Recipes & Food

You can certainly eat corned beef with boiled cabbage and carrots, but it can be a great deal more exciting to pile the shredded meat — ruddy pink, salty, fatty and meltingly sweet — into warm flour tortillas, then top it with a bright, crunchy, slightly fiery cabbage slaw The contrast between the soft and the crisp, the salt and the sweet, is fantastic — particularly if you adorn each taco with a few pickled jalapeños and, perhaps, an additional swipe of mayonnaise It’s not fusion cooking, nor appropriation

This breakfast startles in the best way: It tastes like cozy, steaming porridge, but looks and feels like delightful buttermilk pancakes Tiny quick oats soaked in buttermilk, along with flax and honey, lend a unique tenderness Biting into a round, crackly with butter and caramelized from honey on the outside, reveals the pleasant, familiar creaminess of oatmeal in the center

This is a wonderfully simple and hands-off way to prepare a flavorful hunk of meat, equally suited to a weeknight or a dinner party There is no need to brown the pork first because the meat gets appealingly dark and caramelized while braising in the rich combination of soy sauce and honey Fresh cilantro, scallions and a squeeze of lime added just before serving bring freshness

The beauty of a soup like this — other than its bone-warming properties — is that you don’t need a recipe You can pretty much simmer together any combination of vegetables with a little water or broth, purée it, top it with good olive oil and salt, and end up with something good to eat The addition of miso paste and crushed coriander to the broth, and fresh lemon and cilantro at the end, zips things up without negating the comfort factor.

Creamy and comforting, this cauliflower soup happens to be vegan, and takes its silky texture from being simmered and thickened with roasted cashews The nuttiness of the cauliflower and the cashews is balanced by the addition of a tart apple The preferred thickness of creamed soups varies, so if the soup feels too thick, just adjust it to your ideal level of creaminess, adding more stock or water — and an additional sprinkle of salt — as needed.

Goetta, Cincinnati’s signature meat-and-oat breakfast loaf, is called a sausage, but it’s really more of a meatloaf. In this version, pork, oats, and spices are cooked into a thick porridge and then cooled into a sliceable solid. Slices are then pan-fried until caramelized and crunchy on the outside and still creamy in the center.

For me, a chocolate cake is the basic unit of celebration The chocolate Guinness cake here is simple but deeply pleasurable, and has earned its place as a stand-alone treat.

Basic pancakes are simple to throw together and are guaranteed to delight a crowd But go one step further, separating the eggs and beating the whites, and you turn the ordinary pancake into something almost soufflé-like These also contain ricotta, for extra richness that doesn't weigh the pancakes down.

As a child living in Tuscany, Ixta Belfrage fell for a pasta rich with dried porcini mushrooms, served at the lone restaurant in the tiny mountain village of Acone In her cookbook, “Mezcla” (Ten Speed Press, 2022), she pays homage to the power of porcini mushrooms, which are typically gathered from the wild and taste of it, luscious and nutty They offer a shortcut to glory in this ragù that almost defies the name, because it doesn’t demand hours on the stove and attains a velvety intensity in practically no time at all

“Broccoli, again?” just became “broccoli, again!”

Coated in a crisp, airy batter, fried until light golden, then spritzed with malt vinegar, these fish and chips are gloriously crunchy and tender.

Garlicky, cheesy, and slathered in butter, these easy pull-apart garlic knots take just minutes to assemble, and are miles better than most pizzeria versions.

This large-format pancake puffs up at the perimeter, creating light airy edges, while the center remains denser and almost custard-like. It’s the combination of these two textures that makes the German pancake special — that, and the ease of being able to whip up pancakes for six without being tethered to the griddle. What’s the difference between a Dutch baby and a German pancake, you may wonder? Semantics, really. The origin of this giant baked pancake is commonly attributed not to a Dutch or German dish, but to a Seattle restaurant called Manca’s that began serving the dish in the 1940s. The inspiration and name for this uniquely puffy pancake may have come from some variation of pfannkuchen (the German word for pancakes) and the word Deutsch (German) pronounced in American English eventually morphing into “Dutch.” While many German pancake recipes call for a cast-iron skillet, this recipe uses a 9-by-13-inch rectangular baking pan to create one gargantuan pancake with plenty of crisp edges. How you serve the pancake is up to you: Fill it with berries and maple syrup and a dusting of powdered sugar, or cut it into individual squares and let everyone top the pancakes to their liking.

