna
This rich fall lasagna from Kim Quay, the owner of Comfort Food, a catering and prepared food business in Morrisville, Pa., makes an excellent main course for vegetarians and meat-lovers alike.
Tart Dough
While Dorie Greenspan uses this dough for savories, it’s really an all-purpose recipe that produces a not-too-rich, slightly crisp crust that is as happy holding pastry cream for a strawberry tart as it is encasing a creamy cheese filling for a quiche. This is a good dough to use anytime you see a recipe calling for pâte brisée. Be prepared: The dough should chill for at least 3 hours.
Bulgogi Sliders With Scallion Salsa
Here is a sandwich version of the Korean barbecue standard known as bulgogi — “fire meat,” is the literal translation — and a taste of the sort of home cooking that can lead to more home cooking. It serves as a fragrant hamburger crusher, an elegant vanquisher of pizza. It is an enemy of takeout. I learned the recipe from Hooni Kim, the chef and owner of Danji, on the edge of the theater district in Manhattan, where bulgogi “sliders” are a hallmark of the menu and by far the restaurant’s most popular dish. It’s been adapted for use in the home.
Nashville-Style Hot Fried Chicken
This version of Nashville hot fried chicken, adapted from Peaches HotHouse in Brooklyn, will make your tongue sizzle and fill your eyes with tears from a combination of cayenne and ghost chile powders. (The latter is one of the hottest chiles in the world, reaching 1,000,000 on the Scoville heat scale.) Note that the recipe calls for both granulated and powdered onion and garlic. Try to use both. The powdered stuff is stronger in flavor while the granulated has a little more texture to it. (However if you can’t find both, either kind will work throughout the recipe.) The traditional way to serve this is on top of a piece or two of soft white bread, which helps mitigate the heat. A cold beer wouldn’t hurt, either.
Warm Lentil Salad With Balsamic Roast Squash
This recipe started out as something else. I had in my pantry a bag of mixed sprouted lentils – black, green, and brown. I cooked them with the intention of making dal, but I so liked the integrity of the cooked lentils – green and black lentils remain intact even after they soften – that I didn’t want to mash them. Meanwhile I had roasted some squash with balsamic vinegar. I ended up warming the lentils in a cumin-scented vinaigrette and serving them with the squash.
Bacon-and-Apple Quiche With Flaky Pie Crust
Polenta and Broccoli Rabe Lasagna
This lasagna layers noodles, polenta, mozzarella, sauce and broccoli rabe for a wonderfully savory and multi-textured one-dish meal. A note about the lasagna noodles: You don’t have to boil them, nor do you have to buy special no-boil noodles. You can soak the noodles in a bowl of water while you prepare the other ingredients, then slap them in the casserole dish. They will start to soften in their cold bath and finish cooking as the lasagna bakes.
Easy Roast Chicken
A 3 1/2 pound bird should roast in 55 to 60 minutes, while a 4 1/2 pound bird requires 60 to 65 minutes. If using a basket or a V-rack, be sure to grease it so the chicken does not stick to it. If you don't have a basket or V-rack, set the bird on a regular rack and use balls of aluminum foil to keep the roasting chicken propped up on its side.
Lasagna Vincisgrassi
Risotto al Salto
The Italian kitchen is famous for superior ingredients, and for letting nothing go to waste. This recipe for risotto al salto, which uses leftover, day-old risotto, is a perfect example: You start with a creamy, well-made saffron risotto, then make a crispy delicious cake from it the next day. I’m not the first to notice that many people make more risotto than they need just so they can have extras for this golden perfection the next day.
Coke-Brined Fried Chicken
John Currence, of City Grocery in Oxford, Miss., spent a long time in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit, and was justly celebrated for his hard work there helping to rebuild a cathedral of Southern fried chicken, Willie Mae’s Scotch House. In his 2013 cookbook, “Pickles, Pigs and Whiskey,” Currence paid tribute to the wet batter used on Willie Mae’s legendary dish. But for the purpose of weekend chicken warriors we have omitted it in our adaptation of his homage, concentrating instead on Currence’s use of a Coke-based poultry brine that not only adds some sweetness to the chicken thighs he uses but mildly tenderizes them along the way. Let the meat sit in the brine for a few hours before using, but not so long as overnight, where it really begins to break down. Then dry the thighs, dredge them in seasoned flour, and fry in peanut oil, ideally enhanced by lard. The result is mahogany-brown chicken with a crisp crust and a luscious interior.
Fish Chowder, Bermuda Style
Gumbo Z’Herbes With Crab and Prawns
The chef Tanya Holland’s mother grew up in Shreveport, La., and made a version of gumbo that features lots of hearty greens, so Ms. Holland came up with this version for her newest cookbook, “Tanya Holland’s California Soul: Recipes From a Culinary Journey West” (Ten Speed Press, 2022). It’s a blend of her mother’s recipe and a bit of inspiration from the famous Creole chef Leah Chase. Here, the sauce is a vibrant green thanks to a purée of spinach and kale, giving it an earthy lightness and California flavor that perfectly complements fresh seafood. If you can’t find Dungeness crab, use blue crab or Jonah crab in its place.
