Recipes

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

These seriously elegant and tongue-tingling parfaits are an excellent dessert to have in your year-round repertoire and are as perfect in the formal dining room under the chandelier as they are in the backyard tent on picnic tables under the paper streamers. Alternating thin precise layers of lemon soda gelatin and tangy buttermilk gelatin takes patience and focus, but once built, they can sit, covered, up to a week in the refrigerator. Be sure to pull them twenty minutes before serving to allow the fully chilled and set parfaits to relax a little, tempering to a perfectly jiggly consistency — then try not to giggle as you eat that first zingy lemony spoonful.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

This bright green sauce from Yemen — so fresh from cilantro, so spicy from serrano chiles, so vividly aromatic — will open up a whole world in your cooking. Treat it just as you would a basil pesto or a salsa verde: Make it in small batches, in the mortar and pestle, and then spoon it with abandon over your lunch of cooked lentils with Bulgarian white cheese, chunks of ripe tomatoes and cold cucumbers, your dinner of roasted chicken and sautéed zucchini, or even your breakfast of fried eggs. It brings intense new life and dimension to everything it touches.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

The Italian kitchen is famous for superior ingredients, and for letting nothing go to waste. This recipe for risotto al salto, which uses leftover, day-old risotto, is a perfect example: You start with a creamy, well-made saffron risotto, then make a crispy delicious cake from it the next day. I’m not the first to notice that many people make more risotto than they need just so they can have extras for this golden perfection the next day.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

A whole roast suckling pig is quite special. No other feast food of the holiday season cooks so easily, and presents so majestically. With its mahogany, crisp skin and its sticky-tender meat, people thrill to be at the party where this is on the buffet. Measure your oven, and be firm with your butcher about the pig’s size, so you can be sure it will fit — most home ovens can easily accommodate a 20-pounder. Then, just give the pig the time it needs in a low and slow oven for its meat to reach its signature tender, succulent perfection, while you clean the house or do whatever it is you do before a special party. For the last 30 minutes, ramp the heat of the oven all the way up to get that insanely delicious crackling skin.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

Slowly poaching fresh, firm seedless oranges in a light sugar syrup is a simple yet magical kind of alchemy. You still end up with oranges, yes, but now they are glistening jewels — cooked but juicy, candied but fresh, bitter but sweet — that make an uncommonly elegant and refreshing dessert after a heavy winter meal. These cold candied oranges keep up to a month in the refrigerator, and any that are left over can be delicious with thick yogurt in the morning, or beside a cup of mint tea in the afternoon. But in every case, they are most bracing and most delicious when super cold.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

I think of making my own gravlax — the Nordic sugar-salt cured salmon — as the gentle, blue-square cooking analog of an intermediate ski trail: It’s mostly easy, but requires some experience. While butchering a whole salmon and cold smoking what you’ve butchered are also exhilarating milestones in the life of an advancing home cook (both a little farther up the mountain and a little steeper on the run down), buying a nice fillet and burying it in salt, sugar and a carpet of chopped fresh dill for a few days is a great confidence-building day on the slopes, so to speak. The cured gravlax will last a solid five days once sliced, in the refrigerator. If a whole side of salmon is more than you need at once, the rest freezes very satisfactorily.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

If you can make pancakes for breakfast, you can certainly make crepes for dinner. These savory ones from Brittany — which use buckwheat flour and are filled with Gruyère cheese, ham and egg — are nutty, earthy and incredibly satisfying any time of day. Loosen the batter, if needed, using beer, water or hard cider; it all works equally well. Once you get the hang of the tilt and swirl, you can have your family fed in minutes, and unlike those nerve-shredded times when you brightly declare “It’s breakfast for dinner, kids!” — which children everywhere know is a sign that something is wrong for Mom — this is one instance where you can announce it, and mean it: Everything is actually alright. Galettes complètes are meant to be a meal.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

Like the very best crab cakes on earth, which have as little dulling, distracting or deadening filler as possible, these crab toasts take that ethos to the extreme. There is no call for bell pepper or bread crumbs or diced celery; just the best fresh, sweet, saline crab meat you can buy, gently seasoned with a little lemon juice, bound with a tiny amount of tangy crème fraîche, then piled onto a slab of good toast, still warm. The toast is made ever so luxurious with a slathering of nutty brown butter mayonnaise. These two simple components — crab and brown butter toast — act in concert, and a glass of cold rosé to wash them down makes for the most exhilarating, satisfying spring supper imaginable.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

We’ve made hundreds of thousands of bloody Marys over the decades at Prune, with 11 variations, and this classic base mix has been the stalwart, gleaming engine of them all. The lemon juice is what makes it so bright and zingy, and the Sacramento brand tomato juice is clean, with perfect body, never muddy or thick. Prepared horseradish keeps its bite and moisture just about forever, whereas fresh grated horseradish loses its potency almost immediately, leaving dead bits of pencil shavings in the glass instead — so resist the urge to “improve” the recipe. Worcestershire sauce adds greater depth to the umami already inherent in tomato, and the Tabasco brand hot-pepper sauce brings vibrancy with its high acidity but very manageable heat. This bloody Mary is as refreshing as a virgin affair as it is when spiked and garnished.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

