Side Dish
4106 recipes found
Lemony Cauliflower With Hazelnuts and Brown Butter
Steamed cauliflower has a bad reputation, but doused in enough fresh lemon juice, warm browned butter and crunchy hazelnuts, it’s impossible not to appreciate its soft, creamy texture and delicate flavor. Steam larger florets so the cauliflower doesn’t become waterlogged, then coarsely crush it after cooking for easier eating.
Sesame-Miso Chicken Salad
There’s always room for another chicken salad recipe, especially if the assembly is quick. This one calls for a whole cooked chicken, which you can roast or boil gently several hours ahead or up to 2 days in advance. (Some may choose to buy a precooked rotisserie chicken, but it can sometimes be hard to find one that is seasoned or cooked properly. If you can find a good one, go for it.) The creamy miso dressing can also be used to dress a green salad, or to replace mayonnaise on a sandwich. It also makes a great dip for vegetables.
Lebanese-Style Bread Salad With Tomatoes and Herbs
Ripe tomatoes, cool cucumbers and toasted pita bread, or Middle-Eastern bread salad. To be completely authentic, this Lebanese dish that is served in various forms across the region should also contain a sprinkling of reddish powdered sumac, which has a sour, lemony flavor and is available from good spice merchants. Fresh purslane, a slightly sour green succulent plant, is also traditional to the dish. You can sometimes get it at farmers markets, or find it growing wild. (It volunteers itself in most vegetable gardens.) But neither is required.
Blue Cheese Dressing
Roasted Tomatillo-Poblano-Avocado Salsa
One of my favorite new cookbooks of this season is “A Mouthful of Stars” (Andrews McMeel), by Kim Sunée. The book is a memoir, travelogue and cookbook all rolled into one, written by an author who earlier published another compelling memoir with recipes, “Trail of Crumbs.” Kim is a poetic world traveler who loves many cuisines. She is a big fan of taco trucks and loves salsa, the spicier the better. This salsa is based on her recipe for roasted tomatillo-poblano salsa. I love its balance of char, heat, acid and creamy. I’m a moderate when it comes to heat, but you can make this hotter by adding more chiles.
Venetian Cauliflower
Give commonplace cauliflower an upgrade and it becomes holiday fare. Take a classic Venetian approach by using a mixture of sweet spices. Caramelized onions, saffron and cinnamon build the fragrant foundation, along with fennel and coriander seeds. Currants, golden raisins and pine nuts add complexity.
Tuna, Cauliflower and White Bean Salad
Cauliflower is very happy in a pungent marinade, so I added it to one of my favorite stand-bys, tuna and bean salad. I liked this salad even more with the cauliflower added, as the tuna flavor infuses the cauliflower along with the vinegar and olive oil. You can use canned white beans, or cook up some delicious giant white beans and some of their broth in the dressing. The salad tastes even better if it has a few hours or a day to sit, and it keeps well.
St. Anselm’s Iceberg Wedge Salad
This wedge salad, adorned with blue cheese and warm bacon vinaigrette, is served at the restaurant St. Anselm in Brooklyn. The revelatory vinaigrette is actually a roux made with bacon fat, then thinned with cider vinegar and water, a hit of sugar and another of Dijon mustard. It is superb, and it would not be out of place drizzled over grilled asparagus, accompanied by chopped hard-boiled eggs.
Creamed Corn with Gorgonzola, Tomatoes and Pine Nuts
This light summer meal comes together quickly: Corn kernels are simmered in a cream enhanced with blue cheese and pepper. It's then served on tomato slices and topped with pine nuts for a meal that embraces and enhances the season’s bounty.
Warm Lentil Salad With Goat Cheese
Even people who swear they don’t abide beans find pleasure in the distinctive, profound flavor of lentils. They also cook quickly, and you want them on the al dente side for this salad. That means they’ll be ready in 25 minutes, still a long enough simmering time to yield a savory broth. Goat cheese and lentils make a particularly good pairing; the little earthy-sweet legumes love a salty-umami complement (that’s why you so often see them paired with sausage and other cured pork products), and goat cheese fits the bill. Here the combination is especially cozy, as the cheese melts into the warm lentils, bathing them in a creamy dressing. Lentils and vinegar also marry well. The key here is to add the dressing while the lentils are still warm, even if you don’t plan on serving the salad warm. I spoon the mixture onto a bed of wild arugula, though regular will do if you can’t find the sharper tasting, wispy wild variety.
