Side Dish
4106 recipes found
Potatoes au Gratin
The humble potato gets the red carpet treatment in this easy yet luxurious recipe for potatoes au gratin. Sliced Yukon Gold or russet potatoes (you can use either, but don't use a combination as they cook at different rates) are layered with half-and-half or heavy cream, topped with butter and grated cheese, then baked until golden and bubbly. Feel free to play around: Add leeks, onions, garlic or more cheese between the layers. Experiment with fresh or dried herbs. It's incredibly adaptable and practically foolproof. Just don't forget to season with salt and pepper as you go. Like all potato dishes, it needs plenty of seasoning.
Kuku Sabzi (Persian Herb Frittata)
Kuku, which is like a Persian frittata, comes in many forms, but this one, packed to the brim with herbs, is my favorite. Washing and picking through the piles of herbs can be overwhelming if you’re not used to staring down a mountain of produce, so feel free to prepare them in advance. I particularly love kuku sabzi for the contrast between its vivid-green herbaceous interior and its dark, sweet crust. Kuku is traditionally served with flatbread and a selection of crunchy and acidic condiments to balance the sweetness of the herbs; my favorites are fresh radishes, the chopped eggplant pickles called liteh and chunks of soft, salty feta cheese. Leftover kuku slathered with mast-o khiar makes for a wonderful sandwich.
Really Big Beets
Here is a show-stopping main course to please vegans and vegetarians — and one that even meat-eaters will want to eat. Diana Jarvis, a Manhattan resident who submitted this recipe to the Well blog's Vegetarian Thanksgiving feature in 2014, says to roast the beets for a long time, to achieve a giant, steak-like fist of vegetable, rich and salty-sweet. One hour works — two hours is better.
Wintertime Tomato Soup
Though canned tomatoes are not exactly heirloom, they often are older varieties bred for flavor, not for sturdiness in shipping. Roasting them intensifies their flavor and adds a layer of complexity. Stop cooking them in the oven when the edges of the tomatoes begin to blacken.
Potato Gratin With Swiss Chard and Sumac Onions
This is not your typical potato gratin: The Cheddar and brown-butter pine nuts make it rich but not overly so, as the sumac onions and lemon juice lift the gratin to vibrant heights. Sumac is a tart and astringent spice used heavily in Middle Eastern cooking, adding sharpness to food where needed. These onions are great thrown into pasta and salads, or served with roasted chicken. The gratin can stand as a veggie main with a zesty salad alongside, as an accompaniment to your protein of choice or as part of a larger spread. Get ahead by making the onions and preparing all your ingredients (except the potatoes) well in advance, so they’re ready to be assembled together before baking. Once the whole thing goes in the oven, you’ll have ample time to get any accompaniments ready. You can serve this warm, but it also sits well to be served at room temperature.
Spicy Corn on the Cob With Miso Butter and Chives
Corn slathered in miso butter is special enough, so you’re within your rights to ignore any other ingredients in this recipe. But for lovers of spice, the Japanese spice blend shichimi togarashi is worth seeking out. In English, it translates to “seven-flavor chile pepper,” though not all of those seven flavors are chile: There’s also roasted orange peel, sesame seeds, ground ginger and seaweed in the mix. Add it gradually, so as not to overpower the subtle flavor of the miso butter (and because everyone likes a different amount of spice). If you can’t find shichimi togarashi, substitute crushed red-pepper flakes.
Macaroni With Ham and Cheese
Pasta With Cherry Tomatoes and Arugula
This simple, glorious dish, popular in the southern Italian region of Puglia, is an argument for keeping cherry tomato plants in your garden or on your fire escape. Uncooked tomato sauce is juicy and cool on a summer evening. The recipe asks only that you halve the tomatoes (quarter them if they are particularly large), then combine them with garlic, salt, balsamic vinegar, arugula, basil and olive oil. Toss that with cooked pasta, and shower with salty, firm shavings of ricotta salata. Arugula adds wonderful flavor (all the more if you can find peppery wild arugula) and a nutritional punch.
Corn on the Cob With Lime, Fish Sauce and Peanuts
As this recipe proves, lime juice, fish sauce and sugar is a powerful combination you should commit to memory. Traditionally, those three ingredients form the base of several classic Thai and Vietnamese sauces like nuoc cham and nam pla prik. The mayonnaise here is barely noticeable, but it serves an important role in helping the flavors adhere to the corn. The cilantro is optional so no one will throw a fit.
Buffalo Corn on the Cob
This recipe delivers a hot wings moment minus the meat: Melt some blue cheese into warm Buffalo sauce and slather it on corn, then sprinkle with even more blue cheese crumbles. There are people in this world who think Buffalo sauce pairs better with ranch dressing than blue cheese, and even some people who detest blue cheese. For them, leave out the blue cheese altogether and drizzle ranch (or our recipe for yogurt ranch sauce) over the Buffalo’d cobs.
Citrus Rice Salad With Parmesan
In all of American cooking there is probably no term less meaningful than “salad.” I’m racking my brain for a way to narrow the definition, but the best I can do is a dictionary-like “mixture of food, usually cold or at room temperature, with some kind of dressing.” That’s not saying much, but it opens a world of opportunities, especially when the base ingredient is rice, which offers a far wider variety of flavors and textures than any other grain.
