Party
409 recipes found
Za’atar Parmesan Pinwheels
These crunchy, savory snacks have the irresistible can’t-stop-eating nature of cheese straws, but with the added allure of a sprinkle of herby, sesame-flecked za’atar, a Middle Eastern seasoning mix available in large supermarkets and spice shops. Rolled into logs and sliced into pinwheels before baking, they puff into domes in the oven’s heat, turning golden, crisp and wonderfully flaky. If you can find all-butter puff pastry, it really makes a difference here, adding a rich, deep flavor and an especially bronzed color.
Fried Wontons
Crunchy on the outside with a juicy shrimp filling, these deep-fried wontons are the ultimate party food. (You can use storebought or make your own wontons with this recipe.) To make sure they cook to the ideal golden brown crispness, avoid crowding the pan of hot oil. Each batch takes only a few minutes to fry, and the wontons still taste great when served warm. Better yet, welcome guests into the kitchen and serve the wontons as they’re ready. The spicy sweet-and-sour dipping sauce can be prepared ahead, making this party dish even easier.
Cassava Oven Fries
Cassava (also known as yuca) is a terrific vessel for a variety of dips like ata din din and guasacaca, or doused with a cilantro-garlic sauce. The root vegetable is ideal for roasting, and these fries can be a quick snack or a wonderful side. Don’t skip the first step that calls for blanching them in hot water, otherwise, the oven’s dry heat will dehydrate the starchy root, and the goal here is a tender soft interior in a crisp, golden brown shell. These fries are best finished with salt and served hot. You can reheat any leftovers in a hot oven the next day, but they are way too delicious to save, and will likely disappear rather fast.
Roasted Salmon With Miso Cream
A whole fillet of salmon cut from one side of a fish looks spectacular but takes only a little longer to cook than smaller portions. Crème fraîche spread all over the fish keeps it moist as it roasts and adds a savory richness when a dollop of miso is stirred into the mix. That same pair is gently warmed into a sauce that’s finished with tart citrus juice so that it tastes both creamy and light. This can be served simply with salad and bread or be offered with other vegetables, like potatoes, asparagus or brussels sprouts.
Chicago Thin-Crust (Tavern-Style) Pizza With Sausage and Giardiniera
Tavern-style pizza is not particularly difficult compared with other styles, but it does take a good amount of time from start to finish — several days in fact — but it’s largely hands-off. And, on the actual day of baking, you don’t have to deal with stretching or tossing dough, making it perfect for parties or for topping with kids. This recipe is part of our complete recipe for a Chicago thin-crust pizza. View the recipes for the dough, Chicago-style Italian sausage and accompanying sauce.
Cantonese-Style Steamed Fish
This classic Cantonese dish is one of the simplest ways I know to prepare whole fish or fillets. Simply steamed lean white fish is seasoned with the umami richness of soy sauce and wine, then finished with a (careful) tableside drizzle of hot oil that sizzles and sputters, bringing out the bouquet of fresh ginger, scallions and cilantro piled on top of the fish. You’ll need a lidded pan wide enough to fit the plate you are steaming your fish on, and deep enough to cover the fish, the plate, and a steaming rack underneath. But you’ll end up with fish that is light and silky in texture and aroma, but deep in flavor.
Butternut Squash, Leek and Za’atar Pie
This comforting pie makes a great vegetarian centerpiece, ideal for a celebration. It benefits from being assembled the day before, receiving a good amount of time to set in the fridge and thus involving a lot less work on the day you plan to enjoy it. You can also bake the whole thing a few hours in advance, then just reheat it in the oven for 20 minutes, if you like. Use any extra pastry trim to cut out fun, festive shapes like holly leaves or stars to personalize your pie. Serve this alongside roasted veggies or a big leafy salad.
Spiced Squash and Phyllo Pie
This savory vegetable pie is modeled after the classic Moroccan b’stilla, usually made with squab, pigeon or chicken. It isn’t traditional, of course, but this vegetarian version is quite delicious, flaky, buttery and fragrant with spices. A diced preserved lemon adds perfume and sharpness, but you can also use a regular lemon. B’stilla normally has a layer of scrambled egg, but here, it’s replaced with a mixture of thick yogurt and feta. As with the original, everything is encased in golden, crisp buttered phyllo, sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar and cinnamon and served piping hot.
