Side Dish Recipes & Ideas

A sformato is a close cousin to the soufflé. It has all the same creamy custard-y goodness, but without the hassle of whipping egg whites or the anxiety of collapsing domes. It’s meant to be rather humble. This is also an easy dish to make gluten-free, and it works well as the first course for a fancy dinner or as a light lunch with a salad. Like a soufflé, a sformato starts off with a bechamel sauce.

Celery is one of those things that can languish in the back of our fridge for a long time. It’s hard to use an entire bunch. We chopped three or four stalks into our Thanksgiving stuffing, and this is what we did with the rest… Celery soup isn’t too complicated (the general idea goes something like this). And celery itself isn’t all that flavorful.

Potato latkes are such humble little things, yet so incredibly addictive. This version puts the traditional applesauce topping on the inside, where it gets warm and wonderful as the latkes cook. We love adding cubes of cheese to the filling, too. They melt into pockets of cheesy goodness and add extra savory depth to this classic dish. For this recipe, we’re essentially making a fresh applesauce and sandwiching this between two layers of potato pancake.

This salad, with its deep flavors and rich ingredients, is a perfect example of autumn’s most delicious offerings. In fact, it would almost be too rich if it wasn’t for a bright splash of sherry vinegar and the light, spicy green of arugula. Bring it to a buffet, pot luck or serve it as a light supper on its own.This recipe was inspired by Suzanne Goin from her book Sunday Suppers at Lucques.

Sweet Potato Soufflé, Sweet Potato Casserole, Candied Sweet Potatoes. All delicious, but are they really different? And what about the great topping debate?Every year my family battles it out over mini-marshmallows versus praline crumbles. To make the competition even more stiff, throw in the tasty corn flake crust I discovered last Thanksgiving. Oy vey.I had an Aha! moment while dining out recently that may have changed my opinion forever.

Everyone loves a good casserole, right? The key word here is good. We’ve all had goopy, unappetizing messes inflicted upon us in the name of casseroles, but that really should be the deviation — not the norm. I love casseroles — the good ones. In fact, I just spent a year writing an entire book with 225 recipes for modern, fresh casseroles. This recipe isn’t in the book, but it’s very much in the spirit of things.

Every week we bring you our favorite posts from our friends at Serious Eats. This week: A hearty dinner of Moroccan spinach and chickpeas, a dish of butterscotch pudding, and the world’s first cheese dip championship.• The First World Championship Cheese Dip Competition in North Little Rock, AR – Including such heavy hitters as spinach queso and crawfish and andouille-based dip.• Cook The Book: Butterscotch Pudding With Sautéed Pears – Rum-spiked pudding?

This week we’ve talked about making tortillas (withwithoutinstant corn flour Want more smart tutorials for getting things done around the home? See more How To posts We’re looking for great examples of your own household intelligence too! Submit your own tutorials or ideas here!

This recipe was inspired by one of our favorite vegetable gratins—a combination of summer ingredients that you should eat now, before Fall arrives and you switch to pastas like this. (P.S. We’ve also made this dish without the bacon, and it’s just as good.)This pasta is a cinch to put together. But you can make it even easier by caramelizing the onion and cooking the bacon ahead of time.

Nothing beats the almost feral pleasure of picking up a hot ear of corn and digging in as the salty, buttery juices drip down your arm and bits of kernel wedge in your teeth. A true summertime treat! But when the occasion calls for something a little more refined, try shaving the kernels off the cob and popping them into a frying pan where they slowly caramelize, turning burnished and gold and sweet.This recipe makes a nice side dish or a delicious stuffing for baked bell peppers.

We love the spices in Indian dishes, and dahl is pretty simple to make. However, it still takes about an hour to prep it and some accompanying rice – on many weeknights that kind of time simply isn’t there. Lucky for us, dahl freezes and reheats very well. Here’s what we do to keep from resorting to those prepackaged microwave Indian meals from the grocery shelf: Dahl is simple, but it has a lot of ingredients.

Summer is slowly coming to a close, but tomato season is still in full swing. In honor of the great tomato, here is a fresh and tasty appetizer perfect for outdoor entertaining. These tomato bites are the perfect marriage of juicy cherry tomato, dense mozzarella, and basil. You can even stick a toothpick in them to make them more party-friendly. Zoe Nachman is a graphic designer, photographer, and cook based in Atlanta, Georgia.

