Snack
993 recipes found
Coconut Cream Pie
Coconut cream pie can assume all kinds of variations, with coconut extracts or coconut cream added to enhance the flavor. My mother’s version, which I grew up eating, is a more subtle, custardy version, with a balance of coconut and vanilla. It uses an old-fashioned technique called scalding, popular in the days before milk was pasteurized. Here it is used to change the texture of the milk and enhance its flavor. You can use the same sweetened, untoasted coconut to top the pie that you use in the filling, but the unsweetened, toasted coconut lends some nutty depth.
Roasted Garlic and White Bean Dip With Rosemary
The idea of adding a whole head of garlic to a dip might scare you, but compared to its bracing raw counterpart, roasted garlic is sweet and mellow. This dip is garnished with a sprig of sizzled rosemary that's for more than just looks: Frying the herb infuses the olive oil with its fragrance. Spoon the remainder over your finished bowl for a hit of rosemary you wouldn’t get with just the minced leaves, then scoop it up with warm pita, cucumber spears, and carrot sticks.
Paneer con Tomate
Pan con tomate, the Spanish dish of grated tomato on grilled or toasted bread, is summery and extremely satisfying. Grating a tomato somehow emphasizes everything delicious about it, heightening sweetness and acidity. Paneer con tomate is built on the same principle, but swaps the bread for pieces of crisp-edged, lightly fried cheese. Here, the tomato pulp is seasoned not with olive oil, but with a glug of coconut oil infused with mustard seeds and curry leaves. If you’ve got homemade paneer, which is looser and softer, then there’s no need to fry it. To get vegetarian recipes like this one delivered to your inbox, sign up for The Veggie newsletter.
Lemon Meringue Cookies
Like their inspiration, lemon meringue pie, these cookies have three elements. They’re built on simple, slice-and-bake French shortbread cookies, rich, buttery and flavored with vanilla. The shortbread base is almost classic, except that the cookies are baked in muffin tins, so they’re straight-sided and deeply golden brown. The “filling” is lemon curd, and the topping is crunchy bits of meringue. You get crumbly, velvety and crackly, sweet and tart in every bite. These cookies were created for an imaginary friend, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, the hero of 16 Louise Penny novels, and a man who considers lemon meringue divine.
Boston Baked Beans
Squat, glazed ceramic bean pots lurk in cabinets all over New England. They're traditional for Boston baked beans, but enameled cast iron is faster. Beans in cast iron can be brought to a boil over a burner before the dish goes into the oven; this saves about an hour.
Vanilla Marshmallows
Homemade marshmallows should have their own dreamy name, something that makes it clear that they’re different from the supermarket stuff. When you make this recipe by Christine Moore of Little Flower Candy Co., you get puffs that are soft, tender, languidly stretchy and delicately sweet, and a lesson in the transformative power of heat and air. To make these, you beat together roiling-hot sugar syrup and gelatin, and watch as the mixture goes from murky to opaque, from beige to white, from thin to billowing. For this magic to happen, it takes almost 15 minutes, plus a very large bowl and a sturdy mixer. (I use a 5-quart stand mixer.) You need no special skills, just patience — you have to wait a few hours for the whipped mixture to dry — but you’ll be rewarded with singular sweets good for toasting, s’mores, snacking and wrapping up as gifts.
Poppy Seed Tea Cake
Poppy seeds belong to the small-but-mighty clan of ingredients: Their flavor is nutty, their aroma earthy, and their color, a gorgeous blue-black, dramatic. Even though they’re minuscule, they crack pleasantly under a light bite. Sprinkle poppy seeds over something sweet or savory and you add interest. Give the seeds a star turn and you add surprise. Although this simple loaf cake includes vanilla extract and lemon juice, it’s the flavor that you get from an abundance of poppy seeds that brings everyone back for more. The cake can be served plain, but it’s pretty spread with white icing and speckled with seeds. Remember that because poppy seeds are oily, they can go rancid — store them in the freezer and taste a few before using them.
Lemony Whipped Feta With Charred Scallions
A spin in the food processor and a little olive oil and cream cheese take feta from crumbly and coarse to airy and spreadable. Whipped feta is wonderful on its own, but for a smoky sweetness that makes it special, flavor the dip with scallions that have been blackened in the oven. Serve with pita chips or buttery crackers, and if you’re an overachiever, top the dip with charred cherry tomatoes and a drizzle of honey.