Named for the city in southwestern Iran, salad-e Shirazi is found on practically every Iranian table at practically every meal Think of it as an herbier, juicier, more acidic version of Greek salad, Israeli salad or Indian kachumber It should be bright, crunchy and tart, a nice counterpoint to rich, buttery rice and unctuous stews

In the canon of iconic Iranian stews, khoresh gheymeh holds a top spot alongside classics like ghormeh sabzi A seemingly humble dish of gently spiced meat and split peas, khoresh gheymeh can be served as a cozy home-cooked meal or a celebratory dish; in big batches as a means of giving alms to those in need; or during religious ceremonies “Gheymeh” refers to the size of the meat, which should be cut into small pieces

This creamy, cozy chicken stew is fast enough for a weeknight meal yet satisfying enough for a long Sunday dinner Boneless chicken thighs are used instead of  breasts, as they stay juicier longer Simmering them in the stew along with sweet paprika, chicken stock and a touch of apple cider vinegar adds surprising depth of flavor alongside dried herbs and plenty of vegetables for dimension and texture

There’s no excuse for not having cabbage in the fridge at all times It’s affordable, it keeps forever, and keeping it stocked means you can have a perfect dinner side in just 30 minutes You’ll want to sear the cabbage hard on the stovetop until its outer leaves have frizzled and developed a crispy texture and smoky flavor, while the leaves inside steam and tenderize

Epis is a foundational ingredient used to flavor a wide array of Haitian dishes Gregory Gourdet, a Haitian-American chef, uses it to marinate everything from fish to chicken thighs to beef short ribs He encourages home cooks to make extra to use as a marinade or to flavor stews, soups, vinaigrettes, sautéed vegetables or even meatloaf

Amanda Saab, a social worker and home cook who lives near Detroit, riffs on her Lebanese grandmother's recipe for namoura, a cake made from semolina flour, soaked in syrup while it's still warm When she serves it at iftar dinners during Ramadan, Ms Saab often doses the syrup with a little bit of lavender extract

This four-ingredient recipe draws inspiration from carnitas, barbecue pulled pork and Vietnamese caramel pork for sticky, sweet and spicy pulled meat Braising browned pork shoulder in a slow cooker in pickled jalapeño brine and fish sauce tenderizes the meat and adds savory depth Part of the cooking liquid then simmers with brown sugar and pickled jalapeño slices for a glaze to drape over pull-apart, crispy-edged meat

Eddie Hernandez, who runs Taqueria del Sol, a string of easygoing Mexican restaurants in Georgia and Tennessee, considers himself a born-again Southern boy whose food reflects a mash-up of the two cultures He grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Monterrey, Mexico, where a pork roast like this would have never made it onto the table But he came to love the roast’s role in a traditional Southern Sunday supper, and decided to give it his own Mexican twist

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 simple boiling method doesn’t require measuring or memorization — and you probably already know how to do it.

Sweet, savory, and full of flavor, this easy weeknight noodle soup takes a cue from the warmly comforting northern Thai dish khao soi, with a curry-spiced coconut broth and toppings that offer crunch and contrast First, the butternut squash is simmered in the fragrant broth until very tender Then the squash is mashed, becoming one with the coconut milk before stock and sweet and savory seasonings are added (to keep the soup vegetarian, use soy sauce instead of fish sauce)

These sweet and spicy chicken thighs pack enormous flavor using only a handful of pantry ingredients Generously seasoned with salt, pepper, and onion and garlic powders, they’re roasted at a high temperature to maximize the crispiness of the skin Halfway through cooking, the chicken is brushed with a butter-and-hot-sauce blend

These homemade sweets are ready in 25 minutes or less.

If you go to a children’s birthday party in Australia or New Zealand, you may not get birthday cake, but you are very likely to find fairy bread: triangles of untoasted white bread covered with margarine or butter and “hundreds and thousands” (known as sprinkles stateside) Fairy bread is a much-loved treat with fairly murky origins; one variation is hagelslag, a Dutch treat that uses chocolate sprinkles instead of rainbow-colored rounds After one bite of fairy bread, it is clear why the combination of soft bread, creamy butter and crunchy, sugary sprinkles is beloved by so many — and may be soon by you, too.

Cottage pie is a near twin to its sibling, the slightly better-known shepherd's pie The main difference between these traditional dishes, which have roots in Ireland and Britain, is that cottage pie embraces ground beef while shepherd’s pie, fittingly, favors lamb Smothered in a delicious and thick gravy along with carrots, onions, celery and peas, the ground beef filling is covered in creamy mashed potatoes and then baked into a hearty and satisfying meal

With creamy squash, sticky chickpeas and tangy yogurt, this vegetarian sheet-pan feast easily serves a crowd The method here doesn’t bother with cutting rock-hard raw winter squash Instead, roast them whole until you can rip them apart into wedges