This summer salad is based on one from Nigel Slater, always a trustworthy source. It’s perfect for the summer since the only thing you have to cook is the bacon which isn’t so bad, especially if you use Elizabeth’s low and slow method. (If it’s really hot, you can always use the microwave.) Read on for the recipe. Nigel’s recipe is a bit simpler, using parsley instead of the mint and arugula/cress. You can find it on his website, here.

There are french fries and there are oven-roasted fries, both delicious in their own right. What we’ve been craving is something in between. A potato wedge with the light crispiness of a french fry, but with the creamy sweetness of a slow-baked oven potato. We think we’ve found the perfect recipe.

Poking around the fridge and pantry the other day, I unearthed several ingredients from my boyfriend’s heritage (Korean kimchi) and my own (Vietnamese noodles and rice paper wrappers) and I wondered, why not combine them into one dish? This is a little twist on the traditional Vietnamese gơi cuốn, or summer rolls, filled with fresh vegetables, golden tofu, and the spicy, tangy crunch of pickled cabbage.

Meet my new favorite salad. I looked in my fridge a few weeks ago and found nothing but celery hearts and grapefruit. Hmm. Was that enough for a salad? Did I need any other vegetables? Those are a couple of strong-tasting things, on their own! But you know what? It all works — so simple, so crunchy, so cold and refreshing!This is a very punchy salad; there is a lot of flavor, and a lot of crunch.

The meat-centric Momofuku cookbook as a recipe source for vegetarians? Really? Well, yes! Not the whole cookbook, of course, but there are several delectable recipes that are suitable for vegetarians. Read on for one of my favorites.David Chang’s Momofuku cookbook is a umami-laden carnivore’s delight, with pages and pages devoted to things like foie gras, country ham, pig’s head torchon and something charmingly referred to as ‘meat glue.

For the longest time, we only served snap peas fresh or lightly blanched. Why mess with their bright, spring flavor? But then, one day, we gave them a roast and discovered a whole new way to appreciate them. Roasting brings out the sweetness of the peas, and here we’ve added sesame for a toasty, savory element.

We’ve had asparagus spears wrapped in prosciutto as an appetizer more times than we can count. They’re good (and easy), but we think these are better. We added a flaky layer of phyllo dough for texture; plus, you don’t have to pre-cook the asparagus.We did have one issue with our phyllo dough, though, which we’d love your comments on. Even though we studied this post on how to work with it, we’re not experts.

A bunch of beets is one of those happy vegetable combinations where you get two for one. The sweet root, and the spicy green tops. I love finding ways to put the tops and bottoms of beets back together in the kitchen; it feels so nice and complete to use both at once. Here’s one simple way I just did this: a warm, toothsome salad with spicy greens, a bit of pungent goat cheese, and toasty almonds.

I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to roasting mushrooms. I love slow-cooked, savory mushrooms, dark with flavor, but I generally make them on the stovetop in a pan. The oven is an even easier route, though, and now that I’ve tried it I’m not going back!Roasted mushrooms are a lovely vegan main dish — strong and rich in flavor and umami. They can be dressed up with a little cream or garlic, or topped with a poached egg, like in this dish.

After trying a version of cauliflower puree at a local restaurant a couple of years back, I just had to track down a recipe. If you want to impress your guests, you can call this classic French dish by its original name: chou-fleur purée de chou-fleur. Traditionally used as a bed for serving roasted meats, in lieu of potatoes, it also makes a great side dish sans meat. This dish is a huge crowd pleaser, even among folks (i.e.

OK, you guys really have to try this. I was at the Alemany Farmer’s Market recently and Jerusalem artichokes (also known as sunchokes) are in season. I’ve never tried this sunflower tuber, and I always enjoy trying new vegetables, so I grabbed a couple. They were quite cheap at 50 cents a pound. Once I had them in my kitchen, I decided I wanted to roast them, so I sliced them thin, added salt, olive oil, and fresh rosemary, and wow, welcome to flavor country!

