Simple Cooking

This rich, flavorful Nigerian dish brings together bold chile heat, the pleasant funk of fermented locust beans and dried shrimp, and a good dose of Old Bay.

This lovely, simple dish is great to have in your fridge at all times. It adds a wonderful, distinctive flavor to any dish it accompanies.

Frozen fava beans make easy work of this fragrant rice dish, and you could also replace them with shelled lima beans or edamame instead.

In this spicy salad, cubes of fried tofu act like tender-bellied croutons amid the leaves of baby kale, only with much more protein and spunk than the usual toasted bread.

Using both syrupy date molasses and pitted, sliced dates gives this dish rounded sweetness. It gets a dash of sourness from apple cider vinegar and some heat from cayenne.

This is a very simple way to make wonderful rice in under an hour. It is a technique favored around the Caspian, where rice is eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

A vegetarian version of khoresh, this braise inspired by the popular Persian dish is made with cremini mushrooms, which keep their shape and offer earthy flavor. Enjoy it over rice.

This recipe from Bryant Terry highlights the earthy taste and the toothsome texture of collards, and offsets the greens with tofu that’s been soaked in a Jamaican-inspired marinade.

These hamantaschen are filled with a celebration of seeds set in chewy-soft caramelized honey. While poppy is traditional, we threw in sesame, sunflower, and pumpkin as well for variety and crunch.

These turkey burgers are my nod to the Mediterranean, packed with fresh herbs, lemon, and red onion.

Making oat milk from scratch means creamier, richer, dairy-free milk for mixing into coffee. With this basic formula you can drink it plain, or flavor it however you like.

I serve these pickles like a salad as a side with ramen noodles, gyoza (fried dumplings), or shumai (steamed dumplings), or with a sandwich. 

This soup coaxes big flavors from a short ingredient list. Patiently browning the onions and garlic is essential to adding flavor and depth to the finished dish.

Thai green curry paste packs potent flavor into this one-pan, eight-ingredient, weeknight-friendly chicken dinner.

Bright in color and flavor, the silky sauce for these meatballs is made from a purée of coconut cream, Thai green curry paste, and spinach.

The dairy-free secret to this fudge's creaminess? Avocado.

Green curry with chicken and eggplant from Chef Hong Thaimee.

Homemade green curry paste has more vivid flavor and aromatic intensity than store-bought, not to mention the freedom to control the spice level. Sopon Kosalanan of restaurant Khao King in, Queens says, “If you get it from a can, I don’t feel like it’s green curry. It doesn’t have the same aromas.” This is the recipe he makes in big batches for his restaurant every day.

You may not mistake these jammy-crisp, slow-cooked onions for bacon, but they are truly exceptional as a stand-in, giving a huge blast of umami to create a truly satisfying breakfast sandwich.

No, you don’t have to be a vegetarian to love what’s going on here. Cauliflower and mushrooms provide richness and toothiness that do justice to the meaty original.