Almost every culture seems to have its own version of grilled meat on flatbread: Mexican tacos al pastor, Lebanese shawarma, Greek gyros, Turkish doner kebabs, Persian shish kebabs—and my personal favorite—Indian seekh kebabs.

Most Indian restaurants pay homage to the food once served on the tables of the Mughal emperors. Cooked in ghee and redolent with aromatic spices, ubiquitous staples from tandoori chicken and butter chicken to saag paneer and rogan josh all owe their roots to Mughal high cuisine. But those dishes don’t tell the full story of the culinary influence of the Mughals. An equally important legacy is found in the streets and alleyways of almost every city in India. From Delhi to Calcutta, kebabwallas ply their trade, cooking skewers of marinated meats over glowing sigris (charcoal-fueled open-fire grills) and serving them on parathas—usually with a squeeze of lime and a few slivers of onions fragrant with chaat masala.

These late-night street grills were the inspiration behind my Botiwalla restaurants in Atlanta—and the menu below. Mix and match the skewers and sides for the ultimate cookout, starting with the iconic seekh kebab, a skewer of spiced minced meat—and the gold standard of kebabs in India. With a large enough grill, you can cook lamb in one corner, chicken in another, and still make room for fish and vegetables. You can also do as the SAVEUR test kitchen did and pull off the whole menu indoors: simply break out your grill pans and get those burners going.

The Menu

Lamb Seekh Kebabs

My riff on this beloved classic starts with ground lamb and dials back the heat and Indian spices—flavoring the meat with just a pinch each of turmeric, ground coriander, and Kashmiri chile powder. Then I bump up the cilantro, garlic, and ginger, and add lots of fresh mint to brighten the dish. The trick is to grill hot and fast so that the meat is smoky and charred on the outside, and tender, juicy, and almost delicate on the inside. Serve as a kebab with naan, lime wedges, and chutney; or form the meat into a skinny burger instead, and sandwich between pav, the soft, sweet Indian rolls, along with a cabbage slaw and Maggi ketchup. Get the recipe >

Chicken Tikka Kebabs

Chicken tikka is the sweet and sour pork or the beef and broccoli of Indian cuisine. The O.G. bastardized North Indian export has launched thousands of curry houses in the U.K. and U.S. This version calls for treating chunks of boneless chicken breast (you can also use thighs for even juicier results) with a dry rub and a wet marinade. The dry rub is super simple—just Kashmiri chile powder, turmeric, and salt—while the wet marinade is the perfect balance of yogurt, lime, and spices. Thread the double-infused chicken onto skewers, and again grill hot and fast, turning frequently to avoid over-charring. One bite of the smoky-spicy-juicy end result, and you’ll never again want to pony up for the dry, flavorless, and dyed-red chicken under the buffet heat lamps that’s trying to pass itself off as “chicken tikka.” Get the recipe >

Paneer Tikka Kebabs

Yes, you can grill cheese on a grill! Well, the right kind of cheese. Here, bite-sized chunks of paneer, a dense, pressed fresh cheese, is marinated in a gingery herbed yogurt and grilled with sweet, colorful bell peppers and onions. Get the recipe >

Machli Kebabs

While most fish in India is fried—I don’t think I’ve ever seen it grilled—this recipe inspired by my Persian ancestry rocks on the grill. Start with a firm, chunky fillet—swordfish is my go-to—and a bright, slightly sweet marinade of fresh mint, cumin, lime, and garlic. Baste with plenty of ghee on the grill, then garnish with fresh dill and dried sumac. Get the recipe >

Kachumber

A Hindi word for “chopped up into small pieces,” kachumber is also known as Parsi salad. It was served with pretty much every meal I had growing up in India. The first time I went to a Persian restaurant, I saw an almost identical dish called “salad Shirazi,” which made sense once I looked up the history: The Parsis immigrated to India from a region of Persia known as Pars, of which Shiraz is the capital. With just four main ingredients—cucumbers, tomatoes, red onions, and fresh herbs—the slaw-like salad couldn’t be simpler. Get the recipe >

