Recipes

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

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

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

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

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 · 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

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

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

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

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

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie

Elaine Louie · NYT Cooking

Elaine Louie