Recipes

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

Getting fried oysters from your summer seafood shack is fun, but making them yourself yields something crispy, light and, most significantly, tender. Shuck carefully, bread delicately and fry to golden perfection, then serve with this bright, lively tartar sauce, which gets its spark from cornichons, capers and lemon juice. Eat while hot — whether you’re wearing flip flops or polished oxfords, that’s up to you.

Gabrielle Hamilton · NYT Cooking

McSorley’s Old Ale House in New York City is a perpetually crowded bar with sawdust-covered floors that has been in continuous operation since the 1800s. Besides its ale — dark and light — the bar sells a modest, quirky, perfectly unpretentious cheese plate: Cheddar, raw white onions and saltine crackers with a side of spicy brown mustard. Here, with the minor update of frying the crackers, is a major improvement to an old offering. The plain dry crackers become nutty and extra crisp and salty, warm and rich. It’s like the difference between raw cookie dough and a baked dark-edged batch fresh from the oven. With a sharp tang from Cheddar, the bite of raw onion and that final hit of vinegary mustard heat, this stacked fried saltine makes a lively bite with drinks in any era.

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

Though mango and lime pickles are easy to find on the shelves of Indian grocery stores, home cooks in India pickle all varieties of fruits and vegetables, including tomato. India’s pickle queen, Usha Prabakaran, documented this tomato pickle, flavored with a generous amount of fennel seeds. It’s capable of adding flavor and heat to breakfast, lunch or dinner. Asafoetida has a pungent smell out of the jar, but mellows as it cooks and gives the pickle its personality — don’t skip it! Tejal Rao

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

This recipe for chocolate mousse made in a blender comes via the pastry chef Natasha Pickowicz, who got it from a cook named Monica Stolbach, who in turn got it from her mother-in-law, who got it from a Junior League cookbook published in the 1980s. Straightforward, adaptable and extremely satisfying, it’s one of those recipes that you want to pass along to as many people as you can. Instead of separating the egg yolks and whites, this technique simply involves pouring hot sugar syrup into a blender with chocolate and whole eggs, then folding that mixture into softly whipped cream. The resulting texture is so creamy and rich, it doesn’t need anything at all, though you can top it with extra whipped cream, if you like. Tejal Rao

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

Roti is a basic, everyday bread, but making it takes a lot of skill. The dough is kneaded with just enough water to bring it together and keep it soft and pliable. And though it’s not yeasted, a ball of well-mixed and -rested dough will be supple and almost spongy, as if it were. Cooks who are used to making roti at home can roll out thin, round disks that puff up as if by magic. But the real magic of roti is how a few of them can turn anything — a little kheema, or a few spoonfuls of aloo masala — into a satisfying meal.

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

Kachori started as street food in Rajasthan, where Marwari cooks sealed food in pastry and deep-fried it, making it ideal for the hungry traders doing business at outdoor markets. Kachori can be filled with potatoes, dal and vegetables, but when peas are in season, they make what I consider the pinnacle of the genre. The filling is fresh, green, bright, juicy and lightly seasoned with herbs and lemon, all tucked inside a thin, flaky crust. The dough behaves nothing like pie dough, but somehow achieves the same effect after it’s deep-fried. Though the snack was originally made to be portable and to keep for a long time, these kachori are best the day they’re made.

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

Many diners in the United States know dosas as the crisp, oversize folds served at South Indian restaurants. But those dosas have a large extended family: dosas from Karnataka made with grated cucumber; dosas from Tamil Nadu made with pearl millet flour; and dosas from Kerala made with jaggery. There are lacy-edged dosas and cakelike dosas, delicate dosas that crumple like hankies, and fat, deeply pocked dosas that break where they’re creased. If you’ve never made dosas at home, a good place to start is this simple rice and urad dal batter. Traditionally, the batter relies on a wild fermentation that flourishes in warm kitchens, but many cooks hack this, reaching for packets of dosa mix or adding yeast to ensure that the fermentation kicks off properly. A powerful blender is crucial to getting a fine, smooth batter. You’ll know it’s ready when it’s very foamy and smells a little sour.

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

Sour with tamarind, full-bodied with coconut and smoldering with dry red chiles, this dish has roots in the coastal city of Mangalore. In India, a cook might reach for Byadagi chiles from Karnataka to stain the sauce a bright red color. In the United States, chiles de árbol are easier to find. A stone mortar and pestle is the best tool for grinding the curry paste; the finer you can get the coconut and chile, the smoother and richer the texture of the final sauce. From there, the recipe is very adaptable — replace the fillets with any fish you like, including nice oily ones like mackerel or sardines.

