Recipes
Slow-roasted Spiced Baby Back Ribs
One of my all-time favorite field trips for “Cooking Live” was to Memphis to cover the huge annual barbecue cook-off there. It is an astonishing event that attracts more than 200 teams from all around the country, from funky little crews of like-minded friends to heavily financed corporate outfits. Everyone…
Orzo and Basmati Pilaf with Spring Vegetable Ragout
Orzo is a rice-shaped pasta from Italy. Basmati is a fragrant Indian long-grain rice with a wonderful nutty taste. The two of them combine to make a great side dish, but you can top it with anything and turn it into a main dish. Here we’ve chosen asparagus, mushrooms, and…
Mexican Chicken Salad
This is my favorite kind of salad because it has so many ingredients—and each with a different texture, from the creamy avocado to the crispy homemade tortilla chips. I have cheated here by using leftover or rotisserie chicken. It would work just as well with leftover pork, shrimp, or beef.…
Spring Spaetzle
Soon after I started making spaetzle as a side dish at home on a regular basis, it occurred to me that you could dress up and sauce this German pasta much as you would any other fresh pasta—an inspiration that automatically promoted spaetzle from a side dish to an entrée.…
Jelly Egg Cookies
Each spring I get requests for my Jelly Egg Cookie recipe; it is a perfect showcase for fresh unsweetened coconut and a good make-ahead dessert for Easter. Add some raisins and forget the jelly eggs and they are a good lunchbox treat all year round. 1/2 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted…
Vegetarian Chili Pie with Monterey Jack Cheese and Corn Bread Crust
Vegetable chili, like any stewed dish, is even better the day after you make it, when all the flavorings have had a chance to sink in. Of course, it’s also fine if you eat it the same day you make it. But whenever you make it, make a double batch…
Butternut Squash Soup with Gruyère Pesto
The generic recipe for winter squash soup or puree typically begins by calling for a scary amount of the squash “peeled, seeded, and cubed,” and then steamed or boiled. Have you ever tried to peel, let alone cut, even one of these hard winter squashes? There may be no easier…
Cauliflower Soup with Caraway and Rye Croutons
What I love about vegetable soups like this one is that they boast the soul satisfying consistency of cream without actually containing any. Cooked and pureed, most vegetables are amazingly creamy all by themselves. (OK, some of them need to be pureed with potato to create the desired effect, but…
Spanish-style White Bean, Kale, and Chorizo Soup
In the early nineties, I went on a weeklong press trip to Spain. Other than learning everything there is to know about olive oil—the stated purpose of our trip—all we did for a week was eat ourselves silly and drink many bottles of beautiful Spanish wine. Not surprisingly, I fell…
Gingery Chicken Broth with Wonton Ravioli
This soup combines two of my favorite recipes—Eileen Yin Fei Lo’s gingery Chinese chicken broth and Jacques Pépin’s chicken breast stuffing—with one of my favorite techniques, wonton as ravioli. Eileen introduced me to Chinese-style chicken broth when she appeared on my show to make recipes from her book The Chinese Way.…
Oven-baked Chowder
I was born and bred in New York, but my roots are in New England, so you might say that chowder is in my blood. My family has always made New England-style chowder by starting with whole cod or haddock on the bone, because the bones are the key to…
Smoky Salmon Chowder with Lemon Pepper Crackers
This hot and hearty chowder is a great dish for a winter weeknight. Made with milk, not cream, it’s healthier and lighter than a classic chowder but seems plenty substantial as you are enjoying it. (The downside is that it is a bit more likely to look a little curdled…
Dried Apple and Cheddar Strudel
My grandmother Ruth Moulton was a fabulous old New England cook. She attended the Garland School of Home Economics in Boston, a competitor of the original Fanny Farmer’s cooking school. Roast Beef and Yorkshire pudding, fish chowder, Johnny cakes, and other regional fare–these were her signature dishes. When I was…
Sweet Potato and Black Bean Burrito
Some time ago Good Morning America ran a low-fat, low-calorie Healthy Eating contest that asked viewers to submit original recipes for Best Entrée and Best Dessert. We received hundreds and hundreds of entries, narrowed them down, then flew the winner in each category to New York to make their dish…
Hungarian Pork Cutlets
This is one of the four quick meat sautés that I included in Sara Moulton Cooks at Home. You start by pounding the meat nice and thin which allows it to cook quickly. Then you coat it in seasoned flour which keeps it from drying out when it is cooked,…
Baby Egg Rolls with Soy Sesame Dipping Sauce
It was always a pretty scary proposition when my kids came onto the show to cook with me when they were young. Unlike almost all of my other guests, they were not chefs, or grown-ups, or practiced television performers. They were sweet and funny, of course, but they were children,…
Cooking Duck with Ariane Daguin!
I love duck, cook it frequently, and have included it in all my books. Recently Ariane Daguin, founder of D’Artagnan, invited me to cook with her in an Episode of her video series, Back of the House. Please take a look. Ariane really knows duck; she was raised in Auch,…
Salmon Cakes
If you live on the East Coast and your electricity has been out for more than 48 hours, do take a look at the “From the Pantry” chapter of Sara’s Weeknight Meals. In most recipes, you don’t need anything from your refrigerator. If frozen ingredients are called for, you can…
Tomato Pie
Make this pie during the high tomato season and you just can’t lose; those big ripe local tomatoes will do all the work for you. After you slice and salt the tomatoes and roll out the dough, the rest is simple. (If you want to cheat, use a store bought…
Spicy Shrimp and Avocado Salad with Cashews
Haven’t you often wondered how they make the delicious citrus dressing that glorifies the Iceberg salads often served at sushi restaurants? The orange dressing in this recipe is my attempt at duplicating it, and I think I’ve come pretty close. With the dressing in hand, I wondered just which ingredients—other…
Cool Summer Drinks
It’s summertime, the sun is blazing, and, if you’re lucky, you’re sitting on the beach or by the pool. But wherever you are, city or country, there’s one thing you want more than anything else: an ice-cold drink. Three of my favorites appeared in Sara Moulton Cooks at Home and…
Turkey Burgers with Tomato Corn Salsa
Hamburgers are so central to American culture that messing with them can seem almost sacrilegious. And it’s kind of perilous to boot. Replace the beef with low-fat turkey, as in this recipe, and you risk creating a drier, less flavorful burger, a burger unworthy of the name. Here I’ve countered…
Seared Hanger Steak with Mustard Basil Butter
Known as onglet in French, hanger steak is sometimes called butcher’s tenderloin in English because there is only one of these delicious cuts per animal and butchers tend to hog it for themselves. In other words, it is not something that is regularly stocked in the supermarket meat case, so…
Serrano Ham and Manchego Cheese Roulade
An egg roulade is sort of like an enormous spongy omelet. It is a big rolled-up container for just about any tasty ingredients. From an entertaining point of view, the beauty of an egg roulade is that you can make it the day ahead, chill it overnight, and then fill…