Courses & dish types
Side dishes recipes
The part people actually remember.
Side dishes carry more of a meal than they are given credit for, and the ones here are chosen to do a job rather than fill a plate: something acid against something rich, something crisp against something soft, something plain against something intense. Most of them are fast, most of them scale easily, and several of them are good enough cold to be worth making deliberately for the next day. Where a side is traditionally served with a particular main, the recipe says so and says why the pairing works.
29 recipes
Vinegret
Beetroot, potato, carrot and sauerkraut dressed with oil rather than mayonnaise, with the beetroot oiled first to hold the colour.
Smashed Cucumber Salad
Cucumbers smashed rather than sliced so the torn faces grip a soy, vinegar and sesame dressing instead of shedding it.
Simple Green Salad
Nothing but leaves and vinaigrette, dressed the moment it goes to the table so it arrives crisp rather than limp and watery.
Salted Tomato Salad
Ripe tomatoes salted twenty minutes ahead, then dressed with the juice that draws out of them rather than plain oil.
Roasted Cauliflower with Tahini
Cauliflower roasted hot in wedges so the cut faces brown, served under a tahini sauce loosened to a pouring cream with water.
Quick Salted Cucumbers
Small cucumbers held a day or two in a dill and garlic brine, salted right through but still raw and crunchy.
Olivier Salad
Potato, egg, pea and pickle in mayonnaise, cut to an even dice and dressed only once everything is properly cold.
Lemony Chickpea and Herb Salad
Chickpeas dressed while they are still warm so they drink the lemon and oil, then turned through parsley, mint and dill by the handful.
Holodets
Pork trotters and beef simmered for hours until the broth sets to a firm savoury jelly around the shredded meat.
Herbed Farro Salad
Farro boiled loose in salted water like pasta, dressed while it is still hot, then packed with three soft herbs.
Green Beans with Brown Butter and Almonds
Beans blanched hard in salted water and chilled in ice, then reheated in butter browned with flaked almonds.
Gratin Dauphinois
Thin potato slices simmered in cream on the hob until their own starch thickens it, then baked slowly until set.
Glazed Carrots
Carrots cooked in one layer under a paper lid until the butter, sugar and stock reduce to a syrup that coats them.
Forshmak
Salt herring chopped fine with apple, hard-boiled egg and onion into a spread for dark rye bread.
Crunchy Cabbage Slaw
Shredded cabbage salted and drained for an hour first, so the mustard dressing stays thick instead of thinning to a puddle.
Creamed Spinach
Wilted spinach squeezed bone dry before it meets the cream, which is the whole difference between this and a puddle.
Braised White Beans with Sage
Dried beans soaked in salted water and held at a bare simmer, so the skins stay whole and the liquor turns silky.
Braised Red Cabbage
Shredded red cabbage cooked slowly with apple, vinegar and spice, the acid going in early so the colour stays bright.
Rice and Peas
Rice cooked in coconut milk with kidney beans, thyme and a whole scotch bonnet left in the pot and never broken.
Fried Plantain
Very ripe plantain sliced on the diagonal and fried until the sugars caramelise at the edges and the middle goes to custard.
Festival
Slightly sweet cornmeal dumplings rolled long, fried until crisp outside and cakey within, and eaten with anything fried or jerked.
Salat Mimosa
Tinned fish, egg, cheese and onion layered with mayonnaise and topped with sieved yolk that looks like mimosa blossom.
Roast Squash with Sage and Chilli
Squash roasted in thick crescents with the skin left on, finished with sage crisped in oil and sliced red chilli.
Patatas Bravas
Twice-cooked potatoes under a smoky, faintly fierce tomato sauce — the one tapa every bar in Spain is judged on.
Herring Under a Fur Coat
Layers of salted herring, onion, potato, carrot and beetroot under mayonnaise, left overnight so it sets firm enough to cut.
Garlicky Greens
Greens wilted in garlic oil in a single wide pan, on the table in under ten minutes and the default side for almost anything.
Crushed Roast Potatoes
Floury potatoes parboiled, crushed flat and roasted in hot fat, so the broken surfaces crisp into edges a whole roast potato never gets.
Crisp Roast Potatoes
Floury potatoes parboiled with bicarbonate of soda, roughed up in the pan, then roasted in fat that is already smoking hot.
Buttery Mashed Potato
Potatoes steam-dried in the pan and pushed through a ricer, then beaten with butter before the hot milk goes in.