Western

Western Recipes

721 recipes. Page 10 of 31

Pasta, steak, and other Western recipes

Cajun Boudin

Cooked, chopped pork and liver are mixed with rice and packed into casing, giving a link that eats more like moist meat stuffing than a springy raw-meat sausage. A little of the broth from the long simmer brings the filling together; too much turns it into porridge. Cleaned, food-grade salted hog casings work best filled loosely, because tight links split during the final gentle poach. With no curing salt or drying stage, boudin stays a fresh sausage that belongs in the refrigerator and gets eaten within two days.

Prep 155min Cook 205min 8 servings

Baking Easy

Blueberry Lemon Scones

The lemon zest goes into the cream and egg rather than the flour, which carries its scent evenly through the whole dough. Leave the butter in pea-sized pieces as you rub it into the flour, and the baked scones crack crisply at the edges and crumble softly inside.

Prep 15min Cook 20min 4 servings

Desserts Easy

Rice Pudding

Rice simmered slowly in milk swells and sheds its starch into the liquid, leaving a pudding somewhere between porridge and custard. Served warm, it is loose and spoonable; chilled overnight, it firms into something denser and closer to a set custard. Cinnamon goes on at the last moment so its aroma arrives before the first bite.

Prep 10min Cook 35min 4 servings

Pasta Medium

Gamtae Butter Scallop Spaghetti

Crumbled gamtae, a fine Korean seaweed, gives a butter and lemon sauce the smell of the sea. Scallops are seared hard one side at a time and set aside, then white wine lifts the browned bits they leave in the pan into the sauce. The scallops never simmer; they go back on top of the noodles at the end.

Prep 15min Cook 18min 2 servings

Salads Medium

Gochujang Chickpea Crunch Salad

Chickpeas roasted at 200 degrees until crisp play the part of croutons in this bowl of kale, red cabbage, carrot and cucumber. The gochujang dressing, rounded out with maple syrup and rice vinegar, brings heat, sweetness and acidity at once and covers the grassy taste of the raw vegetables. Massaging the kale by hand for a minute softens its tough fibers and takes the edge off its bitterness.

🥗 Lighter Meals

Prep 15min Cook 22min 4 servings

Western Easy

Caponata (Sicilian Sweet and Sour Eggplant Stew)

Decide whether to serve the caponata at room temperature or chilled, and allow for an overnight rest if you want a softer sweet-sour balance. When browning the eggplant, the cubes should color without collapsing before they return to the sauce. Vinegar or sugar that dominates can obscure the eggplant, so their balance matters as much as the browning. Toasted bread, grilled meat, and fish are serving options already suited to this dish.

Prep 20min Cook 30min 4 servings

Baking Easy

Blueberry Yogurt Scones

The dough is meant to stay shaggy, with damp patches and visible flecks of butter, and that rough texture is what lets the baked scone split into tender layers. Plain yogurt brings moisture and a gentle tang, with vanilla layered over it.

Prep 15min Cook 20min 4 servings

Desserts Easy

Rum Balls

Bite into one and the bitter cocoa on the outside comes first, then the dark rum rises behind it. Nothing is baked, so the rum's alcohol stays in, which makes these firmly an adult treat.

Prep 20min 0 20 servings

Pasta Medium

Giouvetsi (Beef and Orzo Bake)

The beef first braises in tomato with a cinnamon stick, and orzo joins this Greek bake only once the meat yields easily to a fork. Stretching the oven time to rescue tough beef leaves the pasta swollen and mushy.

Prep 30min Cook 110min 8 servings

Salads Easy

Greek Salad (Chunk-Cut Vegetable Toss with Feta)

Tomatoes and cucumber stay in big, rough chunks, so each bite keeps its own juice and crunch. Sweet bell pepper, briny olives and salty feta layer on top, and the oil and red wine vinegar are tossed in only until the vegetables look glossy. Thin slices of red onion keep its sharpness from covering the tomato, olives and feta. In Greece the feta traditionally sits on the salad as a single slab rather than crumbled; broken off bit by bit at the table, it mixes with the olive oil on the plate and becomes the dressing. Rough tossing crushes the tomatoes and leaves a pool of watery juice underneath.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes 🥗 Lighter Meals

Prep 15min 0 2 servings

Western Hard

Capuns (Swiss Chard-Wrapped Spätzle Dumplings)

Swiss chard leaves wrap around a sticky dough of flour, egg, smoked bacon, and parsley, and the little rolls poach in beef broth enriched with milk and cream. Trimming away the thick part of each stem lets the leaf fold neatly around the filling, and a leaf that is still stiff softens with a brief dip in boiling water. Chopping the bacon and parsley very fine spreads their flavor through every bite. The broth stays at a quiet simmer, because hard bubbling can unfold or tear the chard wrappers. Grated Gruyere over the finished rolls adds a nutty, salty finish.

Prep 20min Cook 25min 2 servings

Baking Hard

Boston Cream Pie

Despite the name, there is no pastry anywhere. It is a round sponge split in half, filled with a thick layer of custard and covered with dark chocolate glaze. Most of the time it takes goes into chilling the sponge and the custard separately.

