Milk & Cream
3644 recipes found

Pork-Cabbage Casserole
This hearty skillet meal is filled with layers of buttery, caramelized cabbage sandwiching a filling of herby pork and rice. A garlicky yogurt sauce, plus plenty of lemon juice and zest, keeps the dish bright and tangy, and the soft cabbage makes it especially warming on a cold winter day. This reheats perfectly, so make it ahead if you like (up to three days, store it in the fridge), then heat it up in a 350-degree oven until steaming.

Caramelized Corn and Asparagus Pasta With Ricotta
This summery pasta features caramelized corn, crisp-tender asparagus and earthy turmeric, which provides the dish’s sunny hue. It’s not easy to cook corn to the point of browning without losing all its moisture, but a pinch of sugar helps speed up the caramelization process. Vermouth lends acidity to the light, glossy garlicky sauce, but you could use wine, or even a tablespoon of lemon juice or champagne vinegar for lift. Fresh ricotta provides richness.

Spicy Tomato-Coconut Bisque With Shrimp and Mushrooms
A full-bodied, mildly spiced tomato soup with sweetness and depth from roasted red peppers, this is a tasty base for lightly poached shrimp or pieces of any firm white fish. The gingery, herbed mushroom gets with a citrusy lift from makrut lime leaves, ensuring this dish is packed with flavor. As a substitute, lime zest will work in a pinch. Serve over steamed rice or dig in with torn pieces from a crusty loaf of bread.

Pan-Fried Tofu With Red Curry Paste
Raghavan Iyer says Thailand is the only country outside of India that worships curries with as much devotion. In the way Indian cooks use a blend of herbs and spices, Thai cooks use an array of curry pastes to create regional curries. He created three for his 2023 book “On the Curry Trail: Chasing the Flavor That Seduced The World” (Workman Publishing). His red curry paste is a version of the most common curry. When frying the tofu, add a little more oil if the pan seems dry and be aware that when the chile paste is added to the pan, the capsaicin can produce a head-clearing whiff of heat.

Roasted Salmon With Asparagus, Lemon and Brown Butter
Ready in just 15 minutes, this fast dinner combines silky salmon with a vibrant green medley of asparagus and peas. While the fish roasts, the vegetables and sauce come together in one pan on the stovetop. Thinly slicing the asparagus is the trick to maintaining a crisp texture that complements the tender salmon, while bright lemon juice and zingy capers balance the nutty brown butter sauce. Parsley is used here to finish, but dill or tarragon would also be lovely. Leftover vegetables make a fantastic omelet filling the next day.

Tomato Alphabet Soup
A taste of nostalgia can be comforting. Inspired by the childhood favorite, canned tomato soup, this homemade version yields a lush and satisfying meal culled from kitchen staples. The process of separating your canned tomatoes from their juices, cooking them until caramelized and enhancing their strength with concentrated tomato paste helps develop deep roasted tomato flavor. If you can’t find alphabet pasta, any other small pasta will be delicious.

Tofu and Herb Salad With Sesame
Tender sweet herbs are the foundation of this lovely, delicate salad that’s dressed with a creamy yogurt sauce flavored with sesame, lime juice, ginger and green chile for kick. Feel free to use any combination of the herbs mentioned in the recipe, though you could also incorporate large leaves of butter lettuce. Topped with cool cubes of soft tofu, this dish is a very flavorful and refreshing first course or light lunch.

Tofu Makhani (Indian Butter Tofu)
This recipe is a vegetarian riff on butter chicken, or murgh makhani, a classic Indian dish in which chicken simmers in a rich, dairy-laden tomato sauce that’s seasoned with heady spices like turmeric, cumin, garam masala and cardamom. This weeknight-friendly version has a toned-down ingredient list, and the tofu doesn’t require hours of marinating, which means you can get everything on the table in under an hour if you start the rice as the tomatoes are cooking down. Heavy cream gives this dish a rich finish, but full-fat coconut milk makes a fine substitute. Whatever you do, don’t substitute anything for the butter or ghee (sorry, vegans) — it’s the signature ingredient.

