Recipes

Emily Weinstein · NYT Cooking

Emily Weinstein

Emily Weinstein · NYT Cooking

In 2009, The New York Times asked readers to send photos and recipes of their holiday cookies. About 100 people answered the call, including Naomi Donabedian, a graphic designer who lived in Brooklyn. She submitted this recipe for piparkakut, a Finnish cookie that incorporates cloves, black pepper, cardamom, ground ginger and orange zest. She wrote of the “big 3D flavor” imparted by freshly ground cardamom, but you can use pre-ground cardamom if you like. The dough can be difficult to roll out, but keep at it. This crisp, delicate, aromatic cookie will be your reward. Emily Weinstein

Emily Weinstein · NYT Cooking

These light and flaky pastries, popular among American and European Jews, are adapted from a recipe by Dorie Greenspan, the prolific cookbook author and winner of four James Beard Awards. The crescent shape and layers of filling might look complicated, but the dough is quite simple to put together (hello, food processor!) and easy to work with. Beyond that, it's really just a matter of rolling, spreading and cutting. These are meant to be bite-sized – about one-inch long – but if you want them bigger, go right ahead. (Should you choose to go larger, Dorie suggests rolling the dough into rectangles instead of circles and cutting the dough into bigger triangles. In that way, you would ultimately get more layers of filling and dough.) Emily Weinstein

Emily Weinstein · NYT Cooking

Long before Emily Weinstein was the editor of NYT Cooking, she wrote columns about learning to cook and bake for the Food section’s long-defunct Diner’s Journal blog. This recipe, part of her penultimate baking column, comes from Sarah Black, who was credited for bringing ciabatta to New York in the early 1990s. Make sure to bake it to a very dark brown: Color is flavor here, and the deeply burnished crust makes for a fabulous end result. Emily Weinstein

Emily Weinstein · NYT Cooking

The cake is three layers of devil’s food with a fourth one crumbled over the icing, artfully if your cake is neat, desperately if it’s not. Crumb topping is a great mask for many of the aesthetic problems a cake might have. Emily Weinstein

Emily Weinstein · NYT Cooking

This recipe came to The Times in 2013, when the food writers Michael Pollan and Michael Moss were prompted to make “a tasty, reasonably healthy lunch” using ingredients available at most grocery stores. “No farmers’ market produce, no grass-fed beef or artisanal anything,” the prompt stated. They came up with a few simple dishes: pizza, a salad of sliced avocados and oranges, and this simple but flavorful soup, which Mr. Pollan regularly made for his family and relies on canned garbanzos. Emily Weinstein

Emily Weinstein · NYT Cooking

This creamy, pale yellow risotto is studded with chewy fresh corn kernels, making for a nice mix of textures. Making your own corn stock deepens the flavor of this dish, but if you don’t have the time, chicken stock will work. The dish is also pleasingly light, for risotto — finishing the dish by folding in airy whipped cream adds richness without also adding heft. Add the cream quickly and carefully right before serving. If it sits in the hot risotto it will melt — which wouldn’t be the end of the world, of course, since you’ll still have a wonderfully creamy risotto. Emily Weinstein

Emily Weinstein · NYT Cooking

The principal innovation here is placing the sliced potatoes in the casserole dish vertically, on their edges, rather than laying them flat as in a standard gratin, in order to get those crisp ridges on top. Allow extra time for the task of slicing the potatoes, for which it's helpful to have a mandoline or food processor (though not necessary, strictly speaking). And do buy extra potatoes, just in case; you want to pack the potatoes tightly and keep them standing up straight. Discover more ideas for the big day at NYT Cooking.

Emily Weinstein · NYT Cooking

This gorgeous tart is adapted from "Sweeter Off the Vine," by Yossy Arefi, a cookbook of fruit desserts for every season. It's an ideal vehicle for the ripest strawberries at the height of the season, a dessert that makes more of a splash than just serving berries and cream but still has that simple charm. The only tricky part is the crust, which could crack as you transfer it to a serving board. But if that happens, don't despair. It's meant to be effortlessly loose and casual, and you can cover the damage with swirls of mascarpone and a blanket of berries. Emily Weinstein

Emily Weinstein · NYT Cooking

Ground pistachios give this loaf cake a lovely nutty flavor, green hue and tender crumb. It's adapted from the cookbook "Sweeter Off the Vine," by Yossy Arefi, which often incorporates Middle Eastern ingredients in unexpected and appealing ways. Top slices of the cake with juicy macerated strawberries and a dollop of whipped cream. If you can't find lavender buds, use 1 tablespoon of finely chopped mint or basil leaves. But do not add the chopped herbs to the mortar with the sugar. Instead, toss them with the berries right before serving. Emily Weinstein

