Like a hard cheese, cured yolks can quickly add savory depth and complexity to a wide range of foods—soups, salads, pastas, and even meats.
New Mexican or Anaheim chiles can be substituted for the guajillo chiles. If queso fresco is unavailable, you can substitute farmer's cheese or a mild feta. When baking the tortillas, stir them well to promote even browning.
For a bold take on roast cod, this one-dish meal is inspired by the flavors of the Mediterranean.
A roasted, stuffed eggplant with a crown of shredded cheese is a thing of beauty and makes an appealing and satisfying entrée.
The hallmark of Dutch apple pie is its creamy apple filling, but we didn’t rely on the traditional cream to achieve it. Instead we added melted vanilla ice cream to the apple filling for extra creaminess and a rich vanilla flavor that nicely complements apple pie.
Canned pumpkin puree adds a bit of subtle flavor to these muffins, but more important, it also makes the muffins ultramoist.
To create stovetop Brussels sprouts that were deeply browned on the cut sides while still bright green on the uncut sides and crisp-tender within, we started the sprouts in a cold skillet with plenty of oil and cooked them covered. This gently heated the sprouts and created a steamy environment that cooked them through without adding any extra moisture. We then removed the lid and continued to cook the sprouts cut sides down so they had time to develop a substantial, caramelized crust. Using enough oil to completely coat the skillet ensured that all the sprouts made full contact with the fat to brown evenly from edge to edge.
Cochinita pibil is the pride of the Yucatan peninsula—a dish of smoky, slow-roasted pork marinated in a special blend of ingredients including cinnamon, allspice, and achiote (annatto) seed. Cochinita means “baby pig,” and the real-deal recipes use a whole suckling pig. Traditionally the whole thing is wrapped in banana leaves and then buried in a pib—a pit with a fire at the bottom. Here I use Boston butt and employ a two-stage “grill-and-swim” cooking process to make things a little more convenient and a lot juicier. Pregrilling the meat adds great flavor, while low and slow cooking in a water bath produces especially succulent meat—no pib required. Plus, you won’t have to fire up your grill on taco night, so you can focus on making Homemade Corn Tortillas or that sweet playlist you’ve been meaning to put together.
Eggs are the poster child for sous vide cooking: The technique produces eggs with unique texture, and the method is hands-off and easily scalable.
A hot-milk sponge cake made a good base in our Boston Cream Pie recipe because it didn’t require any finicky folding or separating of eggs. Baking the batter in two pans eliminated the need to slice a single cake horizontally before adding the filling. We used butter to firm up our pastry cream, and we added corn syrup to heavy cream and melted chocolate for a smooth glaze that clung to the top of our Boston Cream Pie and dripped artistically down its sides.