| April 24, 2025 
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 | | Zainab Shah’s peppery beef and shishito stir-fry. Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. |
A very peppery stir-fry that’s not too spicyThere are two key pepper elements in Zainab Shah’s new peppery beef and shishito stir-fry: shishito peppers and black pepper. You might think, given their prevalence in this dish, that I will focus the next bit on the shishitos, those approachable, mild, delightfully grassy peppers. Instead, I would like to take this opportunity to declare my love and appreciation for black pepper. For too long, black pepper was kind of an afterthought in my cooking, the thing I reached for on autopilot after adding salt. But I accidentally left it out of a dish once and, after the first bite, realized I missed its zip, that distinct piney sharpness. If salt lifts all flavors, black pepper grounds them, giving them a subtle warmth and earthiness. Umami-rich foods, I find, really love black pepper: kimchi, cheese, miso and, yes, steak. Especially steak that’s had a quick marinade in soy sauce and sesame oil, and is then seared and tossed with charred shishito peppers, garlic and ginger. You could make Zainab’s dish without the shishitos, or with another mild pepper (bell pepper or sliced long hots) in their place. But you certainly wouldn’t want to skip the black pepper. Featured Recipe View Recipe → Today’s specials:- One-pot za’atar chicken and rice: I cannot resist the soothing siren song of chicken and rice, any chicken and rice, and Andy Baraghani’s new recipe sounds like just the thing for an overcast April evening.
- Cheesy baked gnocchi with spicy tomato sauce: I brought home some oily, fire-engine-red Calabrian chile paste from an Italian grocery store the other weekend, and I’ve been using it to anoint fried eggs and midnight pastas. Next it’ll go into this saucy baked gnocchi from Yossy Arefi in place of the chile flakes, a substitution she suggests.
- Green goddess pasta salad: Plump cheese tortellini, crisp fennel, scallions, sugar snap peas and an herby yogurt (or sour cream) dressing — Melissa Clark never misses.
- Sheet-pan roasted salmon niçoise salad: Yes, niçoise salad is much more of a summer thing. But you will not catch me spinning my oven dial to 400 come August, which is why I’m making this Lidey Heuck recipe now.
- Cream puffs: If you don’t have a pastry bag, don’t worry. You can use an ice cream scoop or even good ol’ spoons to portion your dough onto the baking sheet; the resulting puffs won’t be perfectly uniform, but they will be delicious. This recipe is from Samantha Seneviratne, the friendly genius behind so many of our top baking recipes, so you know it’s both really good and really doable.
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