Emily Weinstein · NYT Cooking

This is the dish that the chef Marcus Samuelsson made for President Obama when he visited the restaurant Red Rooster Harlem. This is an easy braise with wonderful flavors — plum sauce, lemongrass, soy sauce — and as it is pointed out in "The Red Rooster Cookbook," short ribs taste more expensive than they actually are, making them ideal for guests. Make it earlier in the day, then simply reheat when you're ready to serve dinner. The book suggests freezing the extra braising liquid in ice cube trays, so you can slip it into pan sauces or pasta for oomph. Emily Weinstein

Sam Sifton · NYT Cooking

This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Get a sheet pan ripping hot in a 425-degree oven while you cut up a small onion and a bell pepper, whatever color you prefer. Toss the vegetables in a splash of neutral oil, salt and pepper them, and tip them into a single layer on the hot pan. Allow these to roast in the oven while you cut the kielbasa into thin slices, stopping short of cutting all the way through the meat. You want to end up with a long accordion, basically, or an attenuated pill bug. Now remove the vegetables from the oven, give them a stir, and put the kielbasa on top. Return the sheet pan to the oven and allow everything to roast into crisp softness, 20 to 25 minutes, basting heavily two or three times with a mixture of equal parts apricot preserves and mustard, about 2 tablespoons each. Serve with steamed greens or a fresh baguette. It’ll go fast. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wed

Sam Sifton · NYT Cooking

This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. You know how to make rice. For the rest of this dish, grab some small eggplants — the Japanese variety is a good option — and cut them on the bias into little steaks. Drizzle them with neutral oil and roast in a 400-degree oven for 20 minutes or so, turning them once or twice, until they’re soft. Then crank the oven to broil, and paint them with white miso that’s been cut with splashes of sesame oil and rice wine, a smaller splash of soy and a few grinds of black pepper. Let that get going until the skin begins to pop, then serve those little vegetarian flavor steaks over rice, with a spray of sesame seeds over the top. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.

Sam Sifton · NYT Cooking

This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Here’s a spin on a great old sandwich of the American South: peanut butter and pickle sandwiches with a spray of sriracha or sambal oelek, and a tiny drizzle of soy sauce. Toasting the bread before spreading it with peanut butter adds crunch and warmth, and the result is a sandwich of remarkable intensity, sweet and salty, sour and soft and crisp. Trust me on this one! Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.

Sam Sifton · NYT Cooking

This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Here’s a nice Wednesday-night meal. Secure the thinnest chops you can find at the store — that’s crucial for the quick-broil part. Throw a few handfuls of dry-roasted peanuts in a pan set over medium-high heat with a glug of sesame oil. Let those go until they’re fragrant and just beginning to darken, then take them off the heat and toss with a few shakes of chile powder. Set the peanuts aside and heat your broiler. Line a sheet pan with foil, and oil it lightly. Salt and pepper your chops, lay them out on the pan, and slide them into the oven. Cook the chops for around four minutes, then flip them over to finish. Meanwhile, mix a tablespoon or so of gochujang, the Korean red-pepper paste, with a healthy splash of orange juice and a wisp of mirin. Taste. Adjust. Pour into a deep serving dish or platter. When the chops are well crusted and brown, slide them into the sau

Sam Sifton · NYT Cooking

This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. This is good one to have in your back pocket when you’re cooking burgers and dogs on the grill; it’s a no-recipe version of a dish that I first learned of from the Brooklyn restaurateur Joe Carroll. Toss broccoli florets in equal parts soy sauce and balsamic vinegar, a generous dash of maple syrup and a splash of neutral oil, then grill (or broil) until they’re soft and crunchy. Serve them under a scattering of red-pepper flakes and sesame seeds, or use furikake, a Japanese seasoning blend that contains, in addition to sesame, chopped seaweed, sugar, salt and, occasionally, monosodium glutamate. Never mind hot dogs or anything else, actually. I could go for that broccoli on white rice and call it dinner, full stop. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.

Sam Sifton · NYT Cooking

This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Put a Dutch oven over medium-high heat on your stove, then add a glug of olive oil and sauté in it a handful of chopped onions, a couple diced ribs of celery, a diced jalapeño and a small diced red pepper. When the mixture is supersoft, add a few cloves of minced garlic and cook for a couple more minutes, then dump a pound and a half of ground beef into the pot — ideally the sort that is 20 percent fat — and stir and sizzle until it is well browned, about 10 minutes. Bring the heat down a bit and add a lot of tomato paste — say 3 tablespoons, maybe 4 — and let it get a little toasty before adding a cup or more of puréed canned tomatoes. Cook that down for a few minutes, then add quite a few glugs of Worcestershire sauce and hot sauce to taste, and continue cooking until the mixture is quite thick, another 15 or 20 minutes. Season to taste and serve on toasted potato bu

Sam Sifton · NYT Cooking

This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Sometimes I get it into my head to make a fancy grilled cheese sandwich. I don’t have a recipe because you don’t really need a recipe to make grilled cheese sandwiches. You just need desire, and a triangle in your head: salt; crunch; melting ooze. So I’ll slice some mild Cheddar. Get some decent bread, a sliced jalapeño, the tail end of a beefsteak tomato. Then, sizzle-sizzle-flip-flip in some unsalted butter, and top with a sunny-side-up egg. It’s the simplest kind of cooking, and on a weeknight that’s exactly what most of us need. Make grilled cheese! Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.

