Side Dish
4106 recipes found
Sweet Potato and Onion Dip
George Washington Carver, the botanist, educator and inventor, was known as “the peanut man,” but he geeked out over sweet potatoes as much as peanuts. He recorded recipes for sweet potato flour, sweet potato starch and commercial canning. “The delicate flavor of a sweet potato is lost if it is not cooked properly,” he wrote in his 1936 Bulletin No. 38. (His paper booklets were distributed to rural farmers to assist with crop rotation and provide instructions for added-value products.) Dr. Carver considered baking the best way to cook sweet potatoes while preserving the most flavor. Use varieties like Covington, Vardaman or jewel; the sugary notes balance the alliums and warming spices. Raw vegetables or tortilla chips make practical dipping utensils for this spread, or lather the dip over toasted thick-cut bread.
Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Fresh Figs
This dish from Yotam Ottolenghi, a chef and an author of "Jerusalem," the beloved Middle Eastern cookbook, takes inspiration from a city where fig trees grow in abundance. Roasted sweet potatoes, along with wedges of fresh figs, are piled onto a plate, drizzled with a green onion-chile sauce and a balsamic reduction then dotted with generous pats of goat cheese. Do plan ahead, as this recipe does require a bit of preparation, but it's easy work that's more than worth it.
Maple Candied Sweet Potatoes
Here's a simple way prepare a favorite Thanksgiving side. Just bake the potatoes, peel and slice, then drench them in a butter-cider-maple syrup mixture that's been seasoned with cinnamon, cloves and orange zest. Bake until bubbly and the edges brown.
Brown Butter Lentil and Sweet Potato Salad
This simple lentil salad has a little secret: a toasty, brown butter vinaigrette perfumed with sage. The dish has as much texture as it does flavor. French green lentils or black lentils are the ideal choice, as they hold their shape well after cooking, but brown lentils will work too, though they’ll be a bit softer. Start testing your lentils for doneness after about 15 minutes of cooking; you want them cooked through but not mushy, and they’re best if they retain some bite. Roasted until tender, the sweet potatoes add richness, but feel free to substitute just about any roasted vegetables. Carrots, beets or red bell peppers would all be delicious in their stead.
Sweet Potato Hash Browns
A riff on Josh Ozersky’s famous minimalist hash browns, these are made by sprinkling grated sweet potato over hot butter in a very thin layer, then waiting patiently for the starch to work its magic. Crisp, salty, buttery and addictive, these hash browns are so good, you could probably eat the entire batch in one sitting (or force yourself to be generous and share with a friend). Serve with a fried or over-easy egg for a complete breakfast.
Chile Sweet Potatoes
The chef Rick Bayless offers a wonderful recipe for sweet potatoes glazed with an ancho chile paste in his book “Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen.” Instead of making the paste, I make a thinner glaze with canned chipotle and some of the adobo they’re packed in. The glaze makes a spicy contrast to the sweet potatoes. You can make this recipe vegan by using light brown sugar instead of honey.
Sweet Potatoes Baked With Lemon
This recipe first appeared in The Times in 1992, with an article by Molly O'Neill, when Edna Lewis, many years after writing her seminal cookbook “The Taste of Country Cooking,” was the chef at the Brooklyn restaurant Gage & Tollner. The addition of lemon zest and juice make this brighter and less sweet than typical sweet potato dishes.
Roasted Sweet Potato Oven Fries
I don’t know what I like best about these sweet wedges – the way the sweet potato skins crisp and caramelize, the creamy texture of the sweet flesh, or the subtle flavors of the spices and infused oil.
