This story is part of On Repeat, a series in which we ask top chefs, cookbook authors, and other famous foodies about the dishes they just can’t quit.
For today’s installment of On Repeat, we turned to winemaker and chef Steven Rosario, who co-owns Hudson Chatham Winery with his husband, Justen Nickell. When asked what plant-based dish they always come back to, Rosario pointed to a homespun version of Yotam Ottolenghi’s lamb shawarma. Whereas Ottolenghi’s recipe calls for spice-marinated meat, Rosario toasts the spices and mixes them in with a ground plant-based meat like Impossible or Beyond, which then gets formed into ovals, kofta-style. It’s a one-to-one swap to satisfy both meat-eaters and any plant-based folks at their table.
Why we love it
“We were entertaining guests who are vegetarian, and I thought, ‘What’s an exciting dish that we could craft that isn’t simply vegetable-forward, but could be a little bit of a mind trip for them?’ That first time, we followed everything in the recipe to a T and just swapped out the lamb and used Impossible. But you can also switch it up: It becomes a great base recipe, where you can take it in so many directions.”
What we’ve changed
“You can take it from spring to summer to fall very easily using what’s in season. In the fall we did delicata squash and pistachios and sumac as the garnish. We’ve crafted it as a pita sandwich or as the main entrée with vegetable sides and rice. You can go totally vegan with this as well. We were making a summer dinner party and we had a couple of vegan guests, so where it calls for Greek yogurt I’ve simply swamped in Cocojune.
“The recipe calls for ground coriander, and once I didn’t have that but I had fennel seeds, so I used those instead. It’s good to know you can be a little flexible with your ingredients, rather than going out and buying all the stuff that isn’t necessarily in your pantry.”
What else we’re into right now
Veg Forward cooking. A cookbook that I’m obsessed with is Veg Forward, by Susan Spungen. The recipes and the imagery in the book are fantastic. My favorite part is that it’s broken out by season, so it gives you brilliant ideas of what’s in season.
Produce at its peak. Given that we’re based in the Hudson Valley, we have so many farmers markets and farms, so we’re shopping small and shopping local. It also means we can buy things at their peak. We want to eat ingredients in their best possible moment; I want to know what an artichoke tastes like in its moment of perfection.
Revisiting recipes. We’ve been cooking through our library of cookbooks, pulling things off the shelves and rediscovering some really beautiful recipes. In the age of TikTok and Instagram we’re fed so many au courant dishes; it’s nice to revisit the books on our shelves and be reinvigorated, falling in love again with chefs we once used, and we go “Oh my god, this is such a great dish.” We did a tortellini recipe from the Flour + Water cookbook. We pulled it off the shelf and said, “This is a fun shape, why don’t we do it with corn?” (It was originally pumpkin and sage.)