Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

This succulent green bean dish, in a gently spiced sauce of coconut milk, is from Bihar, a state in India. “It is an everyday, simple dish that is several hundred years old,” said Julie Sahni, a cooking teacher, and author of eight cookbooks. The dish requires fresh green string beans, not French haricot verts or Asian long beans, which are thinner, and more dense. “The string beans will plump up, and absorb some of the sauce,” said Ms. Sahni. The recipe can be adapted for 12 ounces of raw cauliflower, carrots, eggplant, or brussels sprouts. For the eggplant, Ms. Sahni uses the long, slender Japanese ones, and cuts them on the diagonal, in one-inch slices. She trims and peels the carrots, and cuts them like the eggplant, in one-inch diagonal slices. For the cauliflower, she uses the florets, and cuts them in pieces that are one and a half inches in diameter. For Brussels sprouts, she trims and discards the stems, and cuts the vegetable in half. Very fresh cauliflower cooks in four minu

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

The chef Floyd Cardoz shared this recipe with The Times in 2011. “I personally love cabbage,” he said. At Tabla, his restaurant on Madison Square Park, he offered lightly caramelized cabbage wedges that had been spiced with cloves, black mustard seeds, shallots, garlic and ginger. Mr. Cardoz brought out the sweetness of the cabbage, and in the plating of it, its beauty. Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

This recipe puts vanilla in a savory setting, giving a sweetness and floral scent to chicken thighs. Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Here is an easy, fast recipe for an appetizer redolent with the deep flavors of summer. Wait until the caponata is finished before toasting the bread. (The New York Times) Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

In 1975, Eli Zabar, the owner of E.A.T., Eli's at the Vinegar Factory and numerous restaurants and markets throughout the city, invented what he calls the platonic ideal of an egg salad sandwich. He did it by eliminating half the egg whites. During this period, he was into simplicity, he said, and he wanted to get to the essential “egginess” of egg salad. The recipe remains unchanged more than 40 years later. But what of all the leftover hard-cooked egg whites? E.A.T. sells them as chopped egg white salad in two versions: plain, and dressed with mayonnaise and dill. Waste not, want not. Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Tyler Kord, the chef-owner of the No. 7 Sub shops in New York, has made the submarine a thing of juiciness, beauty and exoticism. “I like soft bread and fancy ingredients inside,” said Mr. Kord, who worked at a Subway when he was 16, in Ithaca, N.Y., and eventually became sous-chef at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Perry Street restaurant in New York. Take General Tso’s Tofu Sub, a brilliant study of layered textures and flavors. The centerpiece is a deep-fried panko-crusted rectangle of firm tofu, golden and crusty outside, and creamy inside. Mr. Kord layers the tofu between edamame purée, homemade pickled cucumbers and a piquant sauce named after General Tso that includes ginger, garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, sugar and chilis. The blender does the work, in three quick steps. The result is startling. It is what Mr. Kord wants it to be: crunchy, creamy, salty, sweet and sour, all in one bite. Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Can mac ‘n’ cheese be haute? Yes, in the hands of Maximo Lopez May, the executive chef of Wall & Water at the Andaz Wall Street Hotel in Manhattan, who adds exotic mushrooms. “It only works if the mushrooms are great,” he said, “so go for elegant ones, like chanterelles or trumpets.” If your budget doesn’t allow for those, then use oyster mushrooms, hen o’ the woods or cremini. But use a mix. Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

On the hottest days, Indians forgo iced tea (“too American”) for fresh limeade and perhaps mango lassi, which combines fresh mango with yogurt and cardamom. This recipe comes from the cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey, who said, “Mangoes are supposed to be good for the eyes.” This recipe calls for fresh or canned mango pulp. Ratnagiri Alphonso mango pulp, available in Indian shops in New York City and online, is what Ms. Jaffrey recommends. Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

At Spice Market, Jean-Georges Vongerichten fills spring rolls with oyster mushrooms and shiitakes, and spices them with ginger, lemon zest, garlic and green chilies. They recall a trip he took to Singapore years ago. Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

This beautiful, verdant Persian-style frittata is made from a recipe that at first glance looks ridiculous. It’s not the list of ingredients, which sound fresh and lovely with heaps of parsley, cilantro, scallions and lettuce. It’s the last line, Step No. 4, which calls for cooking one side of the frittata 40 minutes, then flipping it over, and cooking the other side 40 more minutes. In the interminable 80 minutes that it cooks, several things happen. The vegetables give up their moisture, the frittata shrinks in height by two-thirds, and the outside becomes a slightly crisp, dark, golden brown — without burning. Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Cooking with your child is an act of relaxation, learning and intimacy. It’s love over a stove. For The Times, the New York chef Marco Moreira and his daughter, Francesca, cooked this simple dish together in 2012. It showcased the fresh tomato sauce they made and provides a recipe as appropriate to grandparents as their kin.

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Jim Leiken, the executive chef at DBGB Kitchen & Bar, cooked us this hearty, rustic dish of fork-tender potatoes, Swiss chard and bubbling Gruyère that can move easily from a satellite role to the centerpiece of a vegetarian holiday meal. Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

This salty yet sweet, creamy yet crunchy fresh corn chowder was developed for The Times by Wade Burch, the executive chef of several restaurants owned by Merchants Hospitality in New York, for a series of articles about chefs who cook with their children. It's loaded with fresh corn (12 ears worth) and dotted with jalapeño and red bell pepper. It does take a little time owing to the corn stock, but it's so worth it. The taste of the finished soup is pure summer.

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Back in 2012, Elaine Louie spent time with Tama Matsuoka Wong, a forager for the restaurant Daniel in New York and Le Bec-Fin in Philadelphia, to see how she and her family ate. Ms. Louie brought back this recipe, a riff on Vietnamese summer rolls and a Wong family favorite. If it’s your first time making summer rolls, don’t fret too much about appearance. “The summer roll is very forgiving,” Ms. Wong said. “Even if you have a hole in the wrapper, you can roll it up and hide the hole.” Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

This recipe is deliberately, exquisitely simple, with pure sweet corn flavor. Grate corn kernels directly into a cast-iron pan and place in the oven, without any seasonings. The corn releases its milk, which thickens, and the kernels turn golden and lightly caramelized around the edges. Only then do you season it, and only lightly: A bit of butter, a sprinkle of salt and cayenne, and the juice of half a lime. Mix. Serve. Adding the seasoning at the end allows you to better control the taste of the finished dish. Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

The Portuguese-born, New York-based chef Luisa Fernandes makes a savory empada — Portuguese stuffed pastry — that is similar to a ratatouille wrapped in puff pastry. She sautés eggplant, tomatoes, squash, onions and garlic, and once the vegetables are cooled, she tucks them into the pastry in muffin tins, and bakes them until they are golden. Serve them for lunch with a salad. Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

A classic Chinese dish is bok choy served with dried black mushrooms, soaked until soft and then flavored with soy sauce and other ingredients.

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Drew Spangler Faulkner, a cooking teacher at L’Academie de Cuisine in Bethesda, Md., makes a Thai green curry that is a kind of comfort food. The sauce, made creamy with coconut milk, and gently spicy with the curry paste, is flavorful yet soothing. The vegetables, which are simply dropped into the sauce, and gently simmered for about 12 minutes, turn out tender, not soggy. It is startlingly simple. She makes her own green curry paste, but the recipe calls for any one of three store bought pastes. Although some green curry pastes contain fish or shrimp paste, she has found three brands which do not: Thai Taste, Maesri and Thai Kitchen. Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie