This Grand Fashioned was the first-place winner of Grand Marnier and the New York Film Festival’s Independent Cocktail Festival in 1999, long before we ever opened Employees Only. The idea was to get two ounces of Grand Marnier into a cocktail without being cloyingly sweet. To balance this much Curaçao, we muddle fresh blood oranges with lime juice, sugar, and dashes of Angostura bitters. This cocktail looked so much like the contemporary recipe for an Old Fashioned that the name just took over. For the competition, we garnished the drink with a kumquat that had to be tediously scored and peeled to resemble a “blossom,” then stained inside with grenadine. You can imagine our surprise when, upon winning, we were told we would need to make five hundred of these cocktails at the premiere for All About My Mother by director Pedro Almodóvar. The Grand Fashioned is so rich and luscious that it can be consumed as an after-dinner drink.
This is what I call a fridge-eater recipe. The key here is getting a nice sear on the sausage and cooking the tomato down until it coats the sausage and vegetables well.
A savory-hot salsa made with mixed nuts (like the kind dubbed cocktail nuts meant for snacking) gives roast salmon a kaleidoscope of textures and flavors.
Caramelized onions, melty Gruyère, and a deeply savory broth deliver the kind of comfort that doesn’t need improving.
A dash of cocoa powder adds depth and richness to the broth of this easy turkey chili.
This one-pot dinner cooks chicken thighs directly on top of a bed of flavorful cilantro rice studded with black beans for a complete dinner.
Round out these autumn greens with tart pomegranate seeds, crunchy pepitas, and a shower of Parmesan.
Make this versatile caramel at home with our slow-simmered method using milk and sugar—or take one of two sweetened condensed milk shortcuts.
This is the type of soup that, at first glance, might seem a little…unexciting. But you’re underestimating the power of mushrooms, which do the heavy lifting.