Light Brioche Buns
Leek, Kale and Potato Latkes
These delicious cumin-scented potato pancakes are laced with leeks and crispy kale, adding a putatively healthy touch to the standard fried latke. You can serve them with Greek yogurt, sour cream or crème fraîche. But a chutney or yogurt blended with cilantro, mint and garlic would make for excellent eating as well. You might even try a salsa.
Tomato Aspic With Blue Cheese Dressing
Sautéed Brussels Sprouts and Apple With Prosciutto
At the elegant restaurant Piora in the West Village, the chef Chris Cipollone separates each brussels sprout into individual leaves to make this autumnal dish. Thinly slicing the sprouts is faster, though less refined. The slivered sprouts are then sautéed with cubes of sweet apples, and garnished with an icy, porky snow made from frozen prosciutto grated on a microplane. Grated pecorino cheese can be used instead for a meatless version.
Cauliflower With Anchovies and Crushed Olives
In this versatile side dish, cauliflower is both sautéed (for flavor and tenderness) and left raw (for crunch), then dressed with warm, crushed olives and melted anchovies. The preserved lemon, which is optional, may seem like a bit much given all the other salty, briny ingredients, but its punch does a lot to bring everything together.
Pan-Roasted Spiced Cauliflower With Peas
This dish is inspired by a trip to Curry Hill, a neighborhood in New York dotted with stores selling saris, Indian restaurants, Pakistani cafes and hole-in-the-wall spice shops. When I got home from my shopping spree, a cauliflower was screaming for Indian spices, garlic and ginger. Better still, I knew I could knock together a pan-roasted meal in about 20 minutes.
Savory Ham and Gruyère Bread
Red Pepper Rice, Bulgur or Freekeh With Saffron and Chile
This mildly spicy Lenten vegetable rice is prettiest when made with rice, because the saffron will have more of an impact on the color. But I also love it with bulgur, and especially with freekeh, which is very compatible with the peppers, chile and paprika. If you make it with rice, remember that in the traditional Greek dish the rice is very soft, as it is here. If you don’t want the dish to be spicy leave out the chile pepper.
Frijoles Borrachos (Drunken Beans)
The method of cooking beans with beer originated in northern Mexico (Monterrey is the country’s brewery capital), then traveled with the cowboys on cattle drives. It’s easy to imagine a cauldron of beans simmering over a fire, the cook tossing in bits of meat from the grill, then pouring in beer to cover the beans, which might have been more convenient than water. According to “The Taste of Mexico” (Harry N. Abrams, 1986) by Patricia Quintana, the food of northern Mexico is often associated with grilled meats, but it is also epitomized by spicy beans like frijoles charros (or cowboy beans) and drunken beans. Bacon (or Mexican chorizo or other fatty meats) provide a rich base in which to cook vegetables like onions and peppers, while the beer makes the beans brighter and sharper but not boozy. Eat a bowl with grilled meats, flour tortillas or solo.
Pesto-Filled Deviled Eggs
Deviled eggs may be old fashioned, but I will always have a weakness for them. I’m always experimenting with fillings for these perfect little protein packages. Pesto, mixed with half of the hard-cooked yolks, is pungent and rich. I particularly like the basil-mint version. Serve these as an hors d’oeuvre or as part of a light lunch.
Beehive Brussels Sprouts with Spicy Vinaigrette
Like avant-garde art, the avant-garde approach to vegetables can take many forms: investing ordinary objects with extra significance, boldly upending tradition or juxtaposing elements that appear disparate. The Los Angeles chef Roy Choi takes that last approach. He did for the kimchi taco what Diane von Furstenberg did for the wrap dress. His sautéed Brussels sprouts play the vegetable off crunchy honeycomb, Greek yogurt and sriracha-spiked vinaigrette. Fried shallots top off the dish.
Scallion-Cheddar Cornbread Stuffing
This stuffing — or, you can call it a dressing — is baked outside the turkey so that it develops a crisp topping. You’ll want to make sure your cornbread is stale here: If working with fresh cornbread, dry it out in your oven. Crumble the pieces, then spread them on a rimmed sheet pan and bake at 300 degrees until firm and dry, but not hard. Timing will depend on how moist the cornbread was to start, so be sure to keep an eye on it.
Fannie Farmer’s Parker House Rolls
In 1896, Fannie Farmer, then principal of the Boston Cooking School, wrote and published a cookbook that revolutionized the way home cooks thought about cooking and housekeeping (she introduced the concept of using measuring cups and spoons, among other things). The book, originally titled “The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book,” was a smash hit in the United States and became known simply as “The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.” It is still in print. This classic recipe is an adaptation of one found in a revised edition by Marion Cunningham. It takes time but very little effort, and you will be rewarded with soft, pillowy, butter-rich rolls worthy of your best breadbasket.
