Recipes

Paula Wolfert · NYT Cooking

Here's a delightfully simple yet deeply flavorful Sicilian-style pasta sauce from Paula Wolfert, the prolific Mediterranean cookbook author. As you wait for your pasta to cook, sauté a garlic clove in a good bit of olive oil, then discard the clove. Toss in two cans of anchovy fillets and mash them with the back of your spoon until they dissolve into a fragrant sauce. Drain the pasta, then combine it with the anchovy sauce and serve. Sprinkle with chopped fresh parsley for color and toasted bread crumbs for crunch. If you're serving this as a main course, double the recipe, for four generous servings.

Paula Wolfert · NYT Cooking

Paula Wolfert · NYT Cooking

Paula Wolfert · NYT Cooking

Paula Wolfert · NYT Cooking

Paula Wolfert · NYT Cooking

Paula Wolfert · NYT Cooking

Molly O’Neill · NYT Cooking

Molly O'Neill

Molly O’Neill · NYT Cooking

Molly O'Neill

Molly O’Neill · NYT Cooking

Molly O'Neill

Molly O’Neill · NYT Cooking

Molly O'Neill

Paula Wolfert · NYT Cooking

Paula Wolfert

Molly O’Neill · NYT Cooking

Molly O'Neill

Florence Fabricant · NYT Cooking

Florence Fabricant

Amanda Hesser · NYT Cooking

For me, a dinner party is a chance to try all those recipes that serve as bedside reading. For dessert, I dug around my cookbook collection and decided on a Moroccan rice pudding (or roz bil hleeb) from Paula Wolfert, made with almond milk and orange flower water. Amanda Hesser

Amanda Hesser · NYT Cooking

This dish, called muhammara, is a beautiful coarse purée of roasted red peppers, chilies, walnuts, garlic and pomegranate molasses. Amanda Hesser

Alex Witchel · NYT Cooking

Chicken, that old weeknight standby, can get pretty boring day after day. This dish, adapted from "Mediterranean Cooking" by Paula Wolfert, is almost as easy as a few pan-fried chicken breasts, but its flavors – ginger, turmeric, cumin, Spanish sweet paprika, briny olives – are far more exciting. If you have the time, brining the chicken thighs for a couple of hours in a salt-sugar-water solution before cooking will yield supremely tender meat, but if you're in a rush, skip it. You're still going to fall in love with this dish. Alex Witchel

Joan Nathan · NYT Cooking

Joan Nathan

Amanda Hesser · NYT Cooking

Amanda Hesser

Julia Moskin · NYT Cooking

Julia Moskin

Julia Moskin · NYT Cooking

This is Paula Wolfert’s original recipe from her 1973 book “Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco,” but I leave out the warm spices like cinnamon and cardamom so that the flavors are adaptable. The brightness of this pickle has lately elbowed its way out of Morocco’s tagines. New York chefs add the minced peel to salads and garnish fried seafood with it; the cured-lemon flavor is particularly friendly to salmon, carrots, olives, parsley and potatoes. The lemony brine is great in a bloody mary. Julia Moskin

Julia Moskin · NYT Cooking

Serve this butter with Berber skillet bread. Julia Moskin

Julia Moskin · NYT Cooking

The Berbers use an unusual leavening method that gives a warm, earthy aroma to the loaves: a mix of semolina flour, water and garlic cloves that quickly ferments into a pungent starter. The recipe requires three kinds of flour and takes two days, but is richly rewarding in flavor. Julia Moskin

David Tanis · NYT Cooking

For special occasions in Morocco, a whole lamb is turned on a spit over coals for hours, until the exterior is browned and crisp, with tender juicy meat within. Paula Wolfert, the great American authority on Moroccan food, gives this slow-roasting method for achieving similar delicious results in a home oven. Ask your butcher for front quarter of lamb (also called a half bone-on chuck). It is comprised of the neck, shoulder, front shank, and some ribs, all in one piece. Alternatively, ask for 2 large bone-in shoulder roasts. The lamb emerges succulent and fragrant, thanks to careful basting with butter and spices. Serve it with warm chick peas, cumin-flavored salt and a dab of spicy harissa. David Tanis