Bademjan Kebab
Bademjan kebab is traditionally pan-fried eggplant stuffed with bieh, a herb-and-nut sauce that, in Northern Iran, uses sour fruit molasses along with the typical sweet and sour pomegranate molasses. An important Northern Iranian spice, Persian hogweed is earthy, sour and slightly bitter, with a pungent scent; you can find it at Middle Eastern groceries. Mr. Sadr sautés the bieh until the herbs and nuts cook down into a dark green, thick paste, which is spooned onto partially roasted eggplant halves then roasted. Northern Iranian cooking doesn’t use a lot of spices, so the herbs, nuts and molasses create a deeply flavored, almost meaty vegan sauce. It’s flexible, so sub in dill, basil, tarragon, savory or scallion for any of the herbs. The bieh will keep for 1 week in the fridge and up to 3 months in the freezer, so you can make it in advance. If eating this dish as a main, Mr. Sadr suggests serving it with plain or turmeric basmati rice.
Glazed Sweet Potatoes
Less sugary than traditional candied yams, these sweet potatoes rely on the natural sweetness of pineapple juice, with just a hint of brown sugar to form a syrup that’s flavored with vanilla and cinnamon. The pineapple adds some tangy acidity that further balances the sweetness of the potatoes and the syrup that coats them. By parboiling the sweet potatoes before baking them in this recipe (which can be done a day or two ahead), you’re cutting down the cook time — and ensuring that you’ll get fork-tender spuds. This dish is finished on the stovetop, which helps the syrup to thicken and come together quickly.
Salt-Rubbed Sweet Potatoes With Sour Cream and Chives
If you’ve ever thought the somewhat-dull sweet potato could use some punch, try covering it in a layer of salt before you bake it: The salt flavors and tenderizes the skin, leaving a crisp exterior that begs for the cooling tang of sour cream. Leave the potatoes a little damp after you’ve scrubbed them clean so that you’ll have an easier time getting the salt to stick.
Gochujang-Glazed Eggplant With Fried Scallions
Loosely inspired by the Korean banchan gaji bokkeum (stir-fried eggplant), this recipe keeps the eggplant in large pieces and sears it over high heat, yielding beautifully cooked flesh and still-violet skin. Though gaji bokkeum is traditionally soy sauce-based, my mother uses gochujang, the fermented Korean chile paste, for added sweetness and heat. The result is divine: As the sticky red sauce clings to the fried eggplant spears, it caramelizes in the heat of the pan and provides a glossy finish. The real star of this dish, though, is the scallion oil. The tangle of thinly sliced scallions crisps in olive oil, lending its oniony flavor to the oil, which is then used to cook the eggplant. This dish is salty, spicy and sweet — everything you want in a banchan — and tastes great with a bowl of fresh white rice.
Fiery Sweet Potatoes
Coconut milk and Thai red curry paste turn up the heat, but brown sugar and butter are part of the mix too in this side dish — an amazing combination of flavors. It would be a fine addition to any table from Thanksgiving through May.
Eggplant Caponata
Caponata became part of Sicilian cooking centuries ago, when the island was under Arab rule. The Arabs brought eggplants and sugar, along with citrus and spices. Other versions of caponata contain raisins and pine nuts; this one has capers and green olives. Some cooks add a lot of tomato, but I prefer just a touch of good tomato paste. The seasoning is sweet, sour and salty, and laced with olive oil. Like pickles and other savory preserves, caponata is often made in quantity and stored in jars for use throughout the year. Serve it on little toasts as an appetizer or to accompany a meal.
Sweet and Sour Eggplant With Garlic Chips
This vibrant eggplant dish relies heavily on simple pantry staples, but gets its complex flavor from the clever use of garlic: First, you make garlic chips, then you fry eggplant in the remaining garlic-infused oil. Since garlic chips can burn easily, the key here is to combine the garlic and oil in an unheated pan for even cooking. As the oil heats up, the garlic will sizzle rapidly as the moisture cooks off. When it slows down, the garlic slices should be crisp. Be sure to remove the chips just as they begin to turn golden, as they will continue to cook after being removed from the oil. The rest is easy: Sauté the eggplant, create a quick soy sauce glaze, sprinkle with herbs and garlic chips, and serve.