Sweet-And-Sour Onions
Bright Green Pesto and Its Many Uses
I’ve been making pesto forever and have never been able to keep it bright green. It has such promise, such flavor, and I know that the pasta or whatever else I use it in will taste wonderful. But I’ve always been frustrated by how quickly the basil oxidizes and the color goes from bright green to drab. So I decided to try blanching the leaves very briefly to see if that would solve the problem and voilà! It did. You need to blanch the basil for only five seconds, and you don’t want to blanch it for more than 10. Doing this leaches out a wee bit of the basil’s vivid flavor, but not enough to change that of the pesto significantly. The texture and color are wonderful, and the pesto will keep for several days in the refrigerator (but it’s best to wait until you’re ready to use the pesto before adding the garlic and cheese).
Cacio e Pepe Corn on the Cob
Cacio e pepe is a traditional Italian pasta made with pecorino, Parmesan, black pepper and a little pasta cooking water. These cobs borrow the flavors of the traditional dish, but the cheese sauce is not thinned with water, so it’s very rich and creamy. Serve the cacio e pepe corn with grilled steak or fish and a green salad with acidic dressing. You’ll be happy.
Spicy Scrambled Eggs
By most, the humble egg is not considered substantial dinner fare, but these spicy scrambled eggs, which are incredible on their own, make a satisfying meal when piled into a burrito, teamed with rice and beans. Bittman’s cooking technique, borrowed from Jeans-Georges Vongerichten, calls for combining the eggs with butter in a cold saucepan then cooking until creamy and soft – not unlike loose oatmeal – with small curds throughout.
Grilled Corn on the Cob With Chipotle Mayonnaise
The spicy dip that I serve with grilled corn (as well as with steamed or boiled corn) is sort of like a Mexican aïoli, pungent with garlic, smoky and spicy with chipotle chiles. You can also serve it as a dip with vegetables or chips, or use it as a flavorful spread for sandwiches and panini. The recipe makes more than you’ll need for six ears of corn — if you’re having a crowd for a barbecue, you’ll have enough.
Scrambled Eggs With Trout Roe
Fresh Fettuccine With Butter, Peas and Sage Sauce
Sausage Sage Biscuits
For an easy, savory breakfast treat, browned sausage and sage are folded into biscuit dough that’s cut into squares. A generous grinding of black pepper in the mix and on top adds a bit of kick. The flaky biscuits are delicious on their own or stuffed with eggs: Scrambled, fried or poached are all great, but so is egg salad. If you’d like, you can garnish the biscuits with whole sage leaves. Simply brush the unbaked squares with a little melted butter, gently press on a sage leaf, and brush the leaf with a little more butter before baking.
Paul Buxman’s Biscuits
Roasted Radishes With Anchovies
Crisp radishes turn sweet and juicy when briefly roasted at high heat. Here, the chef Bryan Hunt from Riverpark restaurant in Manhattan coats them in a pungent anchovy-rich bagna cauda sauce. This is best served warm rather than piping hot. You can make the anchovy mixture up to 3 days ahead. Store it in the fridge and bring it to room temperature before using.
Corn on the Cob With Coconut and Lime
Anyone avoiding dairy might notice that corn on the cob served at cookouts usually comes slathered with butter. This vegan alternative uses coconut oil to add richness, lime juice for a little acid, and finely chopped, toasted coconut chips for added texture. Mixing half of the chips into the oil helps them stick to the cob, which is smart because you’ll want them in every bite. If you can’t find coconut chips, toasted unsweetened coconut flakes will add a nutty flavor, but you won’t get the delightful crunch.
Pure Potato Latkes
Perfect for Hanukkah or any time of year, these latkes bring out the pure flavor of potato, because that is basically the only ingredient in them. Making latkes can be a last-minute nightmare, with overeager cooks putting too many patties in hot oil, thus taking longer to fry and resulting in a greasy mess. But these can be prepared in advance. This recipe, adapted from the chef Nathaniel Wade of the Outermost Inn on Martha’s Vineyard, starts with parbaked potatoes, which are cooled, grated, seasoned with just salt and pepper, pressed into patties and refrigerated, then fried just before serving. You can either serve them with crème fraîche or sour cream, smoked salmon and tiny flecks of chives, or traditional brisket and homemade applesauce.
Corn on the Cob With Green Coriander Butter
Green coriander, or the fresh seed of a cilantro plant, is known for its intensely aromatic, slightly citrusy, mildly cilantro-ish flavor. Use it anywhere you’d use cilantro: marinades, dressings, hummus; in stews, soups or braises; in herbed rice; with rice noodles or soba; mixed with oil and drizzled atop poached eggs. In this recipe, a handful of traditional Southeast Asian ingredients — fish sauce, ginger, garlic, chiles and a generous amount of pounded green coriander, of course, are worked into a stick of softened butter. It’s savory and spicy, fragrant and pungent, and the first thing you’ll want to do is slather it all over hot grilled corn. Save the rest of the butter to toss with shellfish or roasted vegetables, or to melt into a bowl of steamed rice. For an extra special treat, brown some of the leftover butter, then toss it with pasta and scallops and a squeeze of lemon.