Crispy Feta With Lemon
When heat touches feta, its exterior crisps while its interior becomes surprisingly creamy and soft. Turning it into a dazzling appetizer takes very little: Dust the cheese with cornstarch and sesame seeds, sauté it in butter, then finish it with a squeeze of lemon. You can perch it atop a cracker, or eat it on its own, in awe of the sum of so few parts.
Buffalo Cauliflower Dip
The most negotiable part of Buffalo wings, it turns out, are the wings. Buffalo crudités can be just as crisp, Buffalo chicken dip just as tangy, and Buffalo cauliflower dip just as spicy and alluring. The whole dip — from caramelizing cauliflower to stirring together the creamy hot sauce base and baking on the generous layer of cheese — is made in one pan. You can bring the pan right to the table with dippers of choice and watch it disappear. Just because classic dishes are made a certain way — and Buffalo wings have a cult following, no doubt! — don’t be afraid to riff on them once in awhile. That's how new classics are made.
Som Tum (Green Papaya Salad)
In Isan (and the rest of Thailand), green papaya salad is called som tum, with “som” meaning “sour” and “tum” referring to the pounding sound of the large pestle used to crush ingredients. It is eaten by itself as a snack, or with marinated grilled beef and chicken.
Vegetarian Meatballs
Seasoned with Parmesan, ricotta, fennel seeds and oregano, these meat-free Italian meatballs capture all the flavors of the classic. Cremini mushrooms and chickpeas mimic the texture of ground beef, bulgur helps bind the mixture together, and ricotta keeps it tender. The balls are rolled in a light coating of bread crumbs and Parmesan that crisps as it bakes, but if you prefer a saucy meatball, skip the coating and simply bake until firm, then simmer in marinara. Any extra coating mixture can be toasted in the oven and sprinkled over roasted veggies or creamy pastas. Leftover meatballs can be frozen and reheated in a 425-degree oven until warmed through, about 15 minutes.
Chung Yul Bang (Scallion Pancakes)
The cookbook author Grace Young learned to make these scallion pancakes from her mother, who is from Hong Kong, and first published the formula in her book “The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen” (Simon & Schuster, 1999). In homage to the Cantonese immigrant experience, Ms. Young phoneticized dish names in the same way they appeared on Cantonese-American restaurant menus and titled this recipe chung yul bang. They have the perfect blend of crispy flakiness and tenderness. The trick is a mix of boiling and cold water: The boiling water gives you a soft, malleable dough that is easy to work, the cold water just the right chewiness in the fried pancake. She prefers these served without any dipping sauce: “Hot out of the wok, they don’t need anything,” she said. “They’re perfect the way they are.”
Summer Squash Fritters With Garlic Dipping Sauce
David Venable, the most popular host on QVC, has a reputation for comfort food in its most cheesy, porky forms. But he is also a son of the South, and loves his summer vegetables. This recipe shows off his appreciation of both and is a delicious way to use up summer squash. It might seem daunting to peel 20 cloves of garlic, but you can make quick work of it by smashing the unpeeled cloves lightly with the side of a knife. The papery part will be easy to remove, and the cloves will still roast up mellow and soft. The resulting sauce is also excellent on sandwiches.
Sour Cream and Roasted Red Onion Dip
Here’s how to make onion dip without standing near the stove for an eternity, waiting for onions to caramelize: Roast rings of onion in the oven with the teeniest bit of sugar for 40 minutes for effortlessly faux-caramelized onions. Red onions are naturally a bit sweeter and mellower than white ones, especially when they get brown and slouchy, but lemon juice, chives and raw garlic will perk them right up. The creaminess — what we’re here for — comes from three sources: sour cream, mayonnaise and Greek yogurt, a nice counter to the crisp potato chips you'll, of course, serve it with.
Gâteau Basque
Bixente Marichular, founder of the Musée du Gâteau Basque in Sare, France, says the pastry is part of Basque patrimony: Every family has a recipe, and every family thinks theirs is the best. This version, made with ingredients from an American supermarket, follows the tradition of sandwiching two rounds of rolled-out dough with jam. In the Pays Basque, where the filling is sometimes pastry cream, the jam is usually local black cherry. Once baked, the texture of the “cake” — never mind that it’s about as much cake as Boston cream pie is pie — is a mix of crumbly, tender and chewy. Since gâteau Basque is a casual treat, eating it with your fingers is allowed.
Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
The not-so-secret secret to roasting fresh pumpkin seeds — and crisping them properly — is making sure they’re really dry. Patting the seeds down with paper towels does a fine job, but drying them out in the oven is even more efficient and effective. Once they’ve toasted slightly, simply dress them with oil and salt, then continue to roast them until lightly golden. Feel free to add spices — say za’atar, or cinnamon and cayenne — in Step 3 with the oil and salt. But take note: Some add-ins, like nutritional yeast or raw sugar, may melt under high heat, so sprinkle them onto the seeds just after roasting.
Tomato Fruit Salad
Because tomatoes are technically fruit, they work very well in this colorful and savory take on fruit salad. Try to find interesting grape varieties (like Concord, Himrod and Niagara), which have spicy skins and a more complex flavor than regular red and green seedless. Then go lightly on the vinegar and pepper — you want just enough to bring out the flavors of the fruits, but not enough to take over the bowl.
Blueberry Crumb Cake
It’s easy to find an occasion to serve this cake — breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner or snacktime will do. The dominant flavor here is the berries. Don’t be tempted to increase the amount of walnuts in the topping — scarcity makes them even more delightful.
Earl Grey Madeleines
Cédric Grolet, the pastry chef of Le Meurice hotel in Paris, is famous for his Instagram feed, which has nearly a million and a half followers, his tattoos and his title: Best Pastry Chef in the World. Mostly, and most rightly, he’s famous for his elegant pastries, so I was surprised when he asked me if I’d tasted one of his simplest, his madeleines. Small sponge cakes baked in shell-shaped molds (metal pans give you the best color and crust), madeleines are known for the impressive bump that develop on their tops. These madeleines, adapted from a Grolet recipe, are made with brown butter and flavored with Earl Grey tea and honey. Like all madeleines, they benefit from a rest in the refrigerator before they’re baked. (Good for the mads, convenient for the baker.) If you can arrange it, serve the madeleines just minutes out of the oven — it’s when their fragrance and texture are at their peak.
Pastelillos de Guayaba (Guava Cheese Pastries)
Panaderías in Puerto Rico are magical. Their brightly lit glass cases are lined with fresh-baked bread and rich pastries, begging you to order too many. As a child, I clamored for pastelillos (also called pastelitos) de guayaba. The pastries typically have a flaky crust and are filled with a generous smear of concentrated guava paste — an embodiment of tropical Caribbean flavor — and often with cheese, served glazed or dusted with powdered sugar. In East Harlem, or El Barrio, New York’s historic Puerto Rican enclave where I lived for some time, I discovered Valencia Bakery on East 103rd Street, which made a bite-size version with a generous amount of confectioners’ sugar, creating a portal between the island and my new home. My recipe is inspired by theirs. These are excellent with coffee, and will keep for several days, benefiting from a reheat in the oven.
Lemony Turmeric Tea Cake
This cake, which is adapted from “Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food for Having People Over,” is so good and so simple to put together, you might come to call it “house cake,” which is, of course, cake to keep in your house at all times. Just slicing into it makes a bad day better, the baked equivalent of burning sage or palo santo to clear the energy. It travels well, and can truly be brought anywhere for any occasion, but most of the time it won’t make it out of your kitchen.
Yorkshire Pudding
This recipe is from the British-born chef April Bloomfield, who says it dates back to an era when an English pub might cook a hunk of meat by dangling it from a hook above a roaring fire. The “pudding” emerged from a pan full of runny batter that would have been placed beneath the meat to soak up the juices. “The heat of the fire would make the Yorkshire pudding rise up, and all the fat would seep in,” she said. (Life back then was “nasty, brutish, and short,” as Thomas Hobbes once griped, but apparently there were upsides.) Of course, making Yorkshire pudding these days is a more domesticated undertaking. “Now what happens is you kind of recreate that,” said Ms. Bloomfield, who serves it as part of an order-ahead prime-rib feast at the Breslin Bar & Dining Room in the Ace Hotel in Manhattan. “It’s very soulful,” she said. “Give me 10 Yorkshire puddings and a thin sliver of beef, and I’ll be very happy.”
Baked Ricotta With Spring Vegetables
Here’s a multipurpose dish that is perfect for spring, but can also highlight other seasons. It comes from Dan Kluger at Loring Place in Greenwich Village. He made it in winter, studded with squash and mushrooms. For spring, he scattered pickled ramps, favas and spring onions on top. But he said that other seasonal vegetables like artichokes, peas, morel mushrooms and asparagus could be used. As summer rolls in, there will be a different cast of characters to consider, like zucchini, cherry tomatoes and peppers. The dish works as a first course for four or a lunch dish for two, and could even replace salad and cheeses at a more elaborate dinner.