Recipes with a Job

Sardine Toasts with Roasted Grapes and Black-Pepper Labneh

Fresh sardines blistered under the broiler on crisp toasts with black-pepper labneh and grapes roasted until they blacken and turn savory.

Northbound Smoked-Trout Salad with Apple, Rye, and Mustard Cream

Hot-smoked trout on a platter with tart apple, crisp rye in two textures, and a mustard cream ribboned on rather than poured over.

Pacific-Edge Salmon Rice Salad with Cucumber, Nori, and Burnt-Scallion Dressing

A cool rice salad with roasted salmon, cucumber, and a dressing built on scallions cooked black in a dry-hot pan, with the nori torn on at the last second.

Black Sesame Ice Cream with Salted Honey

Toasted, faintly bitter, and dark enough to alarm people. A quarter teaspoon of sesame oil is what makes it taste twice as much like itself.

Crisp Creamy Coleslaw with Celery Seed and Pickle Brine

Salt the cabbage before the dressing ever shows up — and a spoonful of miso keeps the bowl from tasting like sweetened mayonnaise.

Brown-Butter Black Sesame Cookies with White Chocolate

Toasted before sweet, black as a cookie's shadow, and flexible about almost nothing — which is precisely why they work.

Banana Pudding with Vanilla Custard and Salted Wafer Crumble

Three clocks run in a banana pudding — custard, wafers, bananas — and the bananas' clock only moves toward gray.

Summer Fruit Pizza with Lemon Cream and Fresh Berries

A sugar-cookie crust, a lemon cream that stays tangy, and summer fruit patted genuinely dry. Black pepper on the peaches, if you trust me.

No-Bake Cheesecake with Lemon and Salted Graham Crust

The oven stays off, and in exchange every bit of structure has to come from fat, air, and cold.

Peach Tarte Tatin with Brown Butter and Thyme

Peaches will flood a caramel the first chance they get. This tarte Tatin gets the water out before the pastry ever goes on — brown butter, a little thyme, and one non-negotiable reduction.