Cuisines
American recipes
Regional, immigrant, and constantly rewritten.
American cooking is the product of arrivals, and almost everything in it can be traced to somewhere else and then to a specific point at which it stopped being that and became American instead. Barbecue is African, Caribbean and German techniques applied to what the South had. The diner breakfast is a nineteenth-century industrial invention. The cocktail canon in this section is the country's most exported culinary achievement and is barely two hundred years old. What is genuinely native is the scale of the sweet baking and the seriousness about breakfast. The recipes here run across all of it — the cakes and cookies, the slow-cooked meat, the fried things, and the drinks that gave the world the word cocktail in the first place.
30 recipes
Whisky Sour
Whiskey, lemon and sugar shaken with egg white until it wears a thick pale collar, with bitters dotted across the foam.
Toasted Honey Granola
An oat and almond granola bound with honey and baked in a slab, so it breaks into proper clusters rather than loose dust.
Sweetcorn Chowder
A thick corn soup that simmers the stripped cobs in the stock first, then blends only part of itself for body.
Skillet Cornbread
A savoury all-cornmeal bread baked in a preheated cast-iron pan, so the batter hits hot fat and sets a crust as it lands.
Devilled Eggs
Hard-boiled yolks beaten with mustard, mayonnaise and cayenne and piped back into the whites, with paprika over the top.
Dark Chocolate Brownies
Fudgy brownies built on melted dark chocolate and eggs whisked to a foam, which is what gives them their paper-thin crackled top.
Crunchy Cabbage Slaw
Shredded cabbage salted and drained for an hour first, so the mustard dressing stays thick instead of thinning to a puddle.
Crisp Hash Browns
Grated potato rinsed of its loose starch and wrung genuinely dry, then pressed into hot fat so it fries crisp instead of steaming.
Creamed Spinach
Wilted spinach squeezed bone dry before it meets the cream, which is the whole difference between this and a puddle.
Caesar Salad
Whole romaine leaves coated in an emulsion of coddled egg, anchovy, garlic and parmesan, tossed at the table and eaten with the fingers.
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate chip cookies made with browned butter and a long overnight rest, which deepens the flavour and stops them spreading thin.
Blue Hawaii
Rum, vodka, pineapple and blue curaçao — a drink invented to match a colour, and none the worse for admitting it.
Baked Vanilla Cheesecake
A dense baked cheesecake on a biscuit base, cooled slowly in the switched-off oven and chilled overnight so the top does not crack.
Baked Alaska
Ice cream on a sponge base sealed under meringue and browned in a fierce oven, which works because whipped egg white barely conducts heat.
Zombie
Three rums, two juices, falernum and absinthe over crushed ice — the strongest drink on any tiki menu, and built to taste as though it is not.
Mai Tai
Aged rum, lime, orange curaçao and almond orgeat, shaken over crushed ice — a rum drink with no fruit juice in it beyond the lime.
Chicken à la King
Poached chicken and mushrooms in a sherry cream sauce with pimento, served over rice, toast or pastry depending on the decade.
Waldorf Salad
Apple, celery and walnuts in a lemon-slackened mayonnaise, kept crisp and served cold on a leaf of lettuce.
Steak Diane
Thin beef fillet seared in seconds, then finished in a mustard, brandy and cream pan sauce flamed at the table.
Shrimp Cocktail
Cold poached prawns hung over the rim of a chilled coupe with a horseradish-sharp tomato sauce, and nothing else on the plate.
Oysters Rockefeller
Oysters on the half shell under a green butter of herbs and greens, baked on rock salt until the topping blisters.
Old Fashioned
Whiskey, sugar and bitters built over one big piece of ice — the original definition of the word cocktail, and still the test of a bar.
Manhattan
Rye whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters, stirred and served up with a cherry — the older, richer cousin of the martini.
Hurricane
Dark and light rum with passion fruit and citrus, sweet and red and considerably stronger than it looks.
Hand-Rolled Bagels
A stiff low-hydration dough rolled by hand, retarded overnight and boiled before baking, which is what sets the chewy glossy crust.
Double-Crust Apple Pie
Two kinds of apple under a vented pastry lid, thickened with cornflour so the filling holds together when the pie is cut.
Chicken Noodle Soup
Poached chicken and vegetables in a clear stock, with the noodles cooked apart so the broth stays clean rather than thick and starchy.
Buttermilk Pancakes
Thick American-style pancakes raised with buttermilk and bicarbonate of soda, mixed in under a minute so the batter stays lumpy.
Bushwacker
A frozen chocolate-and-coconut rum drink from the Gulf coast, closer to a milkshake than a cocktail and unapologetic about it.
Aviation
Gin, maraschino, lemon and a measure of violet liqueur that turns it the pale grey-blue the drink is named for.