Herbs & Spices

Make this recipe your thing. Serve this vibrantly hued cured salmon with an assortment of easily assembled herbs, pickles, seedy breads, and schmears.

Mint julep + bubbly? This cocktail recipe combines the two delicious classics and is the ultimate way to celebrate.

Sadly, you’re not going to be able to waltz down to the corner store and pick up escargot and shells. We ordered the Saveurs brand, along with the shells, from Amazon. This recipe is worth the wait.

One simple master recipe, based on a classic French pain de mie, proves endlessly changeable—feel free to think of the five suggestions that accompany it here as merely a start, and let your imagination take it from there.

This sparkling punch, with its aromatic mixture of sage, lemon, and ginger, is refreshing and light enough to drink all night.

These pillowy steamed buns are delicious in all the same ways as Parker House rolls, with the sweet flavor of cornmeal.

This holiday-worthy recipe was inspired by bread pudding and ended up somewhere between a strata, a gratin, and a traditional Thanksgiving stuffing.

Don’t skip on the fresh herb garnishes for this recipe; they will serve as a good contrast to the curry.

The smoky sauce and mix of spices in this meatball recipe complement lamb perfectly.

After a day of power-eating, all we want is this palate cleanser. It has tons of spice, zing, freshness—and vegetables that still have some crunch.

This zesty spin on the old party classic matches hot-smoked salmon with beet horseradish, two kinds of soft cheese, and crunchy veg and herbs. Serve it with bagels or pumpernickel bread.

Zhoug is a spicy herb sauce of Yemenite origin that you find in Syria and Israel. It’s often the go-to condiment for falafel and is eaten with bread for those who want heat with every bite. It’s a must with Shakshuka, and you’ll probably find yourself stirring it into scrambled eggs, spreading it on a sandwich, mixing it with Greek yogurt to make a dip, or just eating it by the spoonful.

This fresh new take on classic horseradish sauce makes a lot, but you’re going to want extra. It’s the perfect companion for both our Porcini-Rubbed Beef Rib Roast and our Crispy Baby Yukon Gold Potatoes.

Making Stollen is not for the faint of heart. Avoiding it altogether because excellent store-bought Stollen abounds is further abetted by the invention of Stollenkonfekt, bite-size chunks of spiced, tender Quark dough studded with almonds and raisins and thickly cloaked in vanilla-scented confectioners’ sugar. They may be a relatively recent development in the world of Christstollen, which dates back to the Middle Ages, but they more than make up for their youth. In other words, want the rich, buttery, spicy flavor of Stollen without the work of a yeasted dough and the weeks of impatiently waiting for the loaves to be ready? If so, Stollenkonfekt is the thing for you.

While you can make a very nice vanilla sugar by simply plunging a vanilla bean into a jar of sugar and leaving it there (for a really, really long time), I actually like to make a slightly fancier version by processing vanilla and sugar together until the bean is all broken down and the sugar is speckled with countless tiny beans and specks of pod. The sugar is more intensely flavored than regular vanilla sugar. Packaged in a pretty glass jar, it also makes for a great gift.

Also known as advieh, this aromatic blend comes from Persian cuisine. It’s fragrant, a little sweet, and gently warming. It is delicious mixed with sugar and sprinkled over baked goods, donuts, and rice pudding or added to dried fruits that are cooking into jam. It straddles the sweet and savory world because it’s also great for flavoring rice pilaf with toasted nuts, lentil soup, lamb meatballs, braised chicken, or vegetable stew. It’s a blend that is shared by chefs and pastry chefs. Use it to make Persian-Style Carrots and Black-Eyed Peas.

One of my favorite crops from my husband’s farm are his fall carrots. I prefer the fall carrots because as the weather gets colder the vegetable sugars concentrate, yielding the sweetest carrots of the year. We use lots of carrots in this recipe, so that it’s more about the carrots than anything else. For the best flavor, serve it cold the day after you make it. You can substitute chickpeas for the black-eyed peas, if you prefer to use another type of bean.

Probably the biggest, most versatile recipe I've ever written and it's become a model for my master-recipe formula. Here six basic components are completely transformed with simple substitutions into 18 totally different dishes.