Recipes

The two main ingredients in sorbet are fruit and sugar—there's no dairy in sight. (In fact, the thing that differentiates a sorbet from a sherbet is that sherbet contains milk or cream.) This sorbet by chef and ice cream maker Fany Gerson has a creamy texture thanks to the addition of corn syrup or honey, which increases the sugar content and helps make the final product richer, less icy, and more scoopable. Bright and airy, with the perfect balance of creamy and tart from the raspberries, this sorbet makes for a great palate cleanser. With just the right amount of a floral hit from the hibiscus, this is a super-refreshing summertime treat.

Tart, buttery, and sweet, the caramel-bourbon swirl here comes through in the best of ways, balancing the rich notes of the crème fraîche in this silky, swirled ice cream. Fresh, ripe peaches add a great bit of texture in every bite. American-style ice creams are eggless (unlike French-style ice creams, which contain eggs yolks) and usually made with a combination of milk and cream, sometimes containing cornstarch as a thickener. For this recipe, chef and ice cream maker Fany Gerson's version uses cream (no milk) and crème fraîche or sour cream to balance out the flavors and add creaminess to the fluffy texture.

This sweet, tart, and creamy confection is a beautiful homage to strawberries and cream. It's a French-style ice cream, adding egg yolks to cream and milk to form a custard base, giving rise to a thick, silky ice cream. According to chef and ice cream maker Fany Gerson, the key to French-style ice cream is making a base so good you could eat it without freezing it. In this recipe, Gerson wanted to celebrate the flavors she grew up eating. "My mom would take strawberries and put a little Mexican crema and sugar on top, and that became dessert," she recalls. "For this ice cream, roasting the strawberries gives a new dimension to the fruit."

"The soup all abuelitas make their grandchildren, cooking a ojo, or by feel, with a million variations," says 2019 F&W Best New Chef Kwame Onwuachi of this comforting recipe. "I didn't have a Puerto Rican grandmother, so this version is a re-creation of the flavors I remember from places like Caridad and Louie's on Gun Hill Road, 188 Cuchifritos, and all the other lechonerias, cuchifritos, lunch counters, full-on restaurants, and street food vendors that nourish and restore the Bronx's massive Nuyorican population. The soup is a festival of comfort. At its base are the annatto and sofrito that define much of Puerto Rican cuisine, plus a touch of cumin and, because it's me who's making it, a bit of house spice to give just the merest hint of heat."

This Jamaican Callaloo recipe from Kwame Onwuachi's book, My America, is filled with protein-rich leaves cooked until tender and given spice and fulsome flavor with the addition of peppers and tomatoes.

Here, Kwame Onwuachi shares his top tip for making the best steamed rice. "The secret to perfectly steamed rice lies in toasting the grains before they go into the water," he says. "This gives them a wonderful nutty flavor that carries through and is augmented by stock and aromatics. It isn't strictly necessary, of course, but once you start toasting, you'll never go back to straight steaming again."