Saffron-Ginger Pears
For a stellar dessert, poach pears and let them steep in a bright yellow saffron-ginger syrup. With saffron, a little goes a long way: A quarter teaspoon will not break the bank. Prepare these days ahead of serving and store them in their syrup; they’ll only improve in flavor. Served chilled with a dab of crème fraîche or a scoop of vanilla ice cream, this dessert is sheer luxury.
Cheese and Spinach Phyllo Rolls
Tangy and bright, these phyllo rolls make for a great appetizer when you’re preparing food to entertain or to share. The star here is the sumac onion filling, which adds a wonderfully sharp surprise inside crispy phyllo. Though these rolls gain complexity from feta, halloumi, toasted pine nuts and fresh spinach, mint and parsley, they’re also quite forgiving in that you can always use different cheeses, herbs or nuts. Feel free to play around with different phyllo shapes; thicker cigars or even triangles both look great.
Roasted Eggplant Salad
In Morocco — and similarly throughout the Middle East — the most delicious salads are made with seasoned, cooked vegetables, not leafy greens. This dish, smoky eggplant salad with cilantro, infused with cumin, hot pepper and a generous amount of olive oil, is a winning combination. For the perfect flavor, you want to seriously blacken the eggplant. Choose very firm eggplants, which will have fewer seeds. The salad will keep, refrigerated, for several days.
Lemon Cheesecake Tart
With a simple, pat-in-the-pan crust and a thin layer of light, lemon-scented cream cheese, this cheesecake tart is a lot easier to make than you might imagine. The base can be baked right away, with no chilling required, and the custardy filling relies upon little more than tangy cream cheese, lemon zest and juice, sugar and eggs. It’s the perfect dessert for a winter or early spring gathering, when there might not be much fresh fruit around but you’re in the mood for a bright dessert.
Mocha Icebox Cake
Icebox cakes gained popularity in the 1920s along with the rise of refrigerators in American homes and the creation of Nabisco chocolate wafers, which featured an icebox cake recipe on their packaging. This nostalgic, no-bake treat makes use of a few simple ingredients to great effect: Billowy, lightly sweetened whipped cream is layered with chocolate wafer cookies and left to sit until cookies and cream become one; this recipe updates the classic with the addition of espresso powder and a bit of spice. Refrigeration is important for icebox cakes, as it allows the cookies time to absorb some of the moisture from the cream, which gives this dessert a soft, sliceable texture. A bit of time in the freezer makes the cake easier to cut into tidy slices, but it tastes just as good scooped straight out of the pan.
Herbed Grain Salad With Mushrooms, Hazelnuts and Pears
Instead of the usual Mediterranean flavors, this grain salad has a whiff of Eastern Europe, with dill, hazelnuts and mushrooms. Ripe pear adds juicy and sweet notes. It's great for fall and winter parties, and can be prepared well ahead of time, but wait till the last minute to stir everything together.
Mushroom-Butternut Squash Strata
This golden-topped strata has a savory mushroom and butternut squash filling, which gives it a complex, earthy flavor. Mozzarella adds mild richness, while the Parmesan gives everything a hit of salt and depth. You’ll need to let the strata sit in the fridge for at least eight hours (and preferably overnight) before baking. This allows the bread to soak up all the custard. Then, run it under the broiler after baking so the edges become crunchy and pleasingly singed. It’s a lovely main dish for a celebratory brunch or meatless supper, or a hearty side dish with roast chicken or fish for dinner.
Caramelized Onion Galette
This rich, autumnal galette takes its inspiration from the flavors of French onion soup. Seasoned with Gruyère and lots of cracked black pepper, the galette dough takes the place of the crostini, and the caramelized onion filling is fortified with beef broth and sherry. The dish is great for entertaining — it can be prepared in advance — but requires a little bit of patience: You’ll need to let the dough rest for at least four hours, which allows the flour to hydrate and will make the dough less crumbly to work with. Let the tart rest for about 10 minutes before slicing and serving. Eat it while it’s hot or serve at room temperature alongside a salad or steak.
Party Wreath
This party-size vegetarian version of a sausage roll takes a bit of inspiration from potato- and pea-filled samosas: The filling is a coarse mash of peas and potato mixed with fresh ginger and green chiles, along with cumin, fennel and sesame seeds. Seasoned with lemon juice and garam masala, it has a tangy, gently spicy flavor that’s even more sumptuous when it’s wrapped in buttery store-bought puff pastry. Be sure to cut the roll almost all the way to the inner edge before sliding it into the oven, so that the baked pieces are easy to tear away. Serve with green chutney, tamarind chutney, a squirt of Maggi ketchup, or just as is, with a few wedges of lemon or lime on the side.