Eggplant and Potato Gratin
In this side dish inspired by Indian flavors, slices of eggplant and potato sit over a bed of crushed tomatoes seasoned with garlic, cumin and nigella seeds. It’s a wonderful accompaniment to seafood, particularly roasted fish. To cut the cooking time, slice the vegetables even thinner, using a mandolin or food processor. Nigella seeds are sometimes erroneously labeled as black cumin, but they look and taste quite different. They have a triangular shape and a distinct black coat, and the flavor will remind some of alliums. There is no direct substitute, but, for the same texture — if not the same taste — you could use sesame seeds.
Yotam Ottolenghi’s Chermoula Eggplant With Bulgur and Yogurt
A mixture of herbs and spices used in North African cooking, chermoula is often used to season fish. In this recipe from "Jerusalem," the famed Middle Eastern cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi, it is rubbed over eggplant, which is then roasted and topped with a tabbouleh-like salad.
Tomato, Squash and Eggplant Gratin
This is one of the simplest Provençal gratins, a dish that takes a little bit of time to assemble, then bakes on its own for 1 1/2 hours. It tastes best the day after it’s made.
Miso-Glazed Eggplant
Miso-glazed eggplant (Nasu dengaku) is on many Japanese menus, and it’s a dish I always order. It’s incredibly easy to make at home. I roast the eggplant first, then brush it with the glaze and run it under the broiler. The trick is getting the timing right so the glaze caramelizes but doesn’t burn. That’s a guessing game in my old Wedgewood oven, because the broiler door has no window.
Lentil and Orzo Stew With Roasted Eggplant
For rich, golden cubes of roasted eggplant, a high-temperature oven is crucial. Here, lentils and pasta make for a hearty stew, and the coriander seeds introduce a robust, clean flavor. Use a mortar and pestle, a spice grinder or the base of a wine bottle to crush the seeds, opening them up before they’re tossed with the eggplant. Serve this stew warm or hot, topped with an aged, salty cheese like ricotta salata or feta, and a soft-poached egg if you like. The lemon zest and juice are essential and enhance the finish.
Crunchy Eggplant Parmesan
In most eggplant Parmesan recipes, crusty slices of fried eggplant go into a casserole with sauce and cheese -- where they quickly turn to sludge. This recipe holds on to the crunch by transforming each whole eggplant into a crisp cutlet. You can make one eggplant per person to serve this as an appetizer, or add a bed of pasta to make it more substantial. There's no Parmesan cheese in this recipe, but that's not a mistake: in Italian the phrase "alla Parmigiana" refers to a style of dish. It doesn't refer to Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
Pan-Roasted Eggplant With Peanut-Chile Sauce
The chef Cal Peternell, who ran the Chez Panisse kitchen for many years, has a knack for inventing vegetable dishes that are infused with complex flavors. In this recipe, he weighs the eggplant slices down while they roast (like chicken under a brick), which presses out extra liquid and forms a magnificent crust. Finished with a rich, spicy ginger-peanut sauce and sparked with cool, crunchy fresh herbs, it's equally satisfying room temperature as a salad or warm as a vegetarian entrée, served with rice.
Sumac-Scented Eggplant and Chickpeas
The cookbook author Cathy Barrow always finds creative ways to make use of ingredients. She created this recipe as a savory pie filling for her book “Pie Squared: Irresistibly Easy Sweet & Savory Slab Pies,” but it also makes a good vegetarian supper when served over rice, and a nice side dish too. (Make it vegan by omitting the yogurt to serve.) Pomegranate molasses can be found in Middle Eastern markets and health-food stores and adds bright, tangy sweetness to this hearty dish.
Crostini Alla Norma
The classic Sicilian pasta sauce of eggplant and tomato makes a hearty topping for summery crostini. Traditionally, the alla norma method involves frying eggplant, but this recipe calls for roasting it, which saves time and requires much less oil. The eggplant and tomato mixture can be made up to two days in advance, which makes this a great dish for entertaining, since it benefits from some extra time for flavors to develop. For an even quicker appetizer, serve in a bowl with toasted baguette slices on the side.