Main Course
8665 recipes found
Potato and Sorrel Gratin
When a friend offered me sorrel from her garden I accepted gladly. I love the tangy flavor of this green leafy vegetable and will always buy it if I see it in my farmers’ market. You don’t need much to contribute lots of lemony flavor and vitamins C, A, iron, calcium and magnesium. The gratin is not a typical creamy sliced potato gratin; it’s more like a potato pie. I cook the potatoes first, then slice or dice and toss with the wilted sorrel, eggs, milk and cheese.
Tex-Mex Kasha
Chicken and Pepper Stew
This is an adaptation of a classic French bistro dish, poulet Basquaise. The chicken is cooked in a pipérade of onion, garlic, hot and sweet peppers, tomatoes and, in the authentic version, cured ham, which I’ve omitted. In this version I use skinned chicken pieces. Serve with noodles, rice or other grains.
Grilled Skewers of Sausage, Orange and Bay Leaf
Steamed Lobsters
For this recipe, you’re going to have to kill a lobster. Do yourself a favor in this regard. Don’t think about it. Don’t consider the lobster, as David Foster Wallace once did. Don’t take a position, ethically speaking. Just act. It will be easier for all involved. And once you do it, the rewards are deep: the sweet, tender meat, for dipping in melted butter and piling onto your plate with potatoes and corn, and the shells, to sauté and simmer into a luxurious stock.
Hot Shoppes' Mighty Mo Burger
Shrimp With Peppers
Spicy Oven-Fried Rice With Gochujang and Fried Eggs
This crunchy, tasty, not-really-fried rice gets a big umami punch from gochujang, the fermented Korean red-pepper paste that’s worth keeping in your fridge to perk up all sorts of dishes. As with any fried rice, you can add raw or cooked vegetables according to what you have on hand (though you’ll want to add cooked vegetables a little later in the cooking process). If you don’t have brussels sprouts, you could use any type of cabbage. Broccoli or cauliflower would be great substitutes for broccolini, and butternut squash can replace the carrots. The fried egg on top makes it feel like a more substantial meal, but you can leave it out for a lighter dinner. If you are a vegetarian, leave out the sausage, or add some smoked tofu. The dish is endlessly customizable.
Moqueca (Brazilian Fish Stew)
This Brazilian dish may contain a few unexpected or even unfamiliar ingredients, but they are easy to find online and worth the search. The result is a tropical fish stew mellowed by slices of plantain and coconut milk and accompanied by the traditional hot sauce called piri-piri and farofa, the toasted cassava-meal accompaniment. Farofa is served all over South America with all kinds of dishes; this version, with caramelized onions adapted from Felipe Amaral in Rio de Janeiro, was my favorite. You can serve the moqueca without the farofa, if you prefer, but it helps to sop up the soupy liquid from the stew.
Beef Stew With Prunes
Braised dishes like this beef stew may feature green, orange, yellow or red vegetables but their most appetizing color is brown, the shade of brown whose glossy darkness shouts intensity and richness. The key to achieving that glorious color and flavor is sufficient browning of the meat. Don't rush. The good thing is, this savory-sweet stew can almost be ignored while it is cooking and can be made in advance, the night – or even two – before you serve it. Couscous makes a great accompaniment, as does saffron rice, because those bring out the color of the stew. Plain crusty bread is another great option. This is simple cold weather food at its most appealing.
Sinigang (Tamarind Broth With Pork and Vegetables)
This is the soup that made me like vegetables when I was growing up. You always measure sinigang by sourness, which is so much a part of our cuisine — layers of acid coming from vinegar, fresh citrus, tamarind and unripe fruits. Here, sour is a power move, hitting you all the way at the back of your tongue. Whole serrano chiles bring a low-frequency spicy hum, adding not so much heat as depth. The daikon should be left in big, juicy chunks, so when you bite into them, you get an unexpected touch of coolness in the hot broth.
