Side Dishes
Grilled Potato and Corn Salad with Chipotle Mayonnaise
The corn in this salad should be grilled, but what’s the best way to do it? In the husk? With some of the husk removed? Stripped naked? My wholehearted vote is for the “naked” or fully husked, method, which creates an unbeatable toasted popcorn flavor. The secret ingredients here are…
Easy Fresh Cranberry Sauce
1/2 cup water 1/2 cup fresh orange, tangerine, or clementine juice 3/4 to 1 cup sugar or to taste 12-ounce bag fresh or frozen cranberries (3 cups) 1 teaspoon freshly grated orange rind Bring water, orange juice, and sugar to a boil, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Add cranberries and…
Chinese Fried Eggplant with Pine Nuts
This recipe was featured in a travel story on Taipei written by Fred Ferretti and published by Gourmet in January 1993. Served at a hotel called the Imperial Palace, this dish was tested and fine-tuned by Fred’s wife, Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, one of my favorite cookbook authors and Chinese cooking…
Southern Braised Mustard Greens with Ham
These are good old-fashioned mustard greens, cooked slow and low with a ham hock. It is a great make-ahead dish for a crowd, and it nicely rounds out a buffet. You can make the same recipe using kale or collard greens or mix up all three. Me, I prefer the…
Creamed Spinach with Crispy Shallots
Creamed spinach was one of those special-occasion side dishes my mom served up as kids. Although she usually worked with frozen spinach, which is fine, it’s even better using fresh spinach. The richest and most luxurious way to make this recipe is with—surprise—heavy cream. But because I like a lot…
Mom’s Brushed Eggplant
Growing up, we ate our fair share of frozen vegetables: corn, peas, French green beans with toasted almonds (fancy!), the dreaded limas, etc. But every so often my mom would step out and experiment with fresh vegetables. She made a mean vinaigrette, and we always kept a jar of this…
Sauerkraut with Caraway Seeds
Two 14 1/2 ounce cans sauerkraut, drained 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar 1/3 cup cider vinegar 2 tablespoons caraway seeds 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 3 medium onions, finely chopped Serves 8 to 12 Combine the sauerkraut in a large saucepan with the sugar, vinegar, caraway seeds, and 2 cups…
Provençal Tomatoes
Nothing beats fresh tomatoes in season. Usually I just slice them, salt them, drain them, and eat them straight up with avocado and basil and a drizzle of olive oil. (My sister-in-law Janis introduced me to this perfect lunch one summer vacation.) But even perfection gets boring after a while,…
Couscous Tabbouleh
Here’s a wonderfully refreshing summer salad that can take the place of potato salad or pasta salad at a backyard barbecue. The classic tabbouleh, a Middle Eastern salad is made with bulgur (cracked wheat) not couscous. But I prefer this version, which is based on a recipe developed many years…
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.…
Shredded Root Vegetable Latkes
Here is my latest recipe for latkes from Sara Moulton’s Everyday Family Dinners. Sometimes in the fall I buy a bunch of root vegetables for a particular recipe and fail to use them all up. Suddenly there’s a lone parsnip or turnip hanging out in my vegetable drawer. How to…
Creamy Baked Polenta
I have recently been getting a lot of requests for this recipe from Sara’s Secrets for Weeknight Meals. The cornmeal mush known as polenta, one of the national dishes of Italy, emerged in its original form as the field ration of the Roman soldier. Although pulmentum was made of millet…
Butter-steamed Broccoli with Soy
One of the first restaurants I worked in was Cybele’s in Boston’s Faneuil Hall. We were on a very tight budget, so instead of making 1 or 2 special vegetables for each dish we would serve a one size fits all starch and vegetable and plop them on every plate.…
Homemade Pan Gravy
I always get lots of questions about making gravy, so I thought no matter what meat or poultry you are cooking, this recipe would come in handy when you head for the kitchen. I recommend making 1/2 cup gravy per person. You need that much gravy to pour over everything, and…
Grilled Asparagus with Lemon Truffle Vinaigrette
Posted with permission of author, from Girls at the Grill by Elizabeth Karmel The flavors of fresh lemon juice and white truffle oil are the perfect compliment to grilled asparagus. I didn’t think grilled asparagus could get any better until I created this “truffle lemonade” to dress up my favorite…