Moroccan Nachos
This Moroccan twist on the much-loved appetizer features kefta, a ground beef (or lamb) mixture seasoned with parsley, cilantro, mint, paprika and cumin, and a spicy-sweet harissa salsa. Both give these nachos an unusual kick that’s as festive as it is comforting. Creamy guacamole, bright with lemon zest and juice, balances everything out. To save time, cook the kefta mixture and prepare the salsa in advance. Using a combination of fresh and canned tomatoes creates a not-too-runny and not-too-chunky consistency that’s ideal for drizzling over a tray of nachos. That said, feel free to swap the fresh tomatoes for half a 14-ounce can crushed tomatoes or vice versa.
Epis Braised Beef Short Ribs
Haitian-American chef Gregory Gourdet developed this dish for Kann Winter Village, the pop-up restaurant he ran in Portland, Ore., in 2021. The temporary restaurant served as a preview of Kann, the Haitian restaurant he opened in August 2022, which landed on The New York Times’ list of America’s Best Restaurants. Beef is not nearly as prevalent in Haitian cuisine as chicken, pork and seafood, said Mr. Gourdet, whose family is Haitian, but the flavors in the dish — including the Haitian epis seasoning — are “very Haitian. It tastes like my family’s food.”
Citrus Salad With Fennel and Olives
An orange salad can be a simple affair. Add sliced oranges, a few black olives and a drizzle of oil, and it’s a winning combination, known throughout the eastern Mediterranean, southern Italy and perhaps especially in Morocco. You can up the interest factor in any number of ways. Add thinly sliced fennel and red onion, some arugula, mint or basil leaves, a sprinkling of red pepper, a pinch of wild oregano or a little flaky salt. The salad needn’t be restricted to only navel oranges. In season, blood oranges, Cara Cara oranges or grapefruit are welcome to join.
Pineapple Fried Rice
“It’s a whole balanced meal inside a tropical fruit,” writes Pepper Teigen about this pineapple fried rice recipe in her book “The Pepper Thai Cookbook” (Clarkson Potter, 2021). This is fried rice, which means in place of the bacon and chicken, you can use shrimp, beef or whatever vegetables you have languishing in your crisper drawer. The one thing you shouldn’t skip are the assertive seasonings, which merit a party: The full 2 tablespoons of curry powder and 1 teaspoon of ground white pepper are what make this dish tingle and trot with a hot, addictive savoriness.
Chocolate-Chip Cookie Pizza
You like chocolate chip cookies. You like pizza. What could be better than a giant chocolate chip pizza cookie? If your answer is, “pretty much nothing,” we’d say you’re 100% right. This Instagram-worthy treat starts with a batch of our famous chocolate chip cookie dough (with a smidge of cornstarch to keep the cookie soft and gooey in the center), but from there, it’s all yours. When we took it out of the oven, we spread on cherry jam “pizza sauce,” drizzled on melted white chocolate “mozzarella,” and added rounds of raspberry fruit leather “pepperoni.” But warmed Nutella and blobs of marshmallow fluff are a pretty awesome combination, too. We developed this recipe for a special print-only edition of The New York Times for Kids, but our sources tell us grown-up sweet tooths can't resist this oversized treat either. For a more sophisticated dinner party-worthy variation, leave off the toppings and serve generous wedges with scoops of vanilla ice cream and salted caramel sauce.
Braised Pork With Prunes and Orange
This tart-sweet braise is inspired by porc aux pruneaux, a classic French dish, which usually involves soaking prunes in tawny port before adding them to a sauce for pork. Here, the prunes are soaked in a mix of vinegar and brown sugar, a more economical way to amplify their mellow sweet-sour flavor. (But by all means use tawny port instead of the vinegar-sugar combo if you like!) This one-pot version is fragrant with orange and contains an assertive amount of sherry vinegar to balance the richness of the pork and dried fruit. Serve the pork and sauce over polenta or with seeded bread.
Moroccan Chicken Salad
Just as a little saffron, garlic and paprika can conjure the flavors of Spain, so too will preserved lemons, cumin, mint and olives evoke Morocco. This salad and the accompanying couscous can be doubled or tripled to anchor a generous buffet. Both can be assembled a couple of hours in advance and set aside on a kitchen counter. Serve them at room temperature.