Sesame Tofu With Coconut-Lime Dressing and Spinach
Coated in panko and sesame seeds, tofu takes on a splendid crunchiness that contrasts with sautéed spinach in this 30-minute dish. It comes together under a fragrant coconut-lime dressing — which you can double, then toss with salad. Swap out the spinach to your taste: Try this with mustard greens or chopped collard greens, adjusting the cooking time accordingly. Be careful when handling the uncooked tofu once it is breaded, as the breading is delicate. Using a pair of kitchen tongs or two forks to grab the tofu from the sides will help prevent its crumbling or falling apart. Serve this satisfying main by itself, or alongside a bowl of rice.

Beet Salad With Coriander-Yogurt Dressing
Disks of succulent roast beets make this salad especially hearty. If your oven is already on, throw in some beets wrapped in foil, and roast them until tender. But if you are pressed for time, grab some store-bought cooked beets. They’ll work just as well. This salad is all about big forkfuls of vegetables; the plump chickpeas, which are suffused with warm coriander and bright orange zest, lend a delightful crunch. It’s all finished with a creamy yogurt dressing you’ll want to drizzle over everything on your plate.

Coconut Red Curry With Tofu
This simple weeknight red curry relies on jarred or canned red curry paste for flavor, which you can find at larger supermarkets and specialty markets. Transfer leftover canned curry paste to a jar, top it with a little oil and store in the refrigerator for up to a month. Or freeze for longer storage. Feel free to substitute other vegetables for the mushrooms and snow peas, though you might have to increase the cooking time slightly if using something dense like carrot or cubed winter squash.

Brothy Thai Curry With Silken Tofu and Herbs
A jarred red curry paste is the central flavor of this wonderfully restorative and nourishing broth. Coconut milk lends a subtle creaminess, and the cherry tomatoes become bright little jammy bursts. You can use fresh tomatoes when in season, but canned tomatoes do just as well. Ladle the piping hot broth over seasoned tofu pieces and fresh herbs: The delicate silken tofu used here will absorb big flavors from the surrounding liquid.

Mulligatawny Soup
This soup is a British-Indian cuisine hybrid, the result of colonizers’ encounters with rasam — a spiced, soupy dish often enriched with lentils, sometimes served over rice — from Tamil Nadu, a region in southern India. “Milagu tannir,” which means pepper water, was how Tamil people described some versions of rasam; it morphed into mulligatawny when the British made it thick, chunky and meaty. In the cookbook “Classic Indian Cooking,” the author Julie Sahni wrote that she fell in love with mulligatawny when she first encountered it in Germany. “The present version bears no resemblance whatever to the traditional rasam,” she said, adding, “Because of its unorthodox origin, Indian cooks have had a field day exercising their creative genius with it.” This version is thickened with a roux, masoor dal and coconut milk, and bolstered with chicken thighs and tart apple. Curry powder is not a traditional Indian ingredient, but it reflects the dish’s British influence.

Vegetable Tofu Curry
This one-pot vegetarian meal comes together quickly and leftovers keep for days. Creamy coconut milk is made up of fat and liquid from pressed coconut meat and this recipe delivers its full range of flavors. When you melt the solids from a can of coconut milk and keep cooking until the liquid evaporates, the oil eventually separates out and delivers toasty nuttiness. Here, onion — any kind — tenderizes in that tasty fat, and curry powder becomes more fragrant in it. Tofu soaks up the curry sauce while vegetables steam over the mixture, then everything gets stirred together. Experiment with whatever vegetables you have on hand, cooking them until tender.

Indian Butter Chickpeas
A vegetarian riff on Indian butter chicken, this fragrant stew is spiced with cinnamon, garam masala and fresh ginger, and is rich and creamy from the coconut milk. You could add cubed tofu here for a soft textural contrast, or cubed seitan for a chewy one. Or serve it as it is, over rice to catch every last drop of the glorious sauce. You won’t want to leave any behind.

Crisped Chickpeas in Spicy Brown Butter
This recipe for crisped chickpeas dressed in spicy brown butter is your new, 15-minute way to turn a simple can of chickpeas into a satisfying dinner. Chickpeas are fried in a little olive oil, then butter is added, which turns browns and nutty. Crushed fennel seeds and red-pepper flakes season the brown butter, but feel free play around: Add a sprig of thyme or rosemary, a few tablespoons of olives or capers, some grated garlic and ginger, or a drizzle of tahini or honey. You can also toast some nuts or seeds, like cashews or sesame, in the browning butter. Just before serving, add a little lemon juice or vinegar to offset the richness. Serve over yogurt, orzo or rice, or top with a fried egg.