Sam Sifton · NYT Cooking

This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Here's a free-form rice pilaf, made with onions, dried fruit and slivered almonds. First, melt a knob of butter in a pot, then sauté a sliced onion in it until translucent. Add rice, as much as you want to cook, and stir it around, then add water in its usual ratio to the rice, and cook as you always do. At the end, add some chopped prunes, or currants, or raisins, or all three, along with a handful of slivered almonds and salt and pepper. Fluff the rice to mix everything together. Put the top back on the pot, and let the rice and mix-ins mellow out for a few minutes. Serve alongside a store-bought roast chicken, the legs and thighs separated and the breasts cut on the bias and fanned out for show. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.

Sam Sifton · NYT Cooking

This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Pick up a box of large shells — the ones the size of a knuckle, so they hold a little pasta water in them. Pick up a ham steak from the butcher or the corner of the supermarket meat display, and dice it. Pick up a bag of frozen organic peas as well — they’re sweeter. You’ll need a block of good Swiss if you can find it, or some Jarlsberg if you can’t. (Hey, it melts like a dream.) Set a large pot of salted water to boil, and prepare your pasta. While it cooks, get to work on the next burner, browning the ham in a pat of good unsalted butter in a skillet. Offstage, grate about a cup of cheese into a large serving bowl. When the pasta has been cooked for just shy of the time called for on its packaging, throw in a handful of peas, cook another minute, then drain, reserving a little cooking water. Toss the whole mess into the cheese, along with the hot ham, another pat or

Sam Sifton · NYT Cooking

This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Buy a few fillets of the white-fleshed fish you like best (I like fluke, myself), then put a sheet pan in a 425-degree oven and let it get hot. Make a sauce in a small bowl: a few tablespoons of soy sauce for each one of rice wine or sherry, and a heap of minced or grated ginger, and plenty of thinly sliced scallions. You could put some garlic in there, if you like, and a dash of hot chile oil or sesame oil. Salt and pepper the fish, then pull the hot sheet pan out of the oven and get some neutral oil on it. Add the fish to the hot pan carefully, put it in the oven and roast for a minute or so, then paint the sauce onto the fillets and cook for a minute or so longer, until the fish has just cooked through. Serve with rice and greens. And I bet it’d make a good sandwich? Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to re

Sam Sifton · NYT Cooking

This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Start with some cooked rice, white or brown, a cup or so per person, made fresh or pulled from the freezer where you keep some in a plastic bag against the promise of just such an exercise. (The chill helps separate the grains.) Also helpful, also in the freezer: bags of diced organic vegetables you can get at the market (the mixed corn, carrots and peas number, for instance). For the rest: meat if you eat meat, a couple eggs, lots of chopped garlic and ginger, some scallions. You can make a sauce from soy sauce and sesame oil (about a 3:1 ratio) and fire it up with a teaspoon or two of gochujang. You’ll need a little less than a quarter cup of sauce to feed four. To the wok! Crank the heat, add a little neutral oil, then toss in your meat. I like chopped brisket from the barbecue joint, or pastrami from the deli, or ground pork, or bacon, or leftover roast chicken — w

Sam Sifton · NYT Cooking

This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Simplicity itself, if you can find a bag of mussels at the store. Scrub and debeard them as necessary. Then grab a big pot, and use it to sauté some cubed chorizo in olive oil over medium-high heat. When it starts to crisp, add a few handfuls of halved cherry tomatoes and a clove or two of chopped garlic. Let the tomatoes blister in the fat, then add the mussels and a glass of white wine. Cover the pot and allow the mussels to steam open. (If at the end you have mussels that haven’t opened, ditch them: They’re dead.) Garnish with chopped parsley and serve with plenty of toast for the sopping. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.

Sam Sifton · NYT Cooking

This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. If you’re up for a delicious, slightly sporty breakfast, you might consider making some anchovy butter tonight. Take a stick of unsalted butter, and let it soften on the counter while you assemble the other ingredients: a tin of anchovies, some garlic cloves, a shake or two of smoked or regular paprika, a wee splash of lemon juice and maybe, but probably not, some salt. Rinse and mince the little fish, mince the garlic, and fork everything together into the butter to taste. Then, come morning, you can slather toast with the result and serve it with soft scrambled eggs or, better yet, soft-boiled eggs, a breakfast I once had in London at a hotel and restaurant the chef Fergus Henderson was running in Leicester Square. Make sure you spread the butter “wall to wall.” That is a vernacular phrase of the chef Gabrielle Hamilton. It means to cover the entire surface of the br