Grilled Corn Bhel

Bhel is the closest that many Indians will come to eating some type of salad. We traditionally don’t eat a lot of fresh leafy greens. Our greens tend to be dark and fibrous (think mustard greens instead of baby spinach) and lend better to stewing instead of salads. Typically served by street vendors, bhel is a “salad” of puffed rice, crispy chickpea noodles, wheat crackers (puris), chiles, onions, cilantro, peanuts, and potatoes dressed with chutney and the occasional dollop of cold sweetened yogurt. My bhel-inspired corn salad keeps the crunch factor with homemade corn poha (you can substitute store-bought corn flakes) and adds grilled corn kernels, cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, and a three-minute cumin-lime vinaigrette. Get the recipe >

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Start your meal with a crunchy fall salad and dunk pretty brioches à tête into smooth, sweet-and-savory soup. Ditch the canned cranberry sauce in favor of one or two boozy fruit accompaniments to an oyster-stuffed bird. Or skip the roast entirely and confit your turkey in duck fat à la Française.

Buttery haricots verts and a bistro-style potato dish or two round out the meal, but go easy on the sides; the French have mastered the art of pâtisserie better than just about anyone, so you want to save room for the last course.

A pumpkin pie from Guy Savoy or an an apple tarte from Jacques Pépin will appeal to traditionalists while delicate maple pots de crème or fragrant pear tarte tatin will delight diners looking for something a little different. Make two or three desserts and be sure to whip up plenty of crème chantilly for dolloping on everything.

The Appetizers

Apple, Celeriac, and Carrot Salad

Brioche a Tete

The Turkey

Turkey Confit

The Sides

Pomme Purée

Herbed Hericots Verts

The Desserts

Apple Clafoutis

Maman’s Apple Tart

Pear Tarte Tatin

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The blustery fall weather has finally arrived, stirring up our anticipation for the holidays to come. This is our favorite cooking season of the year, and we look forward to planning the entertaining to come.

Whether it’s choosing the best turkey, mapping out special menus, making the perfect pie dough, or deciding what to serve on Christmas morning, we’re here to help you make the most of the season with our free holiday e-newsletters. From now until January 1, get our latest holiday menu ideas, recipes, and tips delivered to your inbox three times a week.

Sign up now to receive our holiday e-newsletter »

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The Menu

• Guacamole
• Frijoles de la Olla
• Red Chili Tamales
• Arroz a la Mexicana
• Mole Verde Zacatecano
• Pabassinas

More About This Menu

1. Guacamole is typically prepared in a molcajete, a mortar made from volcanic rock. See our step-by-step guacamole gallery.

2. Tamales, made with masa (stone-ground corn) dough and wrapped in corn husks, are a Mexican staple. For tips on making them, see our guide the Art of the Tamale.

3. You can find more authentic Mexican recipes in our photo gallery of Mexican Home Cooking.

4. While Pabassinas (the raisin and nut cookies included above) are a common day of the dead treat, so are cookies cut into skulls and decorated with icing. We recommend using this classic sugar cookie recipe.

The post Menu: A Mexican Feast for Día De Los Muertos appeared first on Saveur.

Motherhood can be a messy business, so this Mother’s Day, give your mom (or yourself) a break: light some candles and sit down to a perfectly simple, sophisticated dinner of sparkling wine, chanterelles, and seared steak. Then get Dad to do the dishes.

||| |-—|-—| | | # Mint Julep The julep is the ultimate sultry-weather cooler.| | # Seared Prosciutto-Wrapped Asparagus These salty, savory bundles can also be charcoal grilled to add a great smoky flavor.| | | # Grilled Filet of Beef with Pepper Sauce A surprisingly simple dish of beef and roasted potatoes comes alive with just a drizzle of pepper-infused oil. | | | # Chanterelle Salad Sauteed garlic and mushrooms combine with smoked ham to top this simple but special salad.| | | # Trifle Belle Helene Layers of pear, ladyfingers, and chocolate create not only a beautiful dessert, but a delicious one.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

The post Menu: Elegant Mother’s Day Dinner appeared first on Saveur.

