Today, in The New York Times, I confess my slightly unhinged love of jam, and my delight in lugging home jars of it as sweet souvenirs from my travels. Once that sticky collection in the fridge starts edging out the milk, though, you know it’s time to cull. That’s when the baking begins, those edible mementos becoming cakes, pies, puddings and tarts to share. They’ll get you way more likes IRL than any vacation shots you could have posted.
I had a great time developing two new recipes for my column: a puffy lemon pudding, and a sugar-dusted, one-bowl jam-filled Bundt cake that looks like a giant doughnut.
The pudding is a riff on a classic lemon pudding cake, with beaten egg whites and plenty of citrus juice and zest. To add color and sweetness (and because I had a spare half-jar), I scattered dollops of blueberry jam across the top, which speckle it with pretty purple puddles. It’s tart and lovely, and while you can use any kind of jam to make it, darker colors will pop more on the yellow, curdlike surface.
Featured Recipe
Baked Lemon Pudding With Blueberry Jam
Speaking of lemon curd, Ali Slagle has found a brilliant and surprising way to use it: She slathers it on a whole chicken before roasting. The sugar in the curd helps the chicken skin caramelize while the fat keeps the bird nice and juicy, and the lemon adds its characteristic tang. It’s a simple stunner.
You can catch that bright acidity in a jar by salting lemons and letting them ferment until they’re soft-fleshed and gorgeously funky. Preserved lemons are, of course, a staple of Middle Eastern cuisines, and Yotam Ottolenghi frequently uses them to sharpen mellow, carb-filled dishes, including his fragrant butter bean dip with frizzled onions. The dip is flavored with toasted cumin and thyme, and Yotam suggests serving the earthy, velvety mix as a side dish, or as a filling for shawarma. But I love it just as much as the focus of a meal, with some cut vegetables and pitas.
Tamarind paste is just as pucker-inducing, though with a molasses edge, and it adds its lively notes to dishes both savory and sweet. In her weeknight-friendly roasted fish and broccoli with tamarind and black pepper, Yewande Komolafe pairs gentle coconut milk with tamarind to smooth its snappy bite.
On the other end of the preserved-fruit spectrum, dried dates are all sweetness and no tang. Yasmin Fahr balances their caramel richness with salty crumbles of feta cheese in her delightful roasted eggplant pasta. The eggplant chunks are roasted with cumin, oregano and red pepper flakes until they collapse into golden pillows, and then get tossed with the pasta and cheese. A handful of torn mint or cilantro added right at the end lends a freshness and a touch of needed color to make this dish absolutely shine.
Or turn your dates into dessert in Ali’s almost ridiculously easy ice cream with olive oil and dates. It’s a near-instant recipe that transforms a pint of vanilla ice cream into an elevated treat. Don’t skimp on that garnish of flaky sea salt; it makes it all very sophisticated without any extra work.
Also, a note to Bay Area folks! As part of the tour for New York Times Cooking’s “Easy Weeknight Dinners” cookbook, Emily Weinstein and I will be hosting an event with City Arts & Lectures on Monday, Feb. 10, at 7:30 p.m. We’ll be talking with MacKenzie Chung Fegan, restaurant critic for The San Francisco Chronicle. Get your tickets here. Please come say hi!
And as always, you’ll need to subscribe to get the recipes (and we thank you if you already do). Note that if you bump into any technical problems, you can send an email to cookingcare@nytimes.com for help. And I’m at hellomelissa@nytimes.com if you want to say hi. I may not be able to answer all the emails I receive, but I read every one.
That’s all for now. I’ll see you on Monday.
