721 recipes. Page 4 of 31
Pasta, steak, and other Western recipes
Sweet crab meat and bright lemon ride on a garlic-scented olive oil sauce that stays clean rather than greasy. Butter and starchy pasta water emulsify the oil into a thin coating on the spaghetti, while a splash of cheongju, Korean rice wine, takes the fishy edge off the crab. Crab picked fresh from whole blue crabs tastes noticeably sweeter than frozen meat.
Broccoli blanched for just 30 seconds loses its raw edge but keeps a real crunch. Tart dried cranberries, nutty sunflower seeds, and finely minced red onion are bound by a Greek yogurt dressing brightened with lemon. The salad is served chilled, so it can be made ahead and kept in the fridge.
Salt cod poached gently in milk absorbs moisture before it is mixed with half-cooked potatoes and cream and baked until golden. Fully cooked potatoes would collapse in the oven, so they are only partly fried or pan-cooked beforehand. Saltiness varies by product, which means soaking the cod from the day before and tasting just before it goes into the oven. A few minutes of rest after baking lets the cream settle so the layers hold when served.
Rum leads the flavor here rather than hiding in the background: the baked cakes sit in a syrup made with 100ml of it until they are soaked through to the center. A dough rich in butter and eggs bakes into an open, porous crumb, and those pockets are what drink up the syrup. Fully soaked, each cake swells to nearly twice its size. Legend credits the Polish king Stanislaw with soaking a dry kugelhopf in rum; the idea traveled through Naples to Paris, where pastry cooks gave it the small cylindrical shape. Each bite squeezes warm syrup out of the crumb.
The mushrooms come before the rice. Button mushrooms stay over high heat until their liquid is gone and the edges brown, and only then do onion, garlic and arborio go in, followed by warm chicken stock a ladle at a time. The rice is not rinsed; its surface starch is what makes it creamy.
Caramel poured into the mold sets hard, then melts again as the flan bakes and chills, so when it is turned out an amber sauce runs down over the custard. The sugar is taken past gold to deep amber, which gives that sauce a slight bitterness. The custard itself bakes slowly at 150°C, set in a pan of hot water.
Duck breast rubbed with rosemary, thyme, garlic and olive oil is pan-roasted, then glazed in its last minute with soy sauce and pear juice. After a five-minute rest it is sliced thin against the grain, showing pink meat under the herb-scented skin.
In the American South this is everyday home cooking: chicken stew with soft dumplings on top. The batter is spooned onto the broth and puffs up in the steam under the lid, so the dumplings come out light, closer to biscuit than to noodle. The thigh meat is pulled into shreds, so a spoonful gets chicken and dumpling together.
Clams opening in white wine release the briny liquor that seasons this pasta, so only a little salt is added at the end. Chili flakes add a slow heat, and buchu, Korean garlic chives, stirred in after the heat is off, gives the dish a grassy, garlicky finish that a classic vongole does not have. Starchy pasta water binds clam juice and olive oil into a glossy sauce that clings to every strand.
Nutty, faintly bitter buckwheat groats meet creamy avocado, and each fills in what the other lacks. Dill, a staple herb in Eastern European cooking where buckwheat is everyday food, adds a cool, grassy lift, while lemon juice keeps the grains from feeling heavy. Cucumber and cherry tomatoes bring the juiciness that keeps the bowl from turning dry or monotonous.
Only the top rind is scored, so the whole wheel of Camembert holds its round shape in the oven while the inside turns molten, ready to scoop up with toasted baguette. Cuts that run down the sides let the cheese leak, and baking too long makes the fat separate. When the dish is nudged and the center wobbles, it is done; adding minutes just for color only risks an oily result. Honey and walnuts on top bring sweetness against the garlic, rosemary and salty cheese.
With only flour, water, yeast and salt in the bowl, nothing but handling decides how a baguette turns out. Two stretch-and-folds during the first rise build strength, and shaping without pressing out all the gas leaves irregular open holes in the crumb. The slashes guide where the loaf bursts in the oven, so they need one quick, confident stroke of the blade. The crust softens as it sits, which makes this a bread for the day it is baked.
Chicken, rabbit, green beans and saffron make this the Valencian version, a long way from seafood paella. Once the rice is spread thin in the pan it is never stirred again, so the grains stay separate rather than creamy like risotto, and a thin crisp crust called socarrat forms on the bottom.
Ladyfingers stand upright around the inside of the mold, sugared side out, so the inner faces soak up moisture from the Bavarian cream while the outside stays dry. Unmolded, the dessert is a neat cylinder of pale biscuit around smooth, ivory vanilla mousse.
With a long rib bone attached and a thick eye of meat, a tomahawk steak cannot be cooked through by a hard sear alone, so it comes out of the fridge an hour ahead to let the chill leave even the meat near the bone. After the crust forms, the heat drops and butter with rosemary and garlic is spooned over continuously; for medium, it comes off at an internal 54 degrees.
The chicken breast is pulled into long shreds, so it hangs off the spoon together with the egg noodles. If you plan on leftovers, lift the noodles out and store them separately; otherwise by the next day they will have soaked up the broth.
Ground beef seasoned like bulgogi, with soy sauce, sugar, and garlic, simmers in a tomato sauce, where the sweet-salty soy meets the acidity of the tomatoes. Searing the meatballs first leaves a browned crust that melts into the sauce and deepens it. Breadcrumbs and egg hold moisture, so the meatballs stay tender through the simmer instead of drying out.
Mayonnaise forms the base of this dressing, and lemon juice lifts its heaviness so a thick coat on the romaine never turns cloying. The anchovy is optional. Minced fine, it melts into the mayo and reads as savory depth rather than fish.
Milk and heavy cream held just below a simmer in a wide pan form a thick skin on top, and that skin, chilled overnight and lifted off, becomes the kaymak spread on bread with honey. With nothing whipped and no gelatin involved, the layer tears if the pan is stirred or shaken while it forms. Most of the volume stays behind as liquid. Only the first layer is harvested, giving four small portions whose size depends on the pan and the dairy.
Whipped full of air, the meringue works as insulation, keeping a hot 230°C oven from reaching the ice cream inside. The whole thing spends only a few minutes in the heat, just long enough to brown the swirled peaks. Vanilla extract beaten into the meringue warms in that short bake and comes through as aroma. Cut it open and the face shows three layers at once: toasted meringue, cold vanilla ice cream and soft sponge.
Warm stock steeped with saffron goes in a ladle at a time, turning the rice yellow as it cooks. Off the heat, cold butter and Parmigiano are beaten in quickly, and the risotto is done while it is still loose enough to spread slowly on the plate.
No eggs and no alcohol go into this tiramisu. The cream is whipped cream, mascarpone and mashed chestnut, nothing else, and the whipped cream has to stop at soft peaks, because beaten any firmer it seizes when it meets the mascarpone. Chopped chestnut held back at the start is scattered over the cocoa at the end.
The stew is credited to San Francisco wharf fishermen who pooled their leftover seafood in one pot. The tomato and white wine broth simmers on its own first; mussels, white fish and shrimp follow at the end, one after another, for a short cook. Any mussels still shut after cooking are picked out before serving.
Rome's cacio e pepe gets its sauce from just Pecorino Romano, black pepper and starchy cooking water. This version adds 30g of Parmigiano to soften the saltiness slightly. Finely grated cheese goes into the pan off the heat, in several batches, to keep it from clumping.