One-Pan Paprika Chicken With Lentils, Squash and Daqa
This oven bake requires minimal effort and is very much a meal in itself. Daqa is a vinegar-based condiment, most commonly used when making the much-loved Egyptian koshari, a hearty dish of rice, pasta and lentils. Daqa is a nifty way to brighten stews, braises and anything that needs an acidic lift. Feel free to swap out the kabocha squash for root vegetables, such as sweet potato or celery root, and serve the whole thing with nothing more than a leafy green salad.

Coconut Curry Chickpeas With Pumpkin and Lime
Canned pumpkin purée and coconut milk, heavily seasoned with curry spices and lots of fresh lime juice, make a sweet-sharp sauce for chickpeas. It’s a rich, creamy curry that you can eat on its own, or serve over rice or couscous. If you want to incorporate more vegetables, stir in some spinach, baby kale or sliced green beans during the last few minutes of cooking, letting them soften in the sauce.

Squash and Chickpea Stew With Lemongrass
This comforting weeknight squash stew is inspired by Thai curries that combine rich coconut and fragrant lemongrass, but it’s quite mild and soothing rather than spicy. Deeply orange kabocha is used here, but butternut, delicata or acorn squash would all work well. The secret behind this quick yet flavorful dish is peanut butter; it adds nutty depth to balance the aromatic and bright lemongrass-infused broth. Chickpeas pair well with squash, but this customizable stew can accommodate any bean (like white, pinto or black beans); lightly mashing half of the tender squash and beans at the end thickens the sauce.

Red Lentil Loaf
Vegetarian lentil loaf has a long history of masquerading as meatloaf. With its brownish-grey color and a red ketchup glaze, it does its best to look and taste like meat (though it never does). This delicate red lentil loaf is not at all like that. It’s all about the lentil flavor — sweet and vegetal. The seasoning veers a little bit Turkish, with lemon, cumin, cilantro, dill and yogurt. It is delicious served at room temperature or warm.

Pasta With Chickpeas and a Negroni
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. A drink before dinner? Make a Negroni, then pasta with chickpeas and tomato sauce. First, the Negroni: one part gin, one part sweet vermouth, one part Campari, stirred with ice then strained over ice and garnished with orange peel. Sip! Then peel and chop an onion and sauté it in olive oil with a few cloves of smashed garlic and a spray of salt and pepper. Have another hit of Negroni. When the mixture has just started to brown, add a tablespoon of tomato paste and a 28-ounce can of chopped tomatoes, along with a stick of cinnamon. Stir and simmer away for 10 minutes or so, longer if you can, then add enough cream or half-and-half so that the sauce turns softer in color, running to pink. Meanwhile, boil some salted water and prepare your favorite pasta (I like shells for this application) until it is just al dente. Drain, then toss in a 14-ounce can of drained chickpeas and stir the whole thing into the tomato sauce, topping with chopped parsley and a sprinkle of red-pepper flakes. Finish that Negroni. Eat. 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.

Coconut Rice
Coconut milk lends rice both fat and sweetness, making it a richer, more mellow side than plain rice. To make it, simply replace half of the cooking water with coconut milk. It becomes a meal if you serve it with a fried egg, finely sliced pickled chiles with a little of their pickling liquid and some crushed peanuts. And if you wanted to turn it into dessert, serving it with ripe fruit like cut mango on top, you could stick to the recipe below, but bump the sugar up to 2 tablespoons.

Marcus Samuelsson’s Quinoa with Broccoli, Cauliflower and Toasted Coconut
Quinoa “might be the new kale,” said Marcus Samuelsson, the chef and owner of Red Rooster in Harlem. The ancient grain is the star of this quick one-bowl dish, which Mr. Samuelsson created to be an easy weeknight meal. Quinoa, steeped in coconut milk, becomes a rich canvas for vegetables and bold flavors like ginger and Aleppo pepper.

One-Pan Coconut Curry Rice With Chicken and Vegetables
Baking rice is a fail-safe way to a fluffy bowl of grains — and a quick route to a fragrant, hearty dinner. Red curry paste, coconut milk and peanut butter spice the chicken, rice and vegetables in this hands-off, one-pot recipe. Chunky peanut butter adds nuttiness, crunch and creaminess all at once. Feel free to swap out the carrots and broccoli for vegetables with similar cooking times, like sweet potato or snap peas. Drizzle your red curry rice with lime-spiked coconut milk for brightness just before digging in.