The collection
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63 recipes for a full table.
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Cook Around Anything
Tell us who's coming. Every recipe re-renders with its best honest substitution, or tells you kindly to cook its sibling instead. Your choices follow you around the site.
Or pick it apart:
Desserts start with dairy. Choose dairy-free for the adapted ingredients and method.
Savory recipes also offer dairy additions where they belong. Your restrictions always take priority.
Starters4 dishes
Avocado Toast
Thick sourdough fried crackling in olive oil, guacamole cool on top, a lace-edged egg with a liquid yolk, and cold ribbons of lox draped on last so they never cook.
Guacamole
Rubble of ripe Hass folded through a knife-made paste of onion, serrano, and cilantro, half a lime, and salt built in stages until the avocado gets louder.
Levantine Mezze
Hummus blends scalding hot and whips ivory-pale with ice water and lemon, warm cumin oil pooling in the spiral well. Muhammara answers in rust-red, coarse with toasted walnuts and sour with pomegranate molasses, and the pita hits the table still steaming.
Seared Scallop Amuse-Bouche
A golden scallop on a spoonful of smoky pepper coulis, finished with parsley oil and a few flakes of salt.
The Morning After6 dishes
Chocolate Babka French Toast
Slices of yesterday's babka griddle bronze in butter, chocolate rings molten, flaky salt, a cold tangy spoonful alongside.
Cabin Eggs
Soft, glossy scrambled eggs with thyme-rosemary oil, crisp capers and a measured spoonful of tangy cayenne sauce.
Filet Bites
Tenderloin bites with deeply seared edges and a measured lemon-parsley butter baste.
Liège Waffles
Brioche dough proofed overnight in the cold, studded with pearl sugar, and pressed on a hot iron until the sugar runs molten into pockets of caramel and lacquers the edges to glass. The shell cracks, the crumb chews, and nobody reaches for syrup.
Patatas Bravas
Potatoes go into the oil twice, so they click against the spider before they hit the platter. Brick-rust bravas sauce brings roasted tomato, smoke, and a clean sherry-vinegar finish; cool garlic aioli catches the next corner, bare crackling edges showing between.
Shakshuka with Zhoug
Charred pepper and bloomed cumin turn the sauce brick-red, yolks wobble like set jelly in their wells, and zhoug threads fierce green across the top.
Pasta9 dishes
Linguine Aglio e Olio
Sweet golden garlic, peperoncino and parsley cling to glossy linguine. Coarse lemon crumbs crackle over the top, with fresh olive oil threaded through at the finish.
Beef Pad See Ew
Wide rice noodles blister against screaming steel until they char smoky-black, lacquered in sweet dark soy with seared beef, browned egg curds, and snapping gai lan.
Tonnarelli al Pepe
Toasted Tellicherry blooms warm and floral through every strand, the tonnarelli lacquered in a savory pale-gold cream of cashew, miso, and pepper-stained pasta water.
Beef Bacon Carbonara
Crisp beef bacon, black pepper bloomed in the rendered fat, and a glossy six-yolk sauce fill every ridged tube. Cured yolk brings a salty finish when the jar is ready; Pecorino is the dairy option.
Dan Dan Noodles
Sesame paste, brick-red chili oil, and ya cai wait under the noodles; nothing looks like the dish until everyone tosses their own bowl: twenty seconds, bottom to top, every strand running terracotta under crackling beef.
Hand-Cut Tagliatelle
Hand-cut ribbons coated in roasted pepper and tomato, with torn basil and coarse olive-oil crumbs.
Harissa Rigatoni alla Vodka
Ridged tubes carry coconut cream turned burnt-orange by harissa bloomed brick-dark in oil, vodka sharpening the edges, caraway humming underneath.
Lasagne alla Bolognese
Six whisper-thin sheets of egg sfoglia stack with brick-brown ragù and nutmeg besciamella until the layers fuse into one sliceable thing. The top blisters gold, the exposed corners brown and crackle, and a full thirty-minute rest lets every square stand up with its stripes showing.
Linguine ai Gamberi
Shrimp heads and shells slow-toasted in good olive oil until the fat runs deep coral, and that coral oil becomes the sauce: glossed ribbons, sweet shrimp barely curled through the tangle, chili arriving late, lemon over everything, crumbs fried in the same oil for the crackle.
