Herbs & Spices

Arab salad, chopped salad, Israeli salad—whatever you choose to call it, there is no escaping it. Wherever you go, a Jerusalemite is most likely to have a plate of freshly chopped vegetables—tomato, cucumber, and onion, dressed with olive oil and lemon juice—served next to whatever else they are having. It's a local affliction, quite seriously. Friends visiting us in London always complain of feeling they ate "unhealthily" because there wasn't a fresh salad served with every meal. There are plenty of unique variations on the chopped salad but one of the most popular is fattoush, an Arab salad that uses grilled or fried leftover pita. Other possible additions include peppers, radishes, lettuce, chile, mint, parsley, cilantro, allspice, cinnamon, and sumac. Each cook, each fmily, each community has their own variation. A small bone of contention is the size of the dice. Some advocate the tiniest of pieces, only 1/8 inch / 3 mm wide, others like them coarser, up to 3/4 inch / 2 cm wide. The one thing that there is no arguing over is that the key lies in the quality of the vegetables. They must be fresh, ripe, and flavorsome, with many hours in the sun behind them. This fabulous salad is probably Sami's mother's creation; Sami can't recall anyone else in the neighborhood making it. She called it fattoush, which is only true to the extent that it includes chopped vegetables and bread. She added a kind of homemade buttermilk and didn't fry her bread, which makes it terribly comforting. Try to get small cucumbers for this as for any other fresh salad. They are worlds apart from the large ones we normally get in most supermarkets. You can skip the fermentation stage and use only buttermilk instead of the combination of milk and yogurt.

This is a simple way to prepare whole fish, yet one that few Western cooks have mastered. In the Vietnamese culture, a properly steamed fish is a benchmark for chefs, and those who can't do it right are considered to be bad cooks. A perfectly steamed fish has flesh that is just cooked at the bone, never dry. Typically, whole fish are not served with the liquid in which it was steamed, which is too fishy tasting, and any sauce is added at the end, after the fish has been cooked. In this classic Chinese preparation, the fish is topped with scallions, cilantro and ginger, then doused with hot oil, which releases the flavor of the aromatics into the flesh of the fish.

The mention of Hue, a city in central Vietnam, brings up many conflicted memories for me. It was the site of the Battle of Hue, one of the longest and deadliest battles of the Tet Offensive, which began in January 1968, and of the Vietnam War. Although I was just a kid when the fighting took place, the stories that I heard about it during my childhood were frightening. Hue was the imperial capital of Vietnam for nearly a century and a half, until 1945, and many of the most sophisticated and interesting dishes in the Vietnamese repertoire originated in the region, including this classic spicy beef soup. The light stock, which is made with beef and pork bones, is scented with lots of lemongrass and shrimp paste. Any rice noodle can be used here, but the usual choice is the round rice noodle that resembles spaghetti. In Vietnam, the soup is often served with cubes of coagulated pig's blood, like the bowl pictured here.

This flavorful lemongrass marinade is pretty common in Vietnam, where it's used on thin pork chops that are quickly grilled over a hot fire. Because the marinade has a lot of sugar, grilling the meat is the only way to go. If you try to pan-fry the pork chops, the sugar will burn before the meat is cooked through. These chops are best grilled over a two-zone fire. Start the meat on the hot side of the grill, which will sear the meat and begin to caramelize the sugar in the marinade, then move them to the cooler side to cook them through. The combination of salty and sweet is pretty irresistible, and the hand-chopped lemongrass adds fragrance and texture. I like to serve the pork with bowls of rice or vermicelli noodles. Use the best pork you can get, and don't trim off all of the fat. It helps baste the chops as they cook.

A simple shrimp salad is served in small dinner rolls in this fun (and easy) twist on the traditional New England lobster roll.

This recipe can easily be doubled to feed a larger group—and makes for great leftovers. For a lighter soup, omit the cream; or for a little decadence, add more cream or swirl in a little crème fraîche.

These little showstoppers will incite a fried food frenzy–even though they're baked on party night.

Chile-infused honey is a great foil for the rich and salty flavors of this tart. Serve any leftover honey over biscuits or fried chicken.

Forget the boxed version you grew up with. This yellow cake gets a rich dark-chocolate frosting with a touch of tang thanks to sour cream. For the best presentation, it's important to cut the cake layers evenly.