Spicy Hamburger With Red-Wine Sauce
Mr. Franey gives this American classic a Gallic twist. The recipe here can be prepared on a barbecue grill, in an oven broiler or even in a skillet. Whether you barbecue or broil, cook the patties about six inches from the heat source for about three minutes on each side, or until done as desired. If you are cooking on the stove top, use a heavy-gauge cast iron skillet. Cast iron sears extremely well when hot, but it has to be smoking hot before the meat is put in. Be sure the ventilation fan is on.
Chinese Pepper Steak
Chicken Tacos With Chipotle
For good tacos, you need fresh, hot tortillas and a zesty filling. Canned chipotle chiles will do the trick with their smoky heat; it's an easy way to get flavor fast. Look for small cans with “chipotle chiles in adobo” on the label. And Mexican groceries generally have better-quality tortillas than the ones you find in supermarkets; it's worth seeking those out and heating them gently over steam, or by toasting them in a dry cast-iron pan. You can also use this recipe with precooked chicken, which makes this already quite simple recipe as easy as falling out of bed.
Mac-and-Cheese
Spinach Spaetzle With Bacon and Sage
Spaetzle, the delicious little German dumplings (sometimes called batter noodles), are easy to make, though it takes a bit of practice. I prefer to form them with a soup spoon, flicking tiny half-moons of batter one-by-one into the pot, or to put the batter on a board and cut off thin strips of batter with a wet knife. Many cooks use a special spaetzle-making tool that forces squiggles of the batter into a pot of boiling water. Others push the batter through the holes of a colander, but for this you need to make a slightly wetter batter. These are green spaetzle, made with spinach purée, sizzled with bacon and sage leaves. (Instead of spinach, you could add chopped herbs, but plain spaetzle are divine, too.) Spaetzle take only moments to cook and can be prepared in advance, then sautéed in butter to serve.
Tex-Mex Meatballs With Spaghetti
Tortilla
Puréed Mushroom Soup
Thick and creamy, with no cream, this tastes so much richer than it is. I use a small amount of milk to thin out the soup, but you can also use stock to thin it, if you don’t want to include any dairy.
Barbecued Medallions of Pork
Black Bean-Chorizo Stew
This chili-like stew relies on spicy, fresh green chorizo for its bright, zesty flavor. It only takes half an hour to make your own green chorizo, but you can substitute any kind of fresh (uncured) store-bought sausage, as long as it’s got a kick. Then add some chopped garlic, along with minced parsley and roasted poblano pepper for the green factor. Serve it over rice, or with corn or flour tortillas on the side. Here are several other dishes you can make with chorizo.
Three Pepper Pie
Roy Choi’s Braised Short-Rib Stew
Here is an adaptation of the Korean braised-short-rib stew known as galbijjim, a staple of neighborhood potlucks and church suppers and, in the words of the Los Angeles chef Roy Choi, “that meal from home that every Korean kid says his or her mom does best.” His recipe (well, my version of his recipe, which is his version of his mom’s) is rich and deeply flavored, thickly sauced and pungent with sugar, spice, soy and garlic. It is the sort of meal you could put together on a weekend afternoon and serve for nights to come. It is the best sort of family food.
Arroz Gordo
Arroz gordo, or fat rice from Macau, is reminiscent of paella, which is no surprise considering that Macau was a colony of Portugal, a country that shares many culinary traditions with its Iberian neighbor, Spain. Here, deliciously seasoned rice is studded with bits of duck and sausage and a host of other savory ingredients, all seasoned with a nod to Asia. Many of the components of this recipe can be prepared separately ahead of time and refrigerated, and in the case of the chicken, up to a week in advance and frozen. All that is needed is a quick reheat and last-minute assembly. This recipe calls for chicken, pork, sausage, clams and shrimp, but feel free to make substitutions. Plump mussels would be a fine stand-in for the clams, and you could even purchase Chinese roast pork to skip the step of roasting your own.