We mentioned yesterday that we’re slightly obsessed with Brussels sprouts This dish was totally inspired by the warm salad of Brussels sprouts leaves with fried capers and hazelnuts at Contigo, a great Spanish and Catalan restaurant in San Francisco. We had a very memorable meal there a few weeks ago, but it was this dish that took the top prize. Fresh, warm, and interesting.

Well folks, it’s over. The hustle is no longer hustling and the stockings are waiting to be packed up for the next go ’round. An ungodly amount of See’s Candy has been consumed, and we’re slowly making our way through leftovers and the last dregs of eggnog. Now if you’re anything like me (read: efficient first child), you’ve broken down boxes, recycled wrapping paper, and put your new gifts away.

We usually roast our butternut, acorn, and delicata squash. We like the flavor of winter squash roasted slowly in the oven. The only problem is that word: slow. It takes a while to roast a whole squash or two, so lately we’ve been turning to a familiar technique, used in a new way for squash. Braising.Braised or simmered squash is much quicker than roasting: it cooks in just a few minutes, and you’re left with the benefit of all that creamy sauce, too.

Sweet corn is the perfect thing to eat right now – seasonal, fresh and perfect with almost nothing added to it. But just in case you’re ready for something new, let’s load it up with lots of rich and delicious toppings. What do you say? You may be familiar with elote, a Mexican sweet corn treat.

My mystery box included a nice bag of wild arugula last week, much to my pleasure. For the past year or so, I’ve been enjoying this pungent, more peppery version of arugula in salads, on top of pizzas, as a pesto. But for some reason, I’ve never stopped to ask what’s the difference between arugula and wild arugula?

My Easter meal this past weekend was a fusion menu between my own cultural heritage of Eastern European food (fried rolls, rich sweet bread) and Indian cuisine (tandoori-spiced leg of lamb, sunny yellow pressed rice). This cucumber salad bridges the cultural divide between Eastern Europe and India: both cultures have creamy, cooling salads with dairy and cucumbers. Here’s my easy fusion version.

I had other plans for today’s post but circumstances karmically intervened. Lucky for you and me because the resulting desperation led me, as it often does, to something I would have never thought of under milder circumstances: fennel braised in cream.Oh my. This little dish is beyond fantastic. And it’s pretty easy to do, too. Don’t be afraid of the cream, there’s only a little added at the end. Recipe and more tales, after the jump.

When I brought home a bunch of Chinese broccoli from the farmers’ market, I figured I’d prepare it the same way I always do: blanching followed by a quick stir-fry with soy sauce and garlic or ginger (my dad always added imitation oyster sauce). But then I started poking around the Kitchn archives and decided to try this Cookie Magazine recipe Faith linked to last summer.This recipe starts out similar to my usual method.

Here’s what happened. Kim says: For our New Year’s dinner, I impressed our friends (and myself) with an amazing menu. But what impressed me the most was something completely accidental. Rewind to our Christmas Eve dinner… … I’d stuffed a hen with onions, orange wedges, thyme, sage, and rosemary, and I had a few leftover orange wedges. I put them in the roasting pan with the bite-sized creamer potatoes just to see how they would turn out. Surprise!

We ate this pasta twice last weekend—at both dinner parties. It’s not healthy. It’s soaked in butter. Delicious, toasted, slightly sweet brown butter with little bits of sage fried up in that buttery bath. Save it for the holidays, when you’re splurging on calories. Or, hey, eat it twice in one weekend like we did…We weren’t really adept at browning butter and took a completely uneducated stab at it. Guess what?

We tore through these sweet potatoes before we had the chance to take much of a picture, so we’ll have to describe them instead.These are the easiest things. So much flavor for so little work. We caramelized onions slowly in butter and olive oil (hands off, really – they cook themselves) then browned sweet potatoes and garlic. We let them steam until soft, then added some ginger and paprika for flavor.

We have a trustworthy method for making sweet and spicy acorn squash, but there’s one downside: it’s slow. So we perked up when we saw this alternate method from Alicia and Summer at Bread & Honey.They used a Martha Stewart recipe – such a simple formula, really – and sliced the acorn squash before baking. They dotted each slice with butter, brown sugar, salt and pepper, and then put them in the oven.

