I know I shouldn’t, but I just have to tell you how happy I am about Naz Deravian’s new sushi bake recipe from New York Times Cooking. It’s tough to choose a favourite from our many award-winning dishes.
My go-to recipe for years has been Sheldon Simeon’s pan sushi dynamite, which can be found in his fantastic volume “Cook Real Hawai’i.” Sushi baked in a pan, often known as pan sushi, is always a hit. It’s impossible! Served with palm-sized sheets of nori for DIY hand roll bliss, this dish consists of a large sheet of sushi rice topped with fish that has been roasted just long enough to mix with its sauce.
Similar to a sushi dish, Naz’s version includes a California roll twist. Baked imitation crab topped with cucumber slices and avocado is seasoned with furikake and sprinkled with Sriracha mayonnaise. As an alternative to fresh crab, Naz suggests using canned tuna or salmon; I can attest that canned salmon works well in this recipe.
Millie Peartree’s sheet-pan prawn boil is another crowd-pleaser that’s perfect for a big group. Her recipe has many levels of flavour: Shrimp marinated in lemon juice, garlic and Cajun spice are added to roasted, seasoned potatoes that have been broiled with buttered corn. A reader named BubbaM, who made the recipe with the addition of sliced sausages, said that it reminded him of the gulf coast. “Definitely a keeper recipe!”
If we’re talking about popular items: Here is a recipe for sweet and sour aubergine with garlic chips from Sue Li, who has received over a thousand evaluations and an average of five stars. Garlic slices contribute both flavour and texture to frying oil and the final meal. (If you recognise this dish, it’s because my coworker Tanya Sichynsky gushed about it in her Eggplant Extravaganza Veggie email.) Cook an egg in chile oil and serve over rice for a quick weekday meal.
It’s Wednesday, which means your mind is probably wandering to recipes you might make this weekend. The vibrant hue wasn’t the only thing that drew me to Rick Martnez’s chilaquiles. I’ll pick up some peppers at the farmers market to go with the tomatoes I bought for Rick’s crimson salsa guajillo, since both are at their optimum right now. Because of his great suggestion, I will bake my tortillas instead of frying them when I prepare totopos.
Yewande Komolafe’s cucumber, mint, and ginger agua fresca is the perfect accompaniment to my chilaquiles. To make use of my prolific mint plant and to eventually replace the simple syrup in Rebekah Peppler’s versatile old-fashioneds, I’ll be making twice as much mint syrup as usual.
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Finally, here is our compilation of simple dishes you need to cook before summer ends, in case you (like me) are not quite ready to swap flip-flops and peaches for skeletons and pumpkin spice. Salad with spicy tomatoes and nectarine! Tomato-basil spaghetti! Put the recipes you really can’t live without in your recipe box, and I’ll see you next Monday.
