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9 recipes found
Kansas City-Style BBQ Sauce
This isn’t exactly the barbecue sauce that Gates Bar-B-Q, a Kansas City institution, serves at its five locations in Missouri and Kansas and sells in supermarkets. But it’s as close a recipe as Ollie Gates, the 93-year-old owner, is willing to give up. “It’s close enough,” he said. Like the original, this version uses ketchup and apple cider vinegar as its foundation, and it’s warm with red pepper and perfumed with cumin and celery seed. It tastes like Kansas City tradition, from before the rise of sweeter “Kansas City-style” bottled sauces like KC Masterpiece. “Some people say it’s sweet,” Mr. Gates said. “It’s sweet when you first taste it. Then it blossoms in your mouth, and then the heat comes.”
Apple and Honey Babka
Similar in taste to my late mother-in-law’s homey Polish apple cake but a bit chewier and less sweet, this babka can be served as a dessert or breakfast treat. It comes from Sarah Amouyal, co-founder and co-owner of Babka Zana, a bakery in Paris with a nod to North African and Ashkenazi Jewish baking traditions. Unlike many other babkas today, it still has the feeling of old Europe in its simplicity. Make it for breakfast as I did, in a traditional loaf, or twist it into four smaller round buns to be shared when sipping coffee, as Ms. Amouyal does. What I especially like about this babka recipe is that it can be assembled one day and baked off the next. The cold, long rest in the refrigerator helps the dough rise more slowly, giving it time to develop flavor, while also making the babka easier to work with. Add a half teaspoon or so of cinnamon to the apples if you must.
Cherry Karpatka
Karpatka, also known as Polish Mountain cake, gets its name from the Carpathian Mountains, a 1,500-kilometer range that stretches from the Czech Republic to Romania. Visually dramatic, this dessert is a staple in Polish bakeries, its layers of airy choux pastry giving way to a creamy custard filling. Here, the custard is finished with cream instead of the usual butter and the untraditional addition of a juicy cherry compote delivers a bright hit of fruit flavor amidst the richness, making this a total showstopper.
Cherry Tomato Spritz
Bright and bubbly, this tomato-infused take on the spritz combines muddled yellow cherry tomatoes with tequila, vermouth and lime. The resulting color is a sunny hue (though if you can find only red or orange cherry tomatoes, feel free to switch them in). For tequila, opt for a blanco over a reposado or aged variety to make the drink more herbal and light. Finally, while the recipe is written without garnish, you can always thread a few cherry tomatoes on a skewer and adorn the glass before serving.
Sweet and Salty Frozen Grapes
This snack draws on the South Asian and Mexican culinary traditions of serving ice-cold fruit seasoned with spices and salt. Here, grapes get tossed in a punchy combination of lemon juice, lemon zest, chile flakes, sugar and salt, then frozen solid for a refreshing treat. The lemon zest is optional, but the flecks add a bright, citrusy note.
Peach Ricotta Cake
Peaches are one of the very best things about summer, and this cake celebrates them two ways, with chopped pieces folded into the batter and wedges fanned out to decorate the top. The batter is enriched with ricotta for moisture and a generous amount of lemon zest for brightness. This cake is beautiful enough to serve at a party and can be prepared and baked in less than an hour. If fresh peaches aren't looking good at your market, you can substitute the same weight of any other fresh stone fruit. (If summer fruit isn't available, you can even use a 12-ounce package of frozen sliced peaches; just be sure to thaw the slices fully and pat them dry before adding them to the batter.)
Heirloom Tomato Sorbet
This tangy sorbet transforms peak-season heirloom tomatoes into a quenching savory-sweet treat. Flavorful and refreshing, it’s the platonic ideal of what summer sorbet should be. Reminiscent of a sweet gazpacho, the base comes together quickly: Add the tomatoes, sugar, water, lemon and a pinch of salt to a blender; purée the mixture until smooth; then pass it through a fine sieve directly into an ice cream maker. (No ice cream maker? This base makes an excellent granita; see Tip.) The quality of your sorbet or granita directly reflects your tomatoes, so opt for the ripest, most fragrant ones you can find.
Lemon Zucchini Bundt Cake
It seems like everyone has a glut of zucchini in the summer, and this is a great way to make a dent in that pile of produce. This simple cake batter has a hint of cinnamon and a generous amount of lemon zest, and the finished cake is coated with two layers of lemon glaze for a crackly, sweet and tart finish. The classic Bundt shape and its long shelf life makes this the perfect cake to have on your counter for both afternoon snacks and unexpected guests all season long.
Creamy Lemon-Miso Dressing
If I were a singer-songwriter, I would write a power ballad about my love for Kismet Rotisserie in Los Angeles. The shoebox-size, mostly takeout restaurant serves the kind of food I’d eat every day if I lived in the neighborhood: golden roast chicken, fluffy pita and perfectly seasoned side dishes piled high with vegetables. But what I love most are its sauces and dressings. Especially its miso-poppy seed dressing, which I set out to re-create a couple of years ago. At some point, though, my journey took a detour, landing me here with this recipe from my book, “Good Things” (Random House, 2025), at what just might be my new favorite all-purpose dressing. Tangy, sweet, creamy and rounded out with umami, it manages to hit every note you could want in a dressing without being cloying. Add some poppy seeds for classic flavor or leave them out to make the dressing more versatile for drizzling over roasted vegetables, in potato salad or anywhere else you can imagine.