This classic Cajun side dish is a sweet, hot, juicy, milky, buttery combination of corn, onions and peppers. It’s often cooked in rendered bacon fat and enriched with heavy cream, but this version relies upon only butter and a little water in their place, which allow the ingredients’ flavors to sing more clearly. While it is commonly understood that Fat Equals Flavor, there is a point at which too much fat actually masks complexities in flavors and dulls their vibrancy. Try the maque choux this way and see if you notice how bold and lively it tastes. If you miss the smokiness that bacon imparts, try instead a pinch of smoked paprika stirred in at the end.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

By placing whole, unwashed, plain and naked globe eggplants directly onto the stovetop burner grate and letting them burn until charred, hissing and collapsed, you bring a haunting smokiness and profound silkiness to the interior flesh that will have you hooked for the rest of your life. This way of cooking eggplant is a revelation in itself — easy, yet exciting and engaging — and requires nothing more of the home cook than a little seasoning at the end to be enjoyed, as is. But biting into a warm, crisp, golden fried croquette with that smoky, silken purée at its center is what restaurant-level complexity and satisfaction is all about. One key ingredient, but 11 steps to prepare it — that about sums up the difference between home cooking and restaurant excitement.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

The tian is both a vessel and the name of what’s cooked in it: summer vegetables, sliced quite thin, arranged in careful layers, drenched in quality olive oil and then cooked in a slow oven until each individual vegetable surrenders to the others, becoming one. The true and complete melding of earthy zucchini, sweet onion, waxy potato, juicy and acidic tomatoes is the great achievement of a well-made tian, and resting the finished dish after cooking is no small part of that success. By using a cast-iron pan and starting on the stovetop during the build, covering with a lid along the way, you speed up the cooking significantly. Season every layer and generously drizzle each with olive oil to bring out tremendous flavor and aroma. The Sungold tomatoes are beautiful and bright and quite acidic — perfect against the other flavors — but I find the skins unpleasantly leathery-papery when they are cooked, so simply peel them first. Dropping the tomatoes for 30 seconds into seasoned boiling wa

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

This way of cooking recently harvested new potatoes, by burying them in a plaster of damp salt and baking them, is a triple pleasure: effortless, tasty and very fun. The salt crust seasons the potatoes perfectly, just as it would if you’d boiled or steamed them in salted water, but the airtight seal concentrates their special flavor and texture. They come out dense, waxy and almost creamy. Bring the pan of cooked potatoes to the table right from the oven as is, so everyone can puzzle over the curious-looking white crust, and then delight over the discovery of the piping hot little beauties revealed inside once the surface is cracked. Dig them out and swoop through the butter before popping into your mouth, their skins so paper-thin they snap when you bite into them. Their appeal is irresistible.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

The chef André Soltner served this classic warm onion tart almost every day for 43 years at Lutèce, his world-famous restaurant in New York City. It was for a whole generation the pinnacle of elegant French cuisine in the United States, and yet the tart is straightforward and uncomplicated, rustic and refined all at once. Let the onions slowly caramelize — don’t hasten the cooking by jacking up the heat — and you will be rewarded with a haunting savory-sweet tart in the end that is still irresistible decades later, the very definition of an enduring classic. Gabrielle Hamilton

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

This white borscht, a nod to the tradition of sour soups in Ukrainian cooking, is simply a perfect meal: rich and satisfying, yet bright and delicate and clean all at once. It’s given its distinct tang up front, by soaking a hunk of sourdough bread in the simmering broth, and also at the end, by whisking in a little crème fraîche before serving. At the center is the delicious, subtle, complex broth. The better the kielbasa, the better the broth, obviously, and it’s worth using the whole garland for that complex smoky seasoning it imparts. There’ll be extra for snacking. The chopped dill keeps it all bright and fresh and lively in the mouth. A year-round classic to have in your repertoire, it’s especially beloved in colder months. When weather forecasters announce a dismal spell of sleeting days in a row, you’ll think, oh, good! White borscht weather!

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

This spicy, slippery tripe begs to be slurped like a bowl of noodles, so you may want a roll of paper towels nearby. Slicing the tripe as thinly as possible provides a soft, tender texture, and the collagen that yields from the calf’s foot makes the broth itself slick and full-bodied. The mix of chiles creates a great and powerful warmth that spreads across your chest and leaves a bold, pleasant zing on the tongue, but it is not the kind of sharp or angry spicy that makes your eyes water or your nose run. The paper towels are for tidying up around your enthusiasm, not for dabbing your tears.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

Basically a vegetable-studded potato salad with mayonnaise, Russian salad is hugely popular all over the world for family gatherings and festive events. It’s a beloved, traditional party dish riffed on almost everywhere but my own home: I’d only ever seen pasty, congealed versions I would never wish to eat until I tried this one from Vladimir Ocokoljic, served at his Serbian restaurant Kafana in New York City. While not quite as demanding as his aunt back in Belgrade, who used to slice even the peas in half, Mr. Ocokoljic insists on the tiny dice (each ingredient should match the size of a pea) and emphatically dislikes any sweet pickles (only gherkins or cornichons are a fit), making the finished dish delicate, luscious and savory. Whisking pickle brine into the mayonnaise creates a liquidy slurry, loose enough to dress the salad without its becoming smushed and gluey. Gabrielle Hamilton

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

This towering trifecta of flavor and texture — crisp wafer, creamy peanut butter and glossy dark chocolate — comes together quickly and easily. The hidden star here is Katherine Yang’s utterly delicious peanut butter cream, which binds the layers. It’s savory and nutty, silken and not too sweet. Wafer sheets come in standard 8 ½-inch rounds, so tempering the chocolate in a 10-inch-wide, shallow pan is the simple trick to easy dipping. You can use an offset spatula to spread the filling, or for a more impressive presentation, use a star tip, and pipe swirls, rosettes or scallops. The cake should be eaten soon after assembly, as the filling will eventually start to soften the wafer’s crispness. Gabrielle Hamilton

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

The classic Venetian dish of rice and peas known as risi e bisi makes for a perfect springtime Sunday lunch. This version includes the addition of baby zucchini, which is an acknowledged departure from tradition but a mighty delicious one. The desired final consistency is loose, almost brothy, not tight and creamy like risotto nor drippy like a zuppa. The Venetians use the term “all’onda,” a reference to the swell of waves in the sea. Short-grain rice helps get that distinct starchy quality, but the rice can’t do the job by itself; there has to be stirring throughout. Pour yourself a glass of a good Soave while you stir. You can have a nap after lunch, which is totally traditional.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

There is no other aroma coming from the kitchen — not truffle, not freshly peeled orange, not a chocolate cake baking — that will stop you in your tracks and make you inhale as deeply as this ranchero sauce simmering away. Here’s a large batch to use in many ways: Poach eggs in it for brunch, simmer shrimp in it for taco filling, or spoon it over shredded chicken with avocado slices inside a flour tortilla for lunch for the kiddos. Put it in tightly sealed Mason jars and bring it to friends as a host gift.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

This sandwich serves many dainty folks or fewer rugged types. Preorder the bread from an Italian bakery or deli counter, and build first, season last. Success here is in achieving a perfect filling-to-bread ratio, a generousness with the seasonings, and the ability to close the sandwich around the filling without finding it woefully over- or under-stuffed when it’s time to slice. It’s a huge help to have on hand 8-inch wooden skewers, disposable gloves, a good serrated knife and an egg-slicer gadget. The assembly instructions here are meant to be helpful but not prescriptive, as I trust that everybody knows how to build a sandwich to their own liking.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

Following the model of a classic French salade composée, this satisfying salad, packed with cooked and raw vegetables, as well as canned best-quality tuna and hard-boiled eggs, presents beautifully and eats like a meal. It builds upon a traditional salade niçoise, but a true niçoise uses no lettuce, often has anchovies, would want cracked black niçoise olives and would not have artichoke hearts and basil. So let’s call this a sous-chef salad — and dodge the whole argument while picking up another: It is definitely the best meal salad you will eat all summer. Take care to arrange it so there’s some of each component wherever your eye lands. Try to nestle and fluff the ingredients to allow them all to be seen, rather than piling layer atop layer and thus obscuring the beauty of everything below. This makes the salad very attractive and, most important, ensures that everyone gets some of everything in each bite.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

Wherever the sun is powerful, it has been used to dry local produce. Sundried zucchini are commonly found in the markets in southern Italy, and this sweet-sour marinade, agrodolce, comes from even farther south, in Sicily. The flesh of the zucchini becomes dense and meaty when dried and, after frying, the slices perfectly soak up the aromatic, piquant, lively marinade. Served with slices of sopressata and a fresh orb of burrata, this dish is a delicious addition to an antipasto course. If you can use the sun to dry the zucchini where you live, do so; for the rest of us, the oven in your kitchen will do the trick.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

Fresh black-eyed peas, still in their pods, are a pretty pale green, with a gorgeous purple-black O-ring on each tiny pea. They’re tender and creamy and snappy — with an earthy flavor that goes well with the mint, pepper and turnips in this shallow braise — and they cook in just minutes unlike their wintered-over chalky, drab dried counterparts. I love them when they come in fresh at the market, and also love the so-called chore of shucking them. The chance to sit for a minute and watch the world go by while shelling a big pile of fresh peas will always leave you feeling glad you did.