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

In India, you’re just as likely to have biryani as a lunchtime delivery at the office as you are to see it as a stunning centerpiece at a wedding feast. The dish is pervasive, with many modern interpretations and regional permutations rooted in Muslim communities of the subcontinent. Hyderabad is famous for its style of biryani, which traditionally involves a layer of raw meat and gravy that cooks the rice as it steams in a tightly sealed pot. This Sindhi-style biryani is the one I make for special Sunday lunches and parties. With multiple layers of parcooked rice, fresh herbs, caramelized onion, saffron-infused milk and braised lamb, it’s a project, but a rewarding one. Two tips: Meat on the bone isn’t a rule, but it’s consistently better than meat off the bone. Potatoes are welcome; add a pound of small boiled potatoes to the cooked meat if you want to stretch the pot and feed a few extra people.

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

Though elite, upper-caste Hindus tend to be vegetarian, most Indians eat meat, and many millions of Muslim Indians eat beef. This saucy keema, which can be made with chicken, lamb, beef or a combination of meat, is simple, comforting home cooking — the meat stretched out and made luxurious in a reduction of spiced tomato. It can be dinner with a couple of soft, shiny bread rolls, or a chapati and a dollop of yogurt. A friend of mine even mixes it with spaghetti and a moderate squirt of ketchup. (Don’t judge!) The secret to this version is to take your time: Caramelize the onions properly for a strong foundation, and once you’ve added the beef, simmer it patiently until the sauce is dark and silky, and the fat has split away, risen to the top, and pooled in every nook.

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

A little bowl of simply spiced half-mashed potatoes and onion, glistening with fat, is a standard side dish at bustling restaurants that serve dosas. It’s also one of the best vegetable dishes — inexpensive, quick and delicious — to add to your repertoire as a home cook. The key to these potatoes is water, not fat. Overcooking them just slightly ensures that they’re tender, and that they hold enough moisture so when you drop them into the hot pan, they break up and meld into the sautéed onion mix, becoming almost indistinguishable from it. Though aloo masala is great with a hot dosa, it’s a versatile dish that can also work as a side with other meals.

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

There are countless variations of this style of salad from Karnataka, but my favorite is a simple version made with crunchy raw carrots, dressed with a little tempered fat, coconut, citrus and chopped herbs. If fresh coconut isn’t available, keep a bag of frozen grated coconut in the freezer. It’s easy to find at most Indian grocery stores and, when you have it on hand, you can bring this salad together in less than five minutes.

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

Dal can be made with all kinds of lentils and cooking methods. These vary not just from region to region, but also from day to day, mood to mood. Some cooks like dal soupy, others chunky. There are dals for special occasions, seasoned with charcoal smoke and butter or padded out luxuriously with cream, as well as lighter, leaner dals that can restore you when you’re not feeling well.The flavor of this everyday, Gujarati-style dal comes from the pure nuttiness of split pigeon peas, boiled until tender and bolstered with spices bloomed in hot ghee. This fat-tempering technique, called vaghar in Gujarati, has many names and many uses across the country. In this case, the tempering is a great introduction to the resourcefulness and finesse of Indian home cooks: Just a few tablespoons of carefully seasoned fat, tipped in at the very last moment, transform an entire pot.

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

Eggs have long been an important source of nutrition across the country, and form the base of many classic regional dishes. In Andhra Pradesh, this spicy, tomato-rich egg curry would have firmer, more crumbly yolks (boiled for about 11 or 12 minutes), but I like to cook them a little softer (8 minutes, max).

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

A simple dish of creamy, thin-skinned beans and broth on toast is easy to make, and a comfort to eat alone or feed a crowd. If you make the beans ahead of time, they can keep in the fridge for 3 days, but may need a splash of water added when you heat them up. The broth is a great way to make use of parmigiano rinds, if you happen to be saving those, but if you don’t have any lying around, you can still make it rich with umami: Whisk a heaped tablespoon of white miso with a little of the bean broth to make it smooth and lump-free, then add it back to the pot. It will add a similar, savory depth. The dish seems plain, but it won’t be if you season the broth well, and garnish each bowl generously with olive oil, grated cheese and herbs, just before you eat it.