Escarole appeared in my Mystery Box last week, setting me up for one of my favorite situations: discovering something new to work with in the kitchen. I’ve heard of escarole and have even eaten it in restaraunts, but for some reason, I’ve never been moved to cook with it. That, it appears, is about to change.Escarole is considered a endive, making it a member of the daisy family. It’s high in fiber and rich in vitamins, especially A and K.

We’re heading into kale season and I couldn’t be happier.  Kale provides everything you want and need in food:  it’s nutritious, delicious, easy to prepare, affordable and readily available well into the frost season. Indeed, those of you who live in frost areas are really in luck because a good frost can deepen and sweeten the flavor of kale and other winter vegetables.

Every summer, we anxiously await the arrival of squash blossoms so we can make one of our favorite dishes: fried squash blossoms.It’s a little time-consuming to prepare as you have to carefully remove the pistil from the center of the flower without ripping the delicate petals, but the work involved is worth it. I first had fried squash blossoms when I lived in Italy. In Italy, they’re usually dipped in batter and fried, and then served with salt and pepper.

My mystery box offered up several Little Gems lettuces last week, a most pleasant event indeed! We featuredLittle Gems look like tiny versions of Romaine lettuce, with a crisp, crunchy texture and a sweet flavor. My favorite way to serve them couldn’t be easier: simply cut in half and drizzled with a nice lemon-shallot vinaigrette. Occasionally, I’ll sprinkle on some thinly sliced radish or a few capers, but mostly I let them shine straight up.

With the weather turning warmer, we find ourselves turning to lighter meals and nibbles. Healthy dips and spreads such as muhammara are finding their way onto our plates more often in recent weeks.Another benefit of dips and spreads is they can be used as a substitute for less-healthy toppings such as butter, cream, hollandaise sauces, and other high-fat sauces and accompaniments. Try using hummus in place of mayonnaise in a sandwich, or experiment with covering a grilled steak with guacamole.

Remember when we contemplated the first meal cooked in our new apartmentWe love steaming artichokes and pulling off the leaves one by one to scrape between our teeth. But other than that, we rarely cook big, baseball-sized artichokes. So we loved the way this recipe highlighted their beautiful, floral shape, with stuffing tucked in every layer, ready to be scooped up with the leaves.There is one warning to this recipe. It is full of anchovies.

This is not a combination we would have thought of on our own.We recently enjoyed a cheese plate at a restaurant, where a hard goat cheese was paired with a tomato garnish. At first, we asked the bartender who served us if he could swap the tomatoes with something else (the figs looked good), but he insisted. And when we tasted them, we realized there was something different going on.

These might look like Easter eggs, but actually they’re a traditional treat for Passover. We asked NYC caterer and culinary consultant Sierra Spingarn to share the family recipe for Huevos Haminados.Since observant Jews refrain from doing work on the Sabbath, they employ techniques for slow-cooked foods that can be started Friday afternoon, and still be hot on their table. This year, as Passover begins on Saturday night, these techniques will come in especially handy.

Pilaf makes a quick and elegant side dish to almost any meal. You can buy pilaf mixes at the grocery store, but we think it’s just as easy–or easier–to make it yourself and then fancy it up with whatever veggies and seasonings you like!The basic method for pilaf is not all that different from making regular rice. The main difference is that when you make pilaf, you saute the grains of rice before adding the liquid.

At the Alemany Farmer’s Market right now we’re seeing a lot of cardoons in season. Cardoons are closely related to – and taste very much like – artichokes. Why is this vegetable not well-known, then?Cardoons are high-maintenance vegetables. They look like very large hearts of celery, but have thorns in the stalks, so handle with care. The stalks are not solid like celery, and are semi-hollow and stringy.

We chopped everything into even pieces, drizzled some olive oil over with herbs and salt and roasted. See the results below!Confetti Potatoes and Pearl Onionsserves 2-4 as a side About two pounds mixed baby potatoesAbout one pound pearl onionsKosher saltBlack pepperOlive oil 4 sprigs of rosemary4-6 sprigs of thyme Heat the oven to 400°F. Cut the potatoes into quarters – just a little larger than the onions. Cut the top off each onion, then slice in half and shuck away the skin.

