Pick the youngest, crunchiest romaine heads you can find. Keep them crisp, before and after cleaning, in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator. Even if you pick young, crispy lettuce, you should use only the pale-green and yellow inner leaves for this salad. But don’t throw out the outer leaves. Shred them and stir them into soups, or into a panful of sautéed fresh peas. The dressing shouldn’t be too dense; it should be just thick enough to coat each leaf lightly. The cheese that is added at the end will thicken it a little. Oil and vinegar stirred in at the end is a little touch of mine. It’s how we serve the salad at Lidia’s Kansas City and Pittsburgh. Another little touch that looks nice on a plate is to set one or two whole romaine leaves on the plate and pile the cut leaves over it. Shaving Parmigiano-Reggiano over the finished salad looks nice and tastes nice, too. It’s a good thing to keep in mind for other salads as well. Traditionally, Caesar salad was made with a barely cooked egg. Here I use a hard-boiled egg, as I do in my restaurants, for safety reasons.
Turn humble onions into this thrifty yet luxe pasta dinner.
Serve a thick slice for breakfast or an afternoon pick-me-up.
This pasta has some really big energy about it. It’s so extra, it’s the type of thing you should be eating in your bikini while drinking a magnum of rosé, not in Hebden Bridge (or wherever you live), but on a beach on Mykonos.
Caramelized onions, melty Gruyère, and a deeply savory broth deliver the kind of comfort that doesn’t need improving.
Reliable cabbage is cooked in the punchy sauce and then combined with store-bought baked tofu and roasted cashews for a salad that can also be eaten with rice.
This is what I call a fridge-eater recipe. The key here is getting a nice sear on the sausage and cooking the tomato down until it coats the sausage and vegetables well.
This is the type of soup that, at first glance, might seem a little…unexciting. But you’re underestimating the power of mushrooms, which do the heavy lifting.
A dash of cocoa powder adds depth and richness to the broth of this easy turkey chili.