Sometimes you want a recipe that’s pared down to just the essentials — something very simple and cleanly minimalist. I’m thinking here of pasta nada, stripped down to just olives and parsley, or a perfectly seared salmon fillet, seasoned with only salt and pepper and served with white rice and a green vegetable. (This is a go-to dinner of mine, by the way.)
And sometimes you want a recipe that takes a good thing and runs with it, something that yes-ands itself into over-the-top deliciousness.
Ladies and gentlemen, Vaughn Vreeland’s triple-chocolate brownies.
We shouldn’t be surprised that the brain behind rum-raisin carrot cake and this face-size cheese puff has figured out a way to invite almost every type of chocolate to the brownie dance floor. Cocoa powder and bittersweet, milk and white chocolate all make appearances, forming a terrazzo-patterned brownie with that perfect, crinkled-paper surface and a just-gooey-enough interior. If it all sounds like too much, let this comment from Roland, a reader, convince you otherwise:
“I’m 11 years old and just baked this recipe as an activity for a week without school. Unenlightened of the brownie’s incredible taste, I was bewildered by the perfect combination of these three types of chocolate. Surprisingly as well, it was not difficult to bake and didn’t matter that I didn’t add the espresso powder. Melting the chocolate was the hardest part for me, as I took it off the stove too early and left much sticking to the saucepan after I poured it. This recipe’s for sure a keeper.”
Featured Recipe
Triple-Chocolate Brownies
This roast chicken with maple butter and rosemary from Colu Henry is actually very simple. All four ingredients, minus salt and pepper, are right there in the name. But it tastes very over the top: Slightly browned butter, turned almost caramelly thanks to the sugar in the maple syrup and steeped with assertively woodsy rosemary, has that effect. Pair, as Colu suggests, with rice pilaf to catch all those sweet and salty juices.
Ali Slagle’s ginger-dill salmon is also a straightforward, simple dish: just salmon, ginger and dill with some citrus, radishes and avocado. But those last three things allow you to get really wild. Try a mix of navel, Cara Cara or blood oranges for some juicy flashes of color, and go bananas with the radishes — maybe throw in some purple, watermelon or black radishes if you find them. Avocado, as we all know, is always extra.
Sometimes you just need one vegetable: roasted kabocha squash, or pan-steamed gai lan. And sometimes you want all the vegetables. For that, you could hardly do better than Hetty Lui McKinnon’s lo han jai, or Buddha’s delight, a bountiful dish with roots in Buddhist Lunar New Year celebrations. “There is no single recipe for lo han jai — families are likely to have their own versions — but the key is to create a textural dish by bringing together dried and fresh vegetables,” Hetty notes. “Swap out any of the ingredients you cannot find and consider substituting with other vegetables such as carrot, sugar snap peas, lotus root, baby corn or cauliflower.”
Lastly, making jam yourself is above and beyond, given how easy it is to buy good jam these days. It’s not strawberry season, but Melissa Knific’s easy strawberry jam recipe can absolutely be made with frozen berries, especially since those berries are often picked at their peak right before freezing.
And you don’t need Seville oranges to make a good orange marmalade (though if you have them, by all means). Ben Mims’s brilliant new recipe uses a combination of navel oranges and lemons to mimic the specific bittersweetness of Sevilles, and the result is just the right balance of tangy, sour and sweet. Pair with “Paddington in Peru” or, if you’re going all out, a “Paddington” marathon.
