Recipes

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Nubby with oats, these tender brown sugar muffins have a hint of cardamom that brings out the richness of chocolate chips. Tiny quick-cooking oats offer a delicate chew in batter that comes together fast enough for weekday mornings. Right out of the oven, they’re crisp around the edges and fluffy. Over time, they become stickier and feel even more wholesome.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

In his cookbook “Ghana to the World: Recipes and Stories That Look Forward While Honoring the Past” (Clarkson Potter, 2025), the chef Eric Adjepong calls this his “favorite dessert of all time.” Malva pudding originated in South Africa and is beloved there and throughout its diaspora, but its creation remains a mystery. The lack of concrete facts behind the history of malva pudding seems less important than the dessert’s strong foundation — tender sponge cake seasoned with apricot jam and drenched in buttery sweetened cream. It comes together quickly and easily, and tastes best served warm, making it the ideal way to end a party with friends. Genevieve Ko

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Glossed with a tangy blend of honey and lemon, this salmon caramelizes around the edges while staying juicy and tender. Dill, lots of it, brings freshness, green as cut grass. Wild salmon works especially well here because the butter in the sauce gives the lean fish richness. (Fatty farmed salmon will simply taste even richer, not a bad thing at all.) Quick-pickled cucumbers and mustard seeds offer a cool, crunchy pop to this dish, but the salmon is also tasty on its own. Serve this with rice, potatoes or a tray of asparagus roasted alongside the salmon.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

The whole point of carrot cake is that, in its most ideal form, it’s a vehicle for cream cheese frosting, a triple stack of fluffy spiced cake, finished with generous swoops of frosting. Baking the cake batter in a half-sheet pan, then cutting the flat cake into three rectangles delivers thin, even layers and skips the hassle of baking and slicing tall cake rounds. To highlight the tang of cream cheese, this frosting includes sour cream instead of butter. It gives the whole thing a fresh lightness, each forkful equal parts tender cake and silky frosting. The resulting cake looks modern with its sharp angles but can still be cut into classic triangular wedges.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Making your own protein bars may sound like a project, but this recipe comes together quickly and doesn’t require turning on the oven. Its greatest appeal, though, is how it combines the crackle of nuts and the creaminess of nut butter with earthy maple syrup. A fat pinch of salt and a touch of pepper bring out the nuts’ toasty bittersweetness. The black pepper sharpens the syrup’s caramel roundness, but try ground chipotle or other dried chiles for a smoky heat. There’s plenty of salt, but if you want even more, sprinkle flakes on top before chilling. Feel free to customize the nuts and seasoning: Just be sure to keep the ratios the same.

Sean Kenniff · NYT Cooking

The chef Yara Herrera is clear: “I didn’t invent the idea of a masa pancake.” But she perfected the form at Hellbender restaurant in Ridgewood, Queens, where the theme of native heirloom corn runs through the tacos and tostadas on the menu. For brunch, masa gives the pancakes a sturdy crackle at the edges around a crisp top. Inside, it infuses the batter with a depth not usually found in pancakes, as does the addition of yogurt, yielding a crumb that’s at once fine and fluffy. Fresh masa, a doughy mass of ground nixtamalized corn, can be purchased from tortillerias and some Latin markets (see Tip). It’s blended into a batter that stays light using Ms. Herrera’s technique of cooking tall pancakes in tiny individual skillets. But masa harina, shelf-stable flour ground from dried masa, is more readily available and can be substituted as directed below, with the batter sizzled into the usual flatter rounds. Sean Kenniff and Genevieve Ko

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

San choy bao literally translates from Cantonese to “lettuce wrap,” and its contours are wide: cold iceberg lettuce, a stir-fry of finely diced vegetables and protein, and sweet Chinese bean sauce like hoisin. (The deep-fried noodles here aren’t essential, but they add a fantastic crackle to the juicy filling.) Unlike soft, warm comfort food, which lulls you, san choy bao wakes you up. It feels like a duel, with jabs of hot and cold, lunging back and forth between two worlds. The crunch of icy lettuce snaps into the filling’s steaming crisp bits, and if you can find fresh water chestnuts, you’ll be rewarded with their unique woodsy crunch.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Cold-smoking salmon is a time-honored tradition in Indigenous communities in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, as well as other cold regions where wild salmon runs. The days-long process of infusing the fish with wood smoke without heating it is a tricky one that requires a smokehouse. To replicate the subtle smokiness and tender chew, this recipe cures the fish using a dry brine seasoned with coffee beans, smoked paprika and mezcal, ingredients that bear the scent of fire. A fillet of uniform thickness will yield a consistent firmness, while a tapered one will have thin ends that become like jerky. If you’re concerned about uncooked salmon, you can start with flash-frozen fish, thawing it thoroughly and patting it dry before curing, or you can cook the salmon after it’s been cured.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Can this be considered chili if it’s ready in half an hour? For a completely fresh take, yes — yes, it can. Right when it’s done, the kale, cilantro and peppers remain green as grass with a bright bite. The turkey is still tender and juicy, the tomatoes tangy and the spices tingly. Those distinct lanes of flavor merge if you keep the pot over low heat for an hour or more, or if you pack up leftovers and reheat them throughout the week. Thickened with lentils and a whole pound of kale, this chili is hearty with protein and fiber, making it as satisfying as it is satiating.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