Prep 35min Cook 30min 4 servings

Desserts Easy

Mugwort Tiramisu (Korean Herbal Twist on Italian Classic)

Mugwort powder folded into mascarpone tints the cream pale green and gives it an earthy, slightly medicinal herbal note under the espresso. This version skips eggs entirely and lightens the mascarpone with whipped cream instead, so there is no yolk-and-sugar whisking step.

Prep 25min 0 4 servings

Pasta Medium

Gnocchi alla Romana (Baked Semolina Cheese Rounds)

Unlike boiled potato gnocchi, these are rounds cut from semolina cooked in milk, chilled flat and baked under butter and cheese. The tops go golden and crisp under the grill. The one real hazard is impatience: cut before the slab has fully set and the rounds tear with ragged edges.

Prep 20min Cook 30min 4 servings

Salads Easy

Grilled Peach Burrata Basil Salad

Peach wedges seared on a grill pan for 1 to 2 minutes per side caramelize at the cut edges and gain a concentrated sweetness and faint smokiness that raw fruit never has. Torn burrata spills its cream over the warm fruit, while peppery arugula and crunchy walnuts cut through all that cream. A zigzag of balsamic glaze ties the sweet and tangy notes together, and the salad is at its best in midsummer peach season.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes 🥗 Lighter Meals

Prep 12min Cook 6min 2 servings

Western Hard

Cassoulet (French White Bean and Pork Stew)

Simmered slowly with pork shoulder and sausage, the white beans start to break down and thicken the broth on their own, without any roux. The work starts the day before, with the beans soaking for at least 8 hours.

Prep 25min Cook 150min 4 servings

Baking Medium

French Onion Tart

Three onions cooked slowly in butter for more than 20 minutes, until deep amber, are nearly the whole tart. There is only enough egg and cream custard to hold them together, and Gruyere on top bakes into a salty brown crust.

Prep 20min Cook 35min 4 servings

Desserts Medium

Tiramisu

Both the whipped yolks and the beaten whites go into the mascarpone, giving a cream that is rich yet airy and firm enough to carry layers of espresso-soaked savoiardi. After a night in the fridge the biscuits turn soft and cake-like, and the layers slice cleanly.

Prep 30min 0 8 servings

Pasta Medium

Gnocchi alla Sorrentina (Tomato Mozzarella Baked Gnocchi)

Eight minutes in a hot oven is all this dish gets, just long enough for the mozzarella to melt and stretch over tomato-coated gnocchi. Because of that short bake, the gnocchi come out of the water the moment they float. Extra time in the pot would leave them soft and swollen after baking. Half the basil goes into the sauce and half on top after baking.

Prep 20min Cook 20min 2 servings

Salads Easy

Halloumi Persimmon Arugula Salad

In a dry, hot pan, halloumi holds its shape and browns into a golden crust while the inside turns squeaky and chewy. It needs only 2 to 3 minutes per side; longer and it turns rubbery. Its saltiness meets thin slices of sweet persimmon head-on, and peppery arugula makes the pairing feel lighter. Red onion soaked in cold water for 10 minutes or more loses its sharpness and stops crowding out the fruit and cheese. White balsamic, paler and gentler than the dark kind, dresses the plate without muddying the orange fruit.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes 🥗 Lighter Meals

Prep 12min Cook 6min 2 servings

Western Easy

Cheese Fondue

Grated Gruyere and Emmental melt into gently steaming white wine to make a thick, glossy dip for cubes of baguette. Tossing the cheese with cornstarch first keeps it from seizing into clumps, and the wine and lemon juice cut the richness and salt of the aged cheeses. Too much heat splits the fondue into oil and lumps, so the wine never reaches a boil.

Prep 15min Cook 12min 4 servings

Baking Easy

Bread Pudding

Stale bread soaked in an egg, milk and cream custard turns into something close to a soft pudding, while the pieces poking out on top bake into a crisp golden crust. Cinnamon gives the whole dish a warm, spiced smell. It started as a thrifty way to use up old loaves in England and the American South, and it is still best served warm, with vanilla ice cream or a caramel sauce melting over the top.

Prep 15min Cook 40min 6 servings

Desserts Medium

Zabaglione (Italian Warm Marsala Egg Yolk Custard Cream)

Egg yolks, sugar and Marsala are whisked over steam until they swell to two or three times their volume, and the warm foam is spooned straight over strawberries and blueberries. The heating is brief and a fair amount of the wine's alcohol and aroma stays; if that is too much, half the Marsala can be orange juice. Yolks scramble easily, and this recipe takes the bowl off the heat by the thermometer, at 71°C, not by how the foam looks.

Prep 10min Cook 12min 2 servings

Pasta Easy

Gochu Oil Tuna Puttanesca Spaghetti

There is no extra cooking oil: garlic and anchovies cook in the olive oil from the tuna can, spiked with chili oil, and that fat already carries the taste of tuna and heat. Capers, black olives and anchovies bring the briny, salty edge of a puttanesca, while the tuna flesh is added late and left in big flakes you can actually bite into.

Prep 12min Cook 18min 2 servings