Latest news with #MelissaClark
New York Times
29-05-2025
- Health
- New York Times
A Pasta Salad in Grain Salad's Clothing
On Saturday, I arose to a holiday weekend rarity: no plans, no responsibilities. With nowhere to be and no one to see, I did my best to revel in the boredom. I made a laborious green juice. I toasted some sourdough and soft-scrambled some eggs. I lit a candle. I threw on a record. Perhaps I'd meander to the farmers' market, I told a friend similarly enjoying what she called a 'Saturday of nothingness.' It had been longer than I'd like to admit since I last perused the stalls. Rhubarb! Strawberries! Green onions tall enough to bypass a Hinge height filter! In a trance, I scooped up some snap peas, a bunch of radishes, a bridal bouquet's worth of mint. Much like my weekend, I had no plans for any of it. Then I saw Hetty Lui McKinnon's new herby pearl couscous and sugar snap pea salad, which would make quick use of much of my bounty. It's a pasta salad with grain-salad sensibilities, a distant, springy relative of tabbouleh. You know, the 'our dads are best friends' kind of cousin. Snap peas, mint, parsley and plenty of lemon lend layers of bright flavor, and a little unexpected warmth from allspice keeps things balanced. View this recipe. But I bought far more snap peas and mint than any one recipe should call for. I always enjoy my snap peas raw, or simply blanched, but the tender, nearly caramelized vegetables in this crispy baked tofu from Melissa Clark make a compelling case for letting them hang out in a 400 degree oven for half an hour. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Giddy Up, Cowboy Caviar
Jump scare! It's me, Kim Severson. I'm filling in for Melissa Clark, she of the 'glossy red hair and angular jaw,' as she was described last week in a spicy San Francisco Chronicle article about the chef Thomas Keller. It's Memorial Day. Here's why I love America: It's packed coast to coast with hyperlocal food and singular culinary traditions. I'm constantly delighted by how different a dish can be from one state to another. Take collard greens, for example. The fried collards served between two discs of hot-water cornbread in a corner of North Carolina could not be more different than the greens stewed with two kinds of pork and red pepper flakes in the Mississippi Delta. Texas has a particularly long list of culinary quirks, and cowboy caviar is one I really like. It's the trifecta of party dishes: delicious, easy and a crowd favorite. The original — black-eyed peas in vinaigrette — was knocked out by a New Yorker who moved to Texas and first served it at a Houston country club. Margaux Laskey, a Midwesterner by way of the South, adds black beans and corn, with some cilantro and jalapeño for character. It's a great dish for an impromptu Memorial Day cookout. Featured Recipe View Recipe → Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
20-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- New York Times
Meet My House Asparagus
I'm pleased to announce that I've found my house asparagus recipe for spring 2025: this miso-chile asparagus with tofu from Melissa Clark, my fellow asparagus nut. The house recipe is the dish I cook over and over again when I have asparagus in the fridge, which is often this time of year. One spring it was asparagus with fried eggs. Another was asparagus and pasta in different configurations. But this year, I'll be glazing asparagus and tofu cubes with an easy miso sauce and broiling it all for a dinner that's ready in 25 minutes. That recipe, and four more great options for the days ahead, are below. And if you're new to asparagus, welcome! We have a guide for you that covers buying and prepping, as well as different ways to make it. One note: Last week, we asked whether and how you're changing your grocery shopping, meal planning and cooking because of rising costs. I received dozens of (fascinating, smart, insightful) emails from you. So please, keep them coming! Send me your cost-saving strategies and tell me what you're cooking by emailing me at dearemily@ We'll be gathering up your tips and publishing them soon. Look, asparagus is the whole reason Melissa created this recipe, but green beans work too. The sauce here is especially good. View this recipe. Buttery, garlicky, lemony ease from Lidey Heuck, who describes this recipe as 'chicken for beginners.' The chicken experts will probably love it, too. View this recipe. Ifrah F. Ahmed's version of the fragrant coastal Somali curry is built on xawaash, a spice blend that's easy to make if you can't find it at the store. Silky coconut milk and bright tomatoes always make magic with fish. View this recipe. This simple but sophisticated dinner comes from Yasmin Fahr, who tosses couscous, arugula and large flakes of salmon with a dressing that's dually inspired by green goddess and Persian mast-o khiar. View this recipe. This new recipe from Nargisse Benkabbou is on the agenda for dinner at my house this week. No doubt it will be delicious — the early comments are raves — and crisp-chewy halloumi is a uniquely excellent treat. View this recipe. Thanks for reading and cooking. If you like the work we do at New York Times Cooking, please subscribe! (Or give a subscription as a gift!) You can follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest, or follow me on Instagram. I'm dearemily@ and previous newsletters are archived here. Reach out to my colleagues at cookingcare@ if you have any questions about your account. View all recipes in your weekly plan.