A specialty from Sichuan, a province in the southwest of China, vendors once balanced baskets of noodles and sauce on their shoulder poles and cried out “dan dan mian!” to hawk their wares. Dan dan refers to those bamboo shoulder poles and mian means noodles, but there’s no one way to prepare them. Nowadays in the Western diaspora, the dish is associated with a few essentials, namely chile oil and sesame paste, but another is worth adding: preserved vegetables. Salty and a little sweet with the sour oomph of fermentation, pickled mustard greens give the soothing noodles an umami zing. These noodles are especially rich with sesame, but you can adjust all of the seasonings to your taste. Toasty and salty, tangy on the cliff of funk, chewy with pops of peanut, dan dan noodles are a bowl of contentment.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Buttery and snappy with the floral sparkle of orange zest, these shortbread get an extra zing from a glossy lemon glaze. These holiday cookies — delicious any time of year — highlight the milky allure of butter in their not-too-sweet dough and come out tender if rolled thick and crisp if thin. For an extra-toasty depth, leave the cookies in the oven until they burnish to a deep brown. The tangy zip of these cookies, whether cut into decorative shapes or simply sliced into rounds or squares, glazed or not, is the perfect counterpoint to the season’s sugar excess.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Soft and chewy, these gingerbread cookies come together quickly and easily. Using oil instead of butter keeps the rounds moist and lets the warmth of the spices shine. A chai blend, which often highlights ginger and cardamom and includes the surprising heat of black pepper, gives them even more verve. If you don’t have one on hand, you can simply mix your own (see Tip). That spiced coziness is echoed in the glaze, but the cookies are just as satisfying unadorned. (For more of Genevieve's holiday cookie tips, see this article.)

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

With its welcome bitter edge, matcha balances the usual sweetness of sugar cookies. Although its tannic overtones are subtle here, its grassy hue naturally tints these tender cookies a festive green. Because it’s become a popular drink worldwide, true matcha can be difficult to find and expensive if you do track it down. For these cookies, culinary grade matcha works fine. Royal icing, also known as decorating icing for how hard it sets, gives the tops of these cookies a nice crackle. (For more of Genevieve's holiday cookie tips, see this article.)

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

There’s only one problem with cinnamon rolls: They taste best fresh out of the oven with runny icing. This Bundt cake is also delicious warm, but gets only better as it sits, so you can get a hit of cinnamon roll goodness for days. Including panko in the spiced brown sugar swirl allows the cake layers to pull apart the way yeasted rolls do. The simple vanilla pound cake batter is tender and tangy with cream cheese. More cream cheese — a lot more — cloaks the cake in the form of frosting. Just as there’s no end to holiday cheer, there’s no limit on cream cheese frosting.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Crackly fried Chinese scallion pancakes take the form of baked buns here, crisp on the sesame-speckled outside and tender within. Sizzling scallions in hot oil captures the aroma of the pancakes and brings out scallions’ savory side while preserving their bright green hue. To mimic the pancakes’ scaffolding, the blend is spiraled into a simple yeast dough, subtly sweet and a little buttery. Be sure to bake them right before serving so you can pull apart the hot, soft layers and inhale the fragrant steam before taking a bite.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

For a hearty start to any day — or a fun take on breakfast for dinner — put together this casserole. Red enchilada sauce (you can use 2 cups store-bought) and cheese smother a breakfast burrito base of flour tortillas encasing crisp potatoes and chorizo. Sliding eggs into the dish at the end of baking gives you the bonus of sunny-side-up eggs without the hassle of washing another pan. You can assemble the enchiladas the day before serving to make the morning less hectic.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Homestyle Chinese soups, particularly Cantonese ones, distill the essence of bony meat and vegetables into subtle broths. This take does the same, but instead of simmering a huge pot for hours, it uses proportionally less water and cooks in under an hour for a satisfying meal. This method ensures that the broth is deeply flavorful, the meat still juicy and the vegetables and barley tender with an ideal bite. You can swap in other root vegetables for the carrots and other varieties of cabbage for the napa, but aim for options that end up naturally sweet when cooked. The resulting soup is warming with ginger and ideal for recovering from a cold, but if you prefer a punchier flavor, dress it up with bold condiments.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

