This hot and fiery soup is seen only in the Indo-Chinese restaurants of India. When the weather is cold or I’m feeling unwell, I often make this soup. To boost the protein, you can add bits of leftover rotisserie chicken or tofu. Serve this with rice wine vinegar, Chilli-Soy Vinegar Sauce, or Indo-Sichuan Sauce on the side.
This is a meatless riff on one of my all-time favorite sheet pan dinners: a spicy harissa-slathered chicken loaded with lemony leeks, crispy potatoes, and a salty, garlicky yogurt topping. Here, roasted cauliflower stands in for the poultry, and almonds are tossed in for crunch. Added bonus: without the chicken, this lively, highly festive meal comes together in a flash.
Toum, the fluffy, garlicky, tangy condiment, originated in Lebanon but is found throughout the Middle East. It is the mandatory condiment for chicken shawarma. Accept no substitutions. Usually, toum means you need to spend loads of time peeling and degerming garlic, juicing lemons, and lugging your food processor onto the counter. This method sacrifices some of the fluffiness for ease. Using an immersion blender to create the emulsion, you can skip the delicate drizzling of oil and blend your way to toum town in a matter of seconds.
I first made this soup on a camp stove in my camper van during a six-month road trip, and then again and again and again as the nights grew colder, snowier, windier, darker. It starts with instant soup noodle mix—never leave home without it!—and then follows along the tradition of stracciatella, egg drop soup, hot and sour soup, and sopa de ajo, which are all cloudy with ribbons of egg. As the soup mix simmers, beat an egg in a soup bowl (the warm soup will cook any egg stuck to the bowl). Tear vegetables with your hands to save a knife and cutting board. Add the vegetables towards the end of the soup simmering, then stream in the egg. In a few seconds, what appears resembles clouds, or maybe rags (straccetti means “little rags”), or flowers (the direct translation of the Chinese name for egg drop soup is “egg flower soup”). In one pot, in a few minutes, on a stovetop or campfire, this soup is there for you: starch, vegetable, protein, warmth, comfort, and all.
Gai mei bao is my favorite baked bun. There, I said it. I love a good pineapple bun as much as the next person, but I’m in the minority that enjoys a buttery, coconut-heavy cocktail bun a little more. Cocktail buns originally were created as a way for bakers to salvage day-old buns. The stale buns were ground into crumbs, then mixed with sugar and shredded coconut as a filling for fresh dough (like a“cocktail” of bakery leftovers). Nowadays, bakers make the filling fresh.
Serve hot, warm, or cold. You can double this recipe and make it in a medium (10-inch) skillet. Don’t be alarmed by the quantity of oil and salt; most of it will be drained away. Save the strained oil in the fridge for future tortillas or low-temperature cooking, like sweating vegetables. Have a quick tapas party by serving the tortilla alongside canned fish, salad, crusty bread, and lots of wine.
Soleil thinks of this oil as an elemental building block kind of seasoning. Think about drizzling it on sticky rice or rice noodles. It’s fantastic on grilled sweet corn, any grilled protein, or vegetable. And in the tradition of Soleil’s family, brush it on a freshly grilled baguette and eat it grill side while watching what’s cooking on the fire!
When I hear people say they don’t like buckwheat, I inevitably think, “That’s because you’ve never had my buckwheat pancake.” At Friends & Family, our baked buckwheat pancake is a fan favorite. We warn customers that their order will take up to 20 minutes, but the prospect of waiting doesn’t deter them. Thicker and more filling than a regular flapjack, one buckwheat pancake is enough for me. You could make these entirely with buckwheat flour, but I use some all-purpose flour for a more balanced flavor profile. The pancake is finished in the oven, which imparts a dreamy fluffiness and a crispy exterior. Starting the pancake on the stove allows for an evenly brown, crispy layer, while finishing it in the oven promotes the batter in the center to rise and gel into a light and airy pancake. Once you get the hang of this technique, it’s possible you won’t make pancakes any other way.
This Food IQ recipe for ribs in the oven, the Rodbard way, comes from Matt Rodbard's mom, Cheryl. With the absence of a smoker, the oven is the next best bet for preparing moist, succulent ribs. These ribs utilize a dry rub that adds flavor to the meat before a low-and-slow steam roast, thanks to plastic wrap, that gets the meat to fall-off-the-bone status. This recipe calls for the use of your favorite barbecue sauce, be it homemade or a bottle pulled from the grocery store shelf. Bulls-Eye is the Rodbard family favorite.
Chelo means “plain steamed rice” in Farsi, whereas polos are rice dishes with other ingredients folded in, like pilafs—I included a few variations of these.
If there’s one piece of equipment you’ll see in every Persian household, it’s a nonstick pot. Although I almost never use nonstick cookware, for this recipe, it’s essential. It makes life easy when you want to serve the rice on a platter, or flip and invert it for easy release. Trust me and pay the money to invest in that peace of mind.