278 recipes. Page 4 of 12
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Crisp, garlic-rubbed toast against juicy tomato makes this antipasto work, and that contrast fades as soon as the bread turns soggy. That is why the cherry tomatoes lose some seeds and watery centers and drain briefly in a sieve before seasoning.
The dough stays sticky, too wet to knead neatly, and goes into the pan that way. Fingertip dimples catch pools of olive oil that all but fry the top in the oven, so the surface studded with rosemary, garlic and flaky salt turns crisp, and the inside is full of big, uneven holes.
Minuh, a Korean brown croaker, has enough savory depth that coarse salt and white pepper are all it needs. With a whisper of flour and left undisturbed skin side down, the skin crisps lightly. It is at its best in July and August, but frozen fillets grill up the same way.
Part of the white beans is mashed with a fork and stirred back in, thickening the broth without flour, while the rest stay whole. The chicken is already cooked and simply shredded, and the heat level is built around mild canned green chiles.
Ice-chilled angel hair takes a dressing of chogochujang (Korean chili paste sharpened with vinegar and sugar), loosened with olive oil and lemon juice, that tastes spicy, sour, and sweet at once. Sweet crab meat and crunchy cucumber soften the heat, and the juice of cherry tomatoes thins the thick dressing on the plate. Capellini, among the thinnest pastas, overcooks fast and sticks together at room temperature unless it is chilled the moment it leaves the pot. The chilled noodles are pressed lightly in the sieve to shed their water, which would otherwise thin the dressing. Salt waits until the very end, since chogochujang varies in saltiness.
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.
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.
Minced garlic and chopped rosemary are kneaded straight into these thin twisted Italian breadsticks, and parmesan is scattered over the tops. Set aside a little of the olive oil before mixing the dough, since that portion is brushed on after shaping.
Minced garlic warms in olive oil over low heat until it turns pale gold, and only then does the heat go up for the boiled octopus. Three to four minutes in the pan browns the edges while the pieces stay springy. Paprika powder in place of the chili flakes makes a milder version.
Chunjang, the black bean paste behind Korean jajangmyeon, goes into an Italian-style beef ragu, where its salty, roasted depth meets the acidity of tomato passata. Wide tagliatelle carry a thin, glossy coat of the sauce on every ribbon, and the result tastes somewhere between jajangmyeon and a Bolognese.
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.
Briny black olives and capers, a splash of red wine and canned tomatoes make a rustic sauce that soaks into bone-in chicken as it braises. The skin is seared deep brown first, and the wine lifts those browned bits off the bottom of the pot, giving the sauce its roasted depth. Leftover sauce goes well with pasta or polenta.
Chickpea flour whisked thin with water rests for 10 minutes, then is poured into a pan heated hard with oil, scattered with red onion and cherry tomatoes, and baked into the flatbread of Nice. It comes out crisp at the rim and soft and chewy in the middle.
The skin of the sea bass fillets is dried twice: once while trimming, and again five minutes after the coarse salt and pepper go on, when fresh moisture has come up. The frying oil is olive oil warmed over low heat with crushed garlic and thyme, and after the flip it gets spooned over the flesh.
Pulling the shrimp out early and returning them for only the last 30 seconds keeps them tender instead of rubbery. While they wait, the cream reduces in the same pan and picks up the garlic butter and shrimp juices, so the sauce needs no stock.
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.
A Caesar salad needs no fork once the dressed romaine, Parmesan and pan-cooked chicken breast are rolled inside a warm flour tortilla. The chicken cools for a few minutes before rolling, because hot meat would wilt the romaine and its crunch matters most.
Layers of buttered phyllo bake into sheets that shatter at the touch of a fork, around a filling of spinach with salty feta and dill. Most of the effort goes into the spinach, which is cooked until no water pools in the pan.
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.
Because thin pasta cooks straight in a tomato and chickpea broth, there is only one pot to wash and the noodles take on the oregano-scented base. The catch is timing: the pasta keeps drinking the broth after the heat is off, and a pot left standing turns into soft, swollen noodles with little soup. Parsley is stirred through once at the very end to keep it fresh.
Crisp, honey-sweet chamoe (yellow Korean melon) and cucumber make a cold summer salad dressed with ground perilla seeds. The perilla powder thickens the lemon dressing and gives it a nutty, almost toasty depth, a flavor Koreans know from perilla noodle soups. Shredded perilla leaves go in last for a second, fresher layer of the same plant, and the melon tastes sweeter the colder it is.
Golden chicken thighs simmer in a sauce of browned mushrooms, shallots, white wine and tomato in this French hunter-style braise. The skin is left undisturbed until it releases on its own; lifted too early, it tears. When the sauce runs slowly off a spoon, it is done, and mashed potatoes or crusty bread take care of whatever sauce remains.
Swiss chard in a sweet pie sounds unlikely, but the leaves are mixed with apple, rum-soaked raisins, pine nuts, and brown sugar under a double crust. A dusting of powdered sugar once the pie has cooled through makes it read as a dessert from the first look.
The heads and part of the shells stay on these medium shrimp. Tossed for ten minutes with olive oil, rosemary, thyme and garlic, they cook for two minutes a side on a thin layer of coarse salt in a very hot pan, and the shells that were left on turn crisp.