Barbacoa de Cabrito This goat barbecue typifies a style where the meat absorbs an adobo, a fragrant, spicy marinade of dried chiles and other seasonings. I watched Zoyla Mendoza make this dish in her village, Teotitlán del Valle. Though she and her family can well afford to eat meat, they usually save it for special occasions, so they rejoiced when I asked them to teach me their favorite barbacoa. It was beautiful, breathing the scent of fresh avocado leaves and other herbs. The meat becomes unbelievably tender without drying out or getting mushy. When I came back to my New York kitchen, I set to work to find other methods close to the tender savor of a true pit barbecue. For the type that Zoyla showed me, I feel the best results come from packing the marinated meat in a tightly covered pan just large enough to hold the ingredients and baking it for a long time in a moderate oven. A turkey roaster is good. If you don't have a big enough pan with a tight-fitting lid, wrap several layers of aluminum foil very snugly around the pan to seal in the steam. I make the barbacoa as Zoyla made it, with young goat (kid). Goat is available in some Greek, halal Muslim, and West Indian butcher shops and can sometimes be ordered from other butchers. Ask the butcher to cut it into quarters. Oaxacans always include and specially value the head, which has some extra-tender nuggets of meat. (This is optional for the doubting.) If goat is not available, lamb is the best substitute. At my restaurant, we use lamb shoulder. The dish can also be made with a whole fresh ham or a pot-roasting cut of beef such as round, though you may have to reduce the amount of marinade slightly and experiment with a shorter cooking time. Of course true pre-Hispanic barbacoa was made with turkey—not used as frequently nowadays, but still a notably authentic choice. When the meat is cooked in an authentic pit it yields a lot of rich juices that never develop using the oven method. At my restaurant in New York we approximate this as follows: When the adobo (chile paste) is made, set aside 1 1/4 cup of the mixture and rub the meat with the rest. Cook as described below. When the meat is done, skim the fat from the pan juices and deglaze the roasting pan with 2 cups homemade chicken broth over medium-high heat, scraping up the browned bits. Stir in one 28- to 32-ounce can tomatoes, breaking them up with a spoon. Add the reserved adobo and simmer, stirring frequently, for about 30 minutes, or until reduced to about 4 cups. Let cool slightly and purée in a blender (working in batches as necessary) until smooth. Serve with the carved meat.

(Calabaza en Tacha) The Days of the Dead (November 1 and 2) are not only one of the most dramatic of Oaxacan fiestas but among the most family-centered. Altars dedicated to los difuntos ("departed ones") appear everywhere—outside churches, on shop premises, and especially at family grave sites and in the home, where everyone is preparing for the annual reunion with late friends and relatives. At this time every marketplace in Oaxaca blazes with piles—absolute mountains—of fuschia-red cockscombs and intense orange marigolds. Tall sugarcanes with long fronds and huge banana leaves tower like jungles nearby. The flowers will be used to adorn the altars and the giant fronds to mark arched entries for the souls of loved ones to pass through. People buy their late cousin's favorite kind of cigarettes or their departed father's usual beer to place on the home altar. The other offerings usually include fresh fruit, candies in all kinds of macabre memento mori shapes, decorated breads made from a sweet egg-enriched dough like that for Pan Resobado, and this traditional spiced preserved pumpkin. Every home altar holds a plate of Calabaza en Tacha—an offering that represents about four days' labor of love. The pumpkin—I use a regular Halloween pumpkin or sometimes the green West Indian type—is soaked first in a solution of the same cal (slaked lime) used to treat corn for tortillas. The alkali makes it firm enough to absorb the sugar without disintegrating. Oaxacan cooks like to make the preserve very sweet; I have slightly reduced the amount of sugar. It may not be traditional, but I like to serve it with vanilla ice cream. I find that using fresh sugarcane as a support on which to arrange the pieces of pumpkin is a handy and flavorful trick (though not an indispensable part of the recipe). Look for it at Latin American and other tropical groceries; it can also be found as a specialty produce item in some large supermarkets.

Rae: This is an old-timey High Holiday vegetable side dish, sweetened with honey and raisins or prunes and, sadly, often simmered to mushy blandness. To get past that problem, roast the carrots first, to brown them and coax out their natural sweetness, and then bring everything together on the stove top at the end. Sunflower seeds add a nutty note to the chewy prunes and raisins.

This is my go-to pizza. I don't need a lot of bells and whistles, but I need the best of the best ingredients on this kind of pie. A good dough, a great sauce, fresh mozzarella, and basil are really where it's at.

If it's melon season, you have to make this. In Burma (Myanmar), gin thoke, meaning "ginger mix," is a blend of crispy fried garlic, sesame seeds, and ginger, and is eaten as a sweet digestive snack after meals. Although not native to the region, melons are a refreshing and delicious complement to this dressing, together making a perfect summertime side dish. The ginger is key to this salad. Ideally, the gingerroot should be so young that the skin is almost transparent and the roots are tipped with pink.

Saffron threads and fresh garlic add a kick of color and flavor to this creamy mayo that's perfect for dipping or spreading.

On one of my first trips to India, at a bus stop in Poona, there was a street stand where the vendor was roasting potatoes over charcoal, chopping them, and tossing them with curry spices and crispy onions. He served the mixture wrapped in a piece of newspaper. It was amazing, and it inspired this dish.
There are so many curry spice mixtures from around the world. This recipe employs one of the most common. You can use either yams or sweet potatoes in this recipe.

This spiced-up Asian-inspired sauce is perfect for dipping French fries or crudité, or for drizzling over seared chicken or fish.

This recipe is part of the Epicurious Online Cooking School, in partnership with the Culinary Institute of America. To watch it being made, and to learn how to make other dessert classics, check out the videos.

This recipe is part of the Epicurious Online Cooking School, in partnership with the Culinary Institute of America. To watch it being made, and to learn how to make other dessert classics, check out the videos.