Rice2 dishes
Saffron Risotto alla Milanese with Bone Marrow
Marrow melts into the onion before the rice goes in, and saffron blooms orange-red, smelling of honey and dried hay. Carnaroli takes the color, turns satiny in the final off-heat beat, and ripples out all'onda beneath a soft scoop of roasted marrow and lemon gremolata.
Seafood Paella (Paella de Marisco)
Saffron rice absorbs a stock built from toasted shrimp shells and ñora sofrito, with tender shrimp, opened mussels and briefly seared squid. A light socarrat crackles beneath it, ready to scrape up at the table.
Mains5 dishes
Beef Birria
Chuck and short rib collapse into a brick-red adobo braise that pays twice: shreds for the tacos, consommé for the cup. Flour tortillas drag through the lifted fat, hit the griddle, and come up stained red with lacy, crackling edges.
The Chimichanga
Blistered gold shell that knocks when you tap it, packed with chile-dark braised chuck and toasted red rice, riding a plate of refritos, charred salsa roja, and cool guacamole. The steam when you cut it is half the argument.
Filet Mignon
Dry-brined overnight, the filet leaves the cast iron under a deep brown crust and a 30-second baste of foaming thyme, rosemary, and garlic. It rests to rose at the center, then lands on garnet reduction whisked glossy with cold butter and threaded with emerald herb oil.
Soy-Braised Short Ribs
Short ribs braised in soy, charred scallion, and ginger until the bone barely holds on, then painted with their own reduced braise and broiled to a sticky mahogany lacquer. Cold Asian pear and a sharp smashed-cucumber pickle bite back at all that beef.
Toum Fried Chicken Sandwich
Crag-crusted thigh hisses against cold whipped garlic swiped edge to edge, and the pickles anchor in the toum so nothing slides out of the roll.
Wings4 dishes
Buffalo Wings
Frank's and cold plant butter, mounted into a sauce that clings instead of splitting, over naked twice-fried wings tossed hard and served on a ten-minute fuse. A ramekin of honey mustard waits on the side, because sweet mustard against buffalo heat is the pairing the bar never admitted.
Garlic Lemon Pepper Wings
Lemon pepper wet, the Atlanta order: wings brined overnight, fried twice to glass, then dragged through plant butter heavy with confit garlic and a lemon pepper dried in-house that morning. Fresh zest and juice land last, so the citrus arrives alive over the warm pepper haze.
Louisiana Rub Wings
Double-fried wings carry a thin coat of garlic, paprika, cayenne and herbs, gently bloomed in warm fat. Lime at the table keeps the finish bright, and the measured dry brine seasons the meat beneath the crisp skin.
Smokehouse Wings
Dry-rubbed like a smokehouse order: paprika two ways and a restrained hand of brown sugar roasted into bark at 450°F, then scattered black under the broiler. The white sauce never touches the pan. It waits cold in its own bowl, sharp with vinegar and horseradish, for the dunk.
The Sauce Cellar14 dishes
Buffalo Sauce
Fresh red pepper and cayenne simmered with vinegar, then whisked into a glossy orange wing sauce.
Cherry-Port Coulis
Ruby port simmered into dark cherries, strained to a silk that holds a line.
Cured Egg Yolks
Firm cured yolks rasped over a finished plate for a small, concentrated hit of salt and savory richness.
Garlic Aioli
Raw garlic pounded to cream, then a whisk, a thread of oil, and the moment the bowl goes from liquid to sauce under your hand.
Gremolata
Lemon oil, raw garlic, and parsley chopped together in the last hour, loud on purpose.
Harissa
Toasted dried chilies pounded with garlic and caraway into glossy brick-red heat.
Honey Mustard
Dijon bite under wildflower honey, whisked thick enough to cling to a hot wing.
Hot Honey
Sweet first, then the chile catching up, then a vinegar edge that resets the bite.
Romesco
Ñora pulp and charred pepper, toasted almonds and hazelnuts, fried bread and a clear sherry-vinegar finish.
Salsa Roja
Charred tomato and serrano fire, blended coarse and fried into itself until it tastes like the comal.
Italian Salsa Verde
Parsley and capers chopped by hand, anchovy melted invisibly through, loose in grassy olive oil.