The Menu

• Chilled Tomato Consomme
• Summer Panzanella
• Grillad Lammentrecôte med Röra på Rostade Tomater (Grilled Herb-Marinated Entrecôte of Lamb with Roasted Tomato Sauce)
• Roasted Sunchokes with Thyme, Grape Tomatoes and Lemon
• Perfect Brown Rice

More About This Menu

1. Prepare the tomato water for consomme the day before. Simply garnish with cherry tomatoes, sea salt, and finely chopped herbs before serving.
2. Roast the tomatoes for the lamb the night before. Then bring them back to temperature in the oven for 5-10 minute while the sunchokes are roasting.
3. You can marinate the lamb just 30 minutes before grilling, or the night before. The lamb will take 18-20 minutes to cook, so begin grilling when the sunchokes are about halfway through baking.
4. For more tomato recipes, see our collection of fresh summer tomato recipes »
5. https://www.saveur.com/content/summer-produce-guide-tomatoes/

The post A Late-Summer Tomato Celebration appeared first on Saveur.

This year, celebrate Christmas with holiday food from around the world. Plan a festive, multi-course menu featuring the delicacies of Puerto Rico, Sweden, Germany, and more.

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More than any other holiday, Thanksgiving is a day built on culinary ritual. Turkey, cranberry sauce, potatoes, and pies might be non-negotiable—but a little variation never hurts, so we’ve come up with 9 complete menus: A comforting Southern spread is ideal for feeding a hungry crowd, while a rustic California menu is perfect for a casually refined evening. Our Mexican-inspired feast will bring some spice to your table, and our vegetarian menu leaves no one missing the meat (you can even make it vegan with our suggested adaptations). And if there will be just two at the table this year, we’ve got the perfectly proportioned meal for you. Cook all the recipes from one menu, or mix and match!

See all nine menus in the gallery »

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The Menu

• Thai Green Papaya Salad (Som Tum)
• Lao Poached Bass with Charred Shallots, Eggplant, and Chiles (Puohn Pa)
• Vietnamese Pork Chops (Suon Nuong)
• Indonesian-Style Collards Green Gurry (Gulai Sayur)
• Sweet Filipino-Style Bread Rolls (Pan de Sal)
• Malay Pandan, Palm Sugar, and Coconut Dumplings

More About This Menu

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“Salmon mousse,” she announced, reading the first entry. “My God, I must have made that a hundred times. For the Kaufmans and Hurleys, do you remember them?” I did not; I was five and could barely tell apart the scientists she entertained in those years. But I did remember that salmon mousse. Pink, jiggling, molded in the curved shape of a fish.

“How do you plan a meal?” I asked my mother. She considered this, sipping her red wine. “You start with something you want to make, and you round it out with old favorites. Like salmon mousse,” she told me. “Same as a lab experiment: only one variable at a time.”

How fascinating to go over the decades with her, there on the couch with the wine. First, the adventurous period of youth: making pirozhki by hand in 1977; serving quiche Lorraine and a roast leg of lamb while raising twin boys, running a laboratory, and teaching; attempting Peking duck because she saw it on Joyce Chen’s PBS show. Then the middle-aged period, where ham was the “old favorite,” complemented by variables of crab in phyllo and Jockey Club salad; a time of simplicity, less showing off. And the recent era of rediscovered adventure: Thai food and mango salad, taken from one of her 200 cookbooks.

And yet, despite the wide variety of her cooking, she was right: There were dishes that repeated throughout the years, and they were rarely the most extravagant ones: honey chicken, a recipe from her best friend in college; broccoli bread, from another friend’s mother in South Carolina; crab cakes. Despite all the foods collected from other regions and sources, what the journals showed most of all were my mother’s Southern roots. She would never think of herself as a Southern cook; her own mother refused to teach her, and mine refused to make the fried chicken and macaroni salad of her childhood. Yet there it was, on almost every page: ham, biscuits, spoon bread, pecan pie. How do you plan a menu? You start with what intrigues you, yes. Something new. But you fill in with old favorites.