Trade between China and Thailand began centuries ago and with it came the commingling of people, culture and cuisine. Here, the signature hot, sour, salty, sweet flavor profile of Thai food takes the form of super-savory dumplings with a chile-spiked dipping sauce. Formed into little round patties, these resemble a pan-fried dim sum dumpling filled with garlic chives. The filling is encased in rice paper wrappers (see Tip) because I didn’t have time to buy fresh dumpling wrappers and my local store only carried these dried sheets. They worked beautifully and not only echo the use of wide rice noodles in Thai and Chinese dishes — think pad see ew and beef chow fun — but are also a wonderful pantry ingredient to keep on hand for other recipes. The chicken filling ends up juicy thanks to plenty of napa cabbage and Thai basil in the blend and becomes even more flavorful when dipped into the sauce. Be sure to divide the sauce among individual dishes so everyone can double dip.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

At the restaurant RVR (pronounced “river”), the chefs Travis Lett and Ian Robinson toss this dressing with winter chicories from the local farmers’ market, speckled and striped pink and green. Any crisp leaves from the supermarket, including lettuces and other chicories like radicchio, endive and escarole work well. At their restaurant in Venice, Calif., they top the tossed salad with shaved Parmesan, anchovy-toasted bread crumbs, lots of parsley, fresh squeezes of lemon juice and plenty of black pepper. It’s also delicious as a dip for crudités, with roasted or steamed vegetables, tossed with noodles or used as a spread for sandwiches or savory toasts. Genevieve Ko

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

These mahogany treats deliver the toasted nuttiness and hearty chew of bran and avoid whole wheat’s common afflictions of heaviness and bitterness in baked goods. The key to making these muffins tender and keeping them from drying out is simply liquid — in all different forms. Water helps soften the bran along with orange juice, which adds a floral aroma; molasses and honey highlight bran’s natural sweetness; and oil and buttermilk add a touch of richness. Soaking the bran before baking and infusing the muffins with an orange-honey syrup while they’re still warm ensure they stay soft and moist for days. Dates lend a caramel depth to the mix, but if you’re nostalgic for classic bran muffins, you can use raisins instead.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

This game-changing pancake recipe from Sam Yoo, the chef and an owner of Golden Diner in Manhattan’s Chinatown, combines all the nostalgia of diner pancakes with innovative techniques for a dish that makes your eyes widen at first taste. Mr. Yoo cooks a yeast-risen buttermilk batter in individual skillets to give them height like Japanese soufflé pancakes and a perfect roundness like those in the flapjack emoji. As soon as he stacks them on a plate, he drenches them with buttery maple-honey syrup, then tops them with salted honey-maple butter, both inspired by Korean honey-butter chips and reminiscent of Werther’s hard candies. A berry compote completes the meal with its fresh tang. Genevieve Ko

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

A spoonful of coconut cream scents these crepes with a tropical aroma that takes you somewhere beautiful. It also helps toast the sizzling batter, giving the edges a crackle and the whole thing a nutty note. To make swirling the batter into thin rounds even easier, this blend is quite thin, with just a little more swish than heavy cream. Coconut’s fragrance extends to the accompanying whipped cream, which also includes pandan extract (see Tip). Inspiration for this crepe’s topping came from Diane Moua, the chef and owner of Diane’s Place in Minneapolis, who pipes coconut-pandan diplomat cream into croissants for a spectacular pastry. Coconut brings out the subdued bouquet of pandan and that duo is streamlined into this simply whipped cream.

Genevieve Ko · NYT Cooking

This is the dessert you want from late spring to high summer when rhubarb and strawberry flood markets (or your garden). Tart rhubarb mellows to a juicy tang when baked with berries and this filling is even more flavorful because it starts with roasting the fruit. Caramelizing strawberries to the brink of char eliminates the wateriness that threatens to make them bland and concentrates their natural sweetness. The filling would be great even in a store-bought crust, but this homemade one carries the rich milkiness of butter and, thanks to the shortening, is so flaky it shatters like broken glass. This is delicious on its own, but, like all fruit pies, even better with vanilla ice cream.

Yewande Komolafe · NYT Cooking

Soft and stuffed with cream, these buttery buns also have a smear of jam for an additional pop of sweetness in this version of the traditional Italian treat. Maritozzi are a variation of quaresimali, Roman breads made with almond flour and sweetened with honey and dried fruit. Maritozzi are usually made without dried fruit and they’re small, the size of your cupped hand, distinct with their generous filling of cream. Sold in bakeries across Rome, and increasingly around the world, they’re a fun project to make at home too since the steps can be done ahead of time and in stages. This version is tangy with buttermilk and spiced with a hint of nutmeg. They are best enjoyed soon after assembly and can be finished with a sprinkling of confectioners’ sugar for a bit of extra flair.