Oliver Strand

Oliver Strand · NYT Cooking

Oliver Strand

Oliver Strand · NYT Cooking

Layered flavors are the secret behind this chicken salad, from the chef Sara Kramer of Kismet in Los Angeles. After grilling the chicken and letting it rest, reserve the chicken juice to whisk into a vinaigrette of olive oil and lemon juice. Then add chile crisp, that chile-flake-in-oil condiment some Chinese restaurants have on the table, and augment it with toasted and crushed coriander, fennel seed and cardamom. Kismet makes its own shallot powder with dehydrated shallots, but you could use onion powder instead, or fry up some shallots, garlic or onion, mince them with a chef's knife, and add them to the dressing. Finally, the vinaigrette gets a generous spoonful of sumac for an elegantly tart note. You should use the best-looking herbs and greens at your local greenmarket. If there are several kinds of basil or mint, grab them. This recipe is less a precise formulation than a structure for a dish that you will make your own. If you're tight on time, grill the chicken ahead, even th

Oliver Strand · NYT Cooking

Camila Ramos, a founder of the Miami coffee shop All Day, has worked out a formulation that will appeal to coffee obsessives who are ready to take their cold brew to the next level. All Day uses paper filter bags from the brand Toddy. These filters can rip, so you should first line the steeping container with a large reusable food-safe nylon mesh bag. The steeping container must be large enough so that the coffee and water take up no more than two-thirds of the volume. Look for a local roaster, as they roast beans for the water in your area, and try to buy beans that have been roasted 21 to 28 days earlier. (You can always buy a younger coffee and let it rest.) Fresher coffees tend to be more volatile in cold brew. This recipe calls for gently agitating the coffee slurry for a full 5 minutes, which will feel like an eternity. Don’t cut it short. This step is crucial to the extraction process, and will give your cold brew coffee a more dynamic flavor. Oliver Strand

Oliver Strand · NYT Cooking

This recipe comes from Kismet, the chef Sara Kramer's restaurant in Los Angeles. There, the labneh is made in-house, providing an advantage that can never quite be overcome at home. Still, buy the best labneh you can find. This recipe calls for cherries, but any stone fruit can work: apricots, peaches, plums, nectarines. The slight pickle intensifies the fresh fruit, the taste of summer. The Persian cucumbers can be cut on the bias, as specified here, or sliced thinly on a mandoline. Oliver Strand

Oliver Strand · NYT Cooking

Like any conscientious bartender, Ryan Clur, who created this drink at the restaurant Maialino in New York, is particular about the ingredients he uses: Hologram espresso from Counter Culture Coffee, Fever-Tree tonic water and Regan’s Orange Bitters No. 6. For the best results, use these same brands. If you use other brands, you will change the flavor of the drink (though not necessarily in a bad way). Mr. Clur pulls the shot of espresso into a stainless steel steam pitcher so that the coffee is easier to pour over the back of the bar spoon in a classic bartender’s float, and because the metal will absorb some of the heat of the espresso and drop the temperature of the drink. The result: a drink that feels like an iced coffee even though there is no ice. Oliver Strand

Oliver Strand · NYT Cooking

Peter Reinhart, author of “Artisan Breads Every Day” and “American Pie,” said a 24-hour wait will improve any dough: take your favorite recipe, let it sit overnight, then enjoy the upgrade. Mr. Reinhart recommends letting the dough rise at room temperature for three hours, then refrigerating it.

Oliver Strand · NYT Cooking

Oliver Strand · NYT Cooking

Oliver Strand

Oliver Strand · NYT Cooking

Oliver Strand · NYT Cooking

There isn’t much to the shakerato: a shot of espresso poured over ice cubes and simple syrup, then shaken. But when those three elements are rattled around in a cocktail shaker for what seems like an eternity (it actually clocks in at 15 seconds), they undergo an alchemical transformation: the dense espresso, now frothy, sweet and flecked with ice, is as refreshing as it is flavorful.

Oliver Strand · NYT Cooking

Socca is street food in Nice, in the South of France. This Los Angeles version, served at the restaurant Sqirl, makes it a meal by adding shredded vegetables to the chickpea pancake and tops it with greens and creamy labneh. This recipe calls for carrots, winter squash (Sqirl generally uses kabocha) or zucchini — pick one and proceed. Add a fried egg on top to make it heartier, if you'd like. Oliver Strand

Oliver Strand · NYT Cooking

This is an adaptation of the instructions for making a starter outlined by Peter Reinhart in his “Artisan Breads Every Day.” It takes a little more or less than a week of mixing flour with liquid – Mr. Reinhart starts with unsweetened pineapple juice (though you could also use orange juice or apple cider), then switches to water – to achieve a vigorous, living starter. Once it is bubbling and fragrant, with a light yeasty-boozy scent, you can use it and feed it daily with a cup of flour and a half-cup of water. Or put the starter in the refrigerator and feed it weekly, always discarding (or using!) a cup of the original when you do. (All measurements are by weight.) Oliver Strand

Oliver Strand · NYT Cooking

This cake is a showstopper that a baker with rudimentary skills could pull off. The topping is a toffee glaze made with brown sugar, agave, butter and sea salt; you pour half of it over the cake while still hot so that it saturates the cake, giving it a puddinglike consistency, then wait before using the rest as a high-gloss frosting you sprinkle with sea salt. Seemingly complicated, but surprisingly simple. Oliver Strand

Oliver Strand · NYT Cooking

Oliver Strand