“Thoughts for a crowd,” my mother read aloud as we passed into the entries from the 90’s. A list of possible meals for large groups: boiled shrimp, jambalaya, hot dogs, and hamburgers. She laughed: “I had to write down hot dogs?”

Old friends came and went in her journal. Childhood pals, visiting our Maryland home from the South for a reunion. Her graduate-school friends (one of whom gave us the pound cake recipe that is still a favorite). My mother remarked how many of her old dinner guests were now dead. New friends arrived; new favorites joined the rotation. My husband’s name first shows up at Christmas in 1997, along with a Christmas Eve meal of just hors d’oeuvres that, because he loved it, we have kept as a tradition ever since. My sister-in-law’s name arrived in 2006, and with it, all shellfish vanished from family menus (she is allergic). Her influence is also clear in a dish of peas, ricotta, and lemon that showed up with frequency after that. There is my mother’s partner, Ruth, who appeared in 1991, heralding almost five years of vegetarian dishes before she succumbed to my mother’s ham. And there is my father, who, despite being her ex-husband, appeared every year or so after their divorce, including on the most recent page: a family lunch of salade niçoise.

I’ve kept my journal since 1996, but I have never shown it to my mother; I think it would strain her heart. In it, there is no menu planning. Often I get the date wrong, sometimes the year. That is because, while my mother has always written in her journal before a dinner party, I write in mine afterward. Or during. “meal of disaster,” reads one entry, with a drawing of flames. There are almost no repetitions, no old favorites, no salmon mousse of my own. It is all variables. My life has reached the point where dinner parties occur spontaneously, and I run to the grocery store to get something bubbling by the time eight, ten, or more people arrive. There is no plan, only the tipsy record of what happened. I think these kinds of dinner parties visit my mother in anxiety dreams.

It is too bad that there are large gaps and strange indecipherable entries in my journal, whereas in my mother’s books everything is clear. Hers pass from early motherhood through divorce and the deaths of friends without a break. I, on the other hand, have three entire years unaccounted for. Was I too content to put anything down? Too distracted? My journal chronicles the meals of a moody, passionate person; hers are efficient and calm. I see her row of journals and I am envious: This is what being an adult looks like. By 44, I should not be winging it at dinner. I should not be spilling wine over the pages. I should learn to plan a menu. I should practice with old favorites. I should have a salmon mousse.

And so. I am putting this resolution into practice at a dinner party this week for writer friends. The menu is already written in my book—chicken with sunchokes and spinach salad. To start, a favorite of mine already curing in the fridge: salmon gravlax. And for this I must apologize to my mother: It is as close as I can get. I love you, I do. But I have always hated that salmon mousse.

See the recipe for Orange-Marinated Gravlax »

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Most holiday menus combine comforting food with tradition. How can a cook honor the old while still satisfying a craving for the new? Make texture your plaything with a tableful of mouth-pleasing, contrasting components like pillowy matzo balls and salty, fried-till-they-shatter artichokes. Who says tradition can’t be delicious?

||| |-—|-—| | | # Aunt Gillie’s Matzo Ball Soup Mere chicken soup pales beside this legendary potion, the traditional symbolic first course of the Jewish-American seder.| | # Fried Whole Artichokes If you can’t get to Rome, these “artichokes in the Jewish manner” are the next best thing.| | | # Spinach with Pine Nuts and Raisins A popular Roman-Jewish specialty, this dish is simple but exquisite.| | | # Lil Pachter’s Jewish-Style Braised Brisket We have been told this brisket tastes even better the next day.| | | # Macaroons This recipe is adapted from Professional Baking by Wayne Gisslen.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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