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

Bryant Terry, an Oakland, Calif., chef with two young daughters, developed this recipe to make eating broccoli a treat. It worked: Blanched and puréed with lemon, garlic and a little of what he calls “umami powder,” the broccoli transforms into a deeply flavorful vegan spread that’s also highly adaptable. Thin it with pasta water and toss it with hot noodles, as seen here, or scrape it into a bowl as a dip for crudités. Spread it onto a thick piece of toast and cover it with sliced radishes, dill and crunchy salt. Use some to drown a softly poached egg, drizzle with olive oil, and eat with a spoon, or to dress warm white beans, then shower them with black pepper and grated cheese. Whatever you do, don’t skip rinsing the broccoli with cold water after you blanch it; the step keeps the spread a vibrant green. Tejal Rao

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

Punjabi-style rajma, or red beans, in a thick, spicy tomato gravy is comforting, quick and comes together with what you have in the pantry. This one-pan baked version is inspired by it, but deviates from tradition in several ways. First, it lets the oven do the work of reducing the sauce. When the dish comes out, scatter with cilantro, if you’ve got it, and some quick-pickled onion. The key is to take your time with the base, letting the onion mixture cook out properly, so the final sauce is mellow and deeply flavored. But you can try the same technique with different beans, from chickpeas to cannellini. Eating the dish with a side of yogurt or a glug of cream is common, but it’s also a treat with a little melted cheese, the edges browned in the pan. Use what you’ve got. Serve the rajma over rice, ideally, but if you’re in a pinch, a side of hot flour tortillas or even buttered toast will make it into a delicious meal.

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

While working on her new cookbook, “Usha’s Rasam Digest,” the author Usha Prabakaran gathered over 1,000 recipes for rasam, a thin, tangy broth from southern India with many names and infinite variations. This one comes together in minutes, from a base of gently sautéed garlic and a peppery spice mixture that is ground to make rasam powder. Ms. Prabakara suggests the soup for anyone feeling unwell. Don’t let the garlic color, or it’ll add a note of bitterness to the rasam. Tejal Rao

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

This recipe for a crisp, cheesy pan pizza was developed by Charlotte Rutledge, along with her team of test cooks at King Arthur Flour’s rigorous test kitchen in Vermont. It uses a number of simple techniques to achieve maximum texture and flavor. The dough is folded a few times before it goes in the fridge for a long rest, which develops its flavor and airiness. Cooking the pizza in cast iron gets the edges brown and crackling, and layering the cheese and sauce creates an extra cheesy top with no soggy layer. Make it once in its simplest form, then use the model to play around with the fermentation time and toppings. Tejal Rao

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

Bryan Ford grew up in New Orleans, eating delicious, dense little pan de coco buns from the Honduran bodegas around town. But as a professional baker, he revisited the bread, using a sourdough starter to add dimension and texture, and even adding cocoa and chocolate chips to sweeten it up. In his cookbook, “New World Sourdough” (Quarry Books, 2020), he calls this version choco pan de coco. The key, according to Mr. Ford, is to bake with love and to celebrate the bread you make — not to compare your own bread to the one in the picture. Tejal Rao

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

Kofta curry — a saucy dish of gently spiced meatballs — is often made with meat. But this one, based on my grandfather’s, swaps in a mash of beans. Bound with bread crumbs and seasoned with ginger, garlic, green chile and herbs, it’s a variation full of flavor and texture. Have it with some flatbread and some sliced cucumber in yogurt, or spooned over a bowl of rice. It’s also delicious in a sandwich the next day. Note: To make it with lamb, as in his original version, substitute 1 ½ pounds ground lamb for the beans. Soak the bread crumbs in ½ cup whole milk first, then squeeze out any extra liquid before adding them to the mixing bowl.

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

James Beard took this recipe from his colleagues Irma and Bill Rhode over 60 years ago, but there’s something delicate, fresh and unfussy about the sandwich even now. There isn’t much to it, so each component really matters: Slice the onions thinly and evenly, season well, and be gentle so you don’t squish the bread as you press each sandwich shut. Rolling the edge of the sandwich in chopped parsley (or a mix of parsley and other fresh herbs), gives it a retro styling touch, but it’s crucial for flavor, too. Tejal Rao

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

Salt-rising bread is an American technique with deep roots: Home bakers who developed the bread in Appalachia didn’t have access to yeast, but found a way to bake without it when they noticed that their milk starters bubbled up overnight. It’s much easier and far more consistent to get a good rise with yeast — even bakers who make salt-rising bread regularly have failures with the finicky technique. But those who continue the tradition are rewarded with light, tender, airy crumbed bread that makes a particularly delicious toast. Be sure to maintain the starter at an even temperature, as directed, or it won’t take.

Tejal Rao · NYT Cooking

Salsa macha is a rich chile oil from Veracruz, Mexico, made from variations of dried chiles, garlic, nuts and seeds fried in oil and finely chopped. As a condiment it’s easy to make, and stores well. It’s also incredibly versatile, adding texture and depth to everything it touches, from tacos and fried potatoes to poached eggs or a simple bowl of noodles with herbs. Once you’ve made it once, feel free to adjust the ingredients to suit your taste, playing with the chile varieties, or swapping in different seeds or nuts.