Let’s stand up for the baby pattypan. The baby pattypan has its own unique crown shape and an olive-oil like flavor that cries out for attention. While baby pattypans can work in recipes created for zucchini or yellow summer squash, we’ve been hunting all summer for recipes that were created just for the little pattypans. Isn’t it a shame to slice them up when their shape is so perfect on the plate? Until this weekend, we hadn’t had much luck in our recipe hunt.

Confit is an old French word for a classic method of food preservation. It simply means food that has been slowly cooked in salt and oil for long-term preservation. Duck confit is a famous example, but vegetables – especially garlic – are often used. This version is an easy, hands-off recipe for a tart, flavorful confit of fennel, lemon, and garlic. It’s sweet and mellow with notes of bright bitterness from the lemon.

We have a new favourite way to cook and eat asparagus. We love those tiny, thinner-than-pencil-thin asparagus spears, and yet when we sauté them we often find we misjudge the timing and they get mushy. We like crisp, tender spears, with just enough of a snap and yet not crunchy raw. The easiest way to get this texture is to blanch them, and this is also so quick. Method below… Don’t try this with really thick spears – use the thinnest, freshest ones you can find.

Lemon, rosemary, capers, goat cheese – they taste like summer to us, and they all go into this fresh, tangy pasta. We especially love the fried capers – one of our favorite ways to dress up a dish. It’s easy to make them; just fry drained capers in a little olive oil until they open like tiny buds, with layers of crisp, delicate petals standing out from the juicy center. This can be served as a hot dish or as a warm pasta salad.

These potatoes are a homestyle recipe – full of dairy and fat and other very, very good things. They are comfort food at its finest, with cubed potatoes boiled till just tender and then baked with all sorts of creamy cheese until soft and bubbling. They also come together faster than you might think, and they last for days in the fridge – if you can keep them around that long!

Braising ribbons of cabbage in butter and wine steams away the sharp, sometimes bitter flavor of raw cabbage, leaving an entirely new vegetable. It’s soft, sweet and juicy – a warm, delicate vegetable for a winter’s evening. Dusted with fresh Parmesan it’s even better.

They do take a bit of work, although that can be cut down by using pre-made dumpling wraps. But it’s a relaxing sort of work – chopping, mixing, and wrapping. They smell wonderful, too; the aroma of ginger, scallions and sesame filled my kitchen and I could hardly wait for them to be done! Step-by-step pictures below… This was my first time making this sort of dumpling, as you can probably tell from my awkward wrapping.

Acorn squash is tremendously good for you, and when roasted it has a velvety, luxurious texture that lends itself to both spicy and sweet flavors. Fortunately, there are two halves to a squash, so I dust one with curry powder for a spicy dinner and the other with small mounds of brown sugar for a sweet dessert.I am giving measurements here, but obviously this is the most flexible sort of recipe. Adjust to your taste.

For example, last weekend I needed a vegetarian dish to round out a meal. I had some garlic that needed to be used up, so I roasted it and mashed it to a paste with roasted acorn squash. With a little ricotta this made a delicious filling inside the crisp, flaky strudel. There was the sweet, pungent taste of garlic, and the earthy flavors of squash and sage, with a little crunch from toasted pinenuts.

With Thanksgiving coming up soon, I’m sure a lot of us are on the search for interesting recipes for side dishes to accompany our birds.A mash of some sort is a natural to partner for a thick slice of roasted turkey.

Everything’s better roasted. Ok that’s a sweeping statement, but I almost always default to roasting when it comes to vegetables. It concentrates their flavors, caramelizes their sugars and produces interesting textural contrasts. Basically, it enhances everything that is already great about vegetables.Broccoli has been an exception up until recently. It’s really quite lovely blanched then sautéed, but I felt like cooking it differently the other night.

Columbus may have come searching for gold, but what he found was a wealth of new foods. Before Europeans arrived in the New World they had never tasted peppers, chocolate, tomatoes or the culinary gold of maize – staple of the Native American diet. Imagine Indian curries without peppers, pasta without tomatoes, or Paris without chocolate!This recipe is adapted from one that Gourmet ran last summer, with a tangy lime butter sauce over lightly cooked corn and herbs.