New York Times
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Best Turkey Meatballs I've Ever Made
I finally met a turkey meatball I love, after years of trying. Ground turkey is bland compared with beef and pork, which sets me up for a lackluster meatball. The texture is often problematic, too: dry, dense or both. But Ali Slagle, borrowing a trick from the cookbook author Julia Turshen, adds a good amount of ricotta cheese to the turkey mixture. The result is a pan of meatballs so tender that you can easily slice into them with a spoon as you scoop up saucy bites from your bowl. When I made these meatballs for dinner last week, it was far too hot outside for a buttery sauce and mashed potatoes on the side, as the recipe suggests — delicious, but wintry. So I tossed about a pint of halved cherry tomatoes into the pan and let them cook down along with the meatballs, and then served it all with toast. Light, bright: This is my summer 2025 meatball dinner. I will not be making meatballs this week, however — I'm heading to Chicago! Melissa Clark and I will be chatting about home cooking at the Chicago Humanities festival this Saturday, May 10, at the Ramova Theater at 11 a.m. Tickets are here. Chicagoans, I would love to meet you in person.
New York Times
17-04-2025
- Lifestyle
- New York Times
This Miso-Sesame Vinaigrette Is Dinner Insurance
There's this very distinct mode I hit — and I'm guessing a lot of people reading this will relate — when I'm too tired to make a capital-D Dinner, but I'm also too cheap to order delivery. There are things in my fridge that need using up, but I'm out of eggs (so no frittata or kitchen-sink scramble) and I've already made fried rice twice this week. In these moments, I make a dressing. I've sung the praises of Melissa Clark's all-purpose green sauce a lot in this newsletter, and now I'll turn my attention to another life-giving elixir, Kenji López-Alt's miso-sesame vinaigrette that's good on anything. It truly does live up to its name; I almost always make a double batch and never have any difficulty using it up. Toss it with bagged lettuce mix and leftover chicken — that's a nice salad! Spoon it over seared shrimp or fish and serve that over rice — that's a good rice bowl! Swipe cucumber coins, carrot sticks and hard-boiled egg halves through it — it's a dip! Or do what I'll do: Boil up some noodles, drain them well, then mix in some miso-sesame vinaigrette and too many sliced scallions. That's a slapdash noodle dish, and it's fantastic. Featured Recipe View Recipe → Melissa's Peruvian roasted chicken is, with its grass-green spicy cilantro sauce, a solid contender for my Easter dinner. Watch Melissa make it here! Genevieve Ko has a gorgeous (and gorgeously simple) new salmon dish for us: honey-lemon salmon with dill, with quick-pickled cucumbers served alongside. 'Each time I've tested this recipe,' Genevieve writes, 'I've thrown a sheet pan of asparagus onto the other rack in the oven because the stalks roast in the same short time the fish does.' One might argue that making these sour cream and onion drop biscuits to go with this crispy sour cream and onion chicken might be sour cream and onion overkill, but that person is not me. I love the look of Hetty Lui McKinnon's new broken egg salad recipe, which swaps the usual hard-boiled eggs for just-set eggs that are hand-torn for optimal chunkiness. I'd like my egg salad gently held by two plush pieces of shokupan, please and thank you. More Hetty helpfulness: She suggests tossing her punchy roasted cabbage with capers and garlic with pasta to make the dish even heartier. For dessert — and for breakfast with a cup of coffee — here's lemon poppy seed pound cake. Melissa's recipe, which uses olive oil instead of softened butter as its base, comes together with some simple whisking and gets a confectioners' sugar glaze as its finishing touch.