Spicy Mayo
Kewpie logic from scratch: yolks whisked rich, seasoned with rice vinegar and a defended pinch of MSG, then spiked salmon-pink.
Toum (Lebanese Garlic Sauce)
Whole head of garlic whipped stiff into oil. Fierce, matte, spoon-holding white.
Zhoug (Yemeni Green Hot Sauce)
Serrano fire, then cilantro, then the camphor cool of cardamom in fresh-cut-grass green.
Desserts19 dishes
Frozen Açai Berry Cheesecake
Açai and lemon cut a cool, tangy cheesecake filling over toasted nut crumb. Temper it to the texture of firm ice cream before cutting slim purple slices.
Alfajores
Pale cornstarch shortbread that crumbles tenderly around a milk-caramel seam, rolled in fine coconut.
Apfelstrudel
Tart apples sharpened with lemon, rum-plumped raisins, and toasted walnuts, rolled inside a dough stretched by hand until you can read through it. The wraps bake to a crackle while the fruit collapses into warm, cinnamon-scented slices that barely hold their shape.
Chocolate Chip Banana Bread
Black-skinned bananas roast to jam, their juice reduced to syrup and stirred back in, so the browned-butter crumb tastes of banana twice over. Torched two-tone meringue crowns each slice, crisp-shelled over a pillowy middle, with chocolate pockets and a crunchy turbinado lid underneath.
Canelés de Bordeaux
Lacquered near-black outside, barely-set custard within: rum and vanilla concentrated into a two-bite paradox that asks for two days and a fearless oven, and repays every hour of both.
Cannoli
You hear the first bite across the room. Shells fried to a bronze blister, filled the minute someone asks: cool vanilla cannoli cream studded with mini chocolate chips in half, a deep chocolate cream in the rest, the ends pressed in more chips.
Chocolate Babka
Dark chocolate, cocoa, and cinnamon wind through a rich enriched crumb, so every cut face opens as a ring of layers. Hot sugar syrup goes on straight from the oven and sinks in, leaving the deep-brown crown lacquered; toasted on day two, the fill runs molten again.
Dark Chocolate Mousse
A smooth dark-chocolate cream folded with meringue, set cold and served in four small glasses.
Dark Chocolate Olive Oil Torte
Seventy percent chocolate and a fruity olive oil, whole eggs whipped to ribbon for the only lift: a set edge, a barely-fudgy center, and a deep-cracked crust that shatters over the knife.
Kardinalschnitte
Ivory meringue and gold sponge baked side by side in stripes, sandwiched around a vanilla pudding cream beaten to mousse. Every slice shows its colors.
Kokosh
Babka's humbler, denser cousin, and the one you bake when you want the chocolate to win. The dough is rolled nearly translucent, loaded until the filling almost outweighs it, coiled flat, and baked to a fudgy dark seam that runs the length of every slice.
Kormos
Dark chocolate poured over broken butter biscuits and toasted hazelnuts, rolled into a log, chilled hard, and sliced into mosaic rounds. Every Greek household has a version; this one is salted properly and cut with orange, which is most of the difference between good and forgettable.
Millefeuille
Three shattering leaves of hand-laminated pastry, vanilla-bean cream piped between, the top burnished to caramel glass. Built minutes before it is eaten, because the crackle runs on a clock.
Olive Oil Cake
Fruity olive oil in the gold crumb under a lemon glaze that cracks at the knife.
Sticky Toffee Pudding
Black-brown date sponge, stabbed to the pan floor and flooded with salted salted toffee while it's hot, meets a cold pour of cream at the table.
Tarte Tropézienne
Saint-Tropez guards the filling recipe like a state secret, and this is the honest answer to it: a pearl-sugar brioche breathing orange blossom, split like a sandwich and piped two fingers deep with a chilled cream that is half mousseline, half diplomate, silky where it meets the crumb and light where it meets the tongue.
Pastel de Tres Leches
A light sponge soaked overnight in evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk and cream, cut cold beneath a soft cinnamon topping.
Trubochki
Spirals of rough puff wound to a point and baked until the sugared coil goes glassy, then piped full of a silky caramel buttercream built on boiled condensed milk. The Soviet sweet counter's finest hour.
NYC-Style Baked Cheesecake
A tall, tangy cream-cheese filling in a thin spiced biscuit crust, chilled overnight and served with tart blueberry compote.