Herbs & Spices

I had something like this on a visit to Bangkok, chicken with a creamy but spicy lime sauce. At first I thought the rich texture had come from a pan reduction or even a béchamel-like sauce, but I detected the faint taste of coconut and realized it was little more than coconut milk spiked with lime. With canned coconut milk, it can be made in less than a half hour.

Meuniere once referred to fillets of sole that were floured and quickly sautéed in clarified butter, then finished with parsley, lemon juice, and a little melted butter. Over the years its definition has expanded, to the point where it describes a series of flexible techniques that can be applied to just about any thin cut of meat, poultry, or fish, all of which makes it more useful. You must preheat the skillet before adding the oil (or clarified butter, if you’re feeling extravagant) and you must use a large, flat-bottomed skillet, preferably nonstick, with deep, sloping sides, which makes turning the cutlets easier and keeps the inevitable spattering to a minimum.

Chicken Al Mattone as it’s rightfully called, is the simplest and best method for producing crisp, delicious skin and wonderfully moist meat. All you need is a split chicken and two ovenproof skillets or a skillet and a couple of bricks or rocks. (The weight serves two purposes: it partially covers the chicken, which helps it retain moisture, and it ensures that the flesh of the chicken remains in contact with the skillet, which encourages browning.) Once covered, the chicken is transferred to a very hot oven to finish cooking. Handling the hot, heavy pan takes two hands—be careful.

Cornish Hens are better looking, faster to cook, and easier to handle than chickens. With a minimalist spice mix and a broiling technique that involves no turning, they’re perfect for a speedy menu. You can find Szechwan peppercorns (which are not really peppercorns) at many supermarkets and any Asian food market.

Branches of rosemary are ideal for this dish, especially if you live in a Mediterranean climate where rosemary grows in shrubs. You can slide the food right onto them (in the direction of the needles, so as not to dislodge them), and they flavor it brilliantly; but so does some rosemary tucked in among the chunks of food. If you skewer on wood or metal skewers, turning will be made easier if you use two sticks in parallel for each skewer, separating them by about a half inch; you can also buy two-pronged metal skewers that do the trick nicely.

The dark rich meat of a chicken thigh responds brilliantly to the strong, equatorial flavors associated most closely with grilling. This Mexican-style treatment packs plenty of punch, even if you use the minimum amount of cayenne (as I do) or omit it entirely.

Eggplant is so strongly associated with the cooking of Italy and southern France that it is almost always prepared with olive oil and garlic. This need not be the case, of course, and with a few ingredient changes—like the addition of ginger—you can make a novel kind of “ratatouille,” which readily converts an ordinary boneless chicken breast into an unusual and appealing dish. Be sure to spend a few minutes thoroughly cooking the shallots before adding the eggplant, allowing them to brown and begin to soften; and don’t overcook the ginger.

Although aquaculture has made fresh salmon a year-round product, wild salmon does have a season, from spring through fall. At those times it’s vastly preferable to the farm-raised fish, because the best salmon—king, sockeye, and coho—has so much flavor of its own that it needs nothing but a sprinkling of salt. But a simple formula of salmon, oil or butter, and a single herb, combined with a near-foolproof oven-roasting technique, gives you many more options and makes even farm-raised salmon taste special. Be sure to preheat the pan in the oven—this allows the fish to brown before it overcooks. (If you start the same fillet in a cold pan, it will simply turn a dull pink and will not brown until it is as dry as chalk.)

Cooking in packages requires a small leap of faith to determine that the food is done, because once you open the packages you want to serve them. This method works well.

Because the sauce is so moist, swordfish treated in this way will take a little longer to grill than usual; the interior, after all, has what amounts to a thick liquid cooling it off. So instead of cooking a one-and-a-half-inch-thick steak—about the right size for this procedure—for eight to ten minutes, I’d estimate twelve to fourteen. The actual time will vary depending on the heat of your grill or broiler, but you can assume a little bit longer than what you’re used to. Check by cutting into the fish when you think it’s done; the interior can be pearly but should not look raw.

Although this minimalist but infinitely variable technique of herb-coating salmon is about as straightforward as can be, allowing the fillets to sit for a while after coating will encourage the fragrant seasonings to permeate the flesh of the fish; try fifteen minutes or so at room temperature or up to 24 hours in the refrigerator.

The intense orange color, meltingly tender texture, and wonderful flavor of gravlax give it an allure shared by few fish preparations—not bad for a dish whose name means “buried salmon” in Swedish. The curing process intensifies the color, tenderizes the texture, and enhances the flavor. Although most chefs jazz up gravlax with sauces and side dishes, it is brilliant on its own or with just a few drops of lemon or mild vinegar. And the rankest kitchen novice can make it at home. Be sure to check your salmon fillet for pinbones, the long bones that run down the center of the fillet; these are not always removed by routine filleting. Press your finger down the center of the flesh and you will feel them; remove them, one at a time, with needle-nose pliers or similar tool.

Between your favorite crab cake and a box of frozen fish sticks lies a world of crisp, easily produced fish cakes that make for great weeknight eating. In addition to fish, they all have two elements in common: something to “bind” the cake as it cooks and a fair amount of seasoning. My favorite way to hold fish cakes together is to mix the flaked meat with mashed potatoes, about three parts fish to one part potato. If you begin with a mild fish, like cod, the flavorings can be as adventuresome as you like. My preferred combination is a hefty dose of ginger and cilantro, spiked with a bit of hot red chile. The result is a zingy cake that needs nothing more than a squeeze of lime.

Leeks, one of the first legitimate spring vegetables, are the highlight here (in fact this recipe is great without the shrimp; see page 230). In place of the shrimp, you could use scallops, tofu, chunks of chicken or pork, or slices of beef.

The sea scallop is one of the most perfect of nature’s convenience foods—almost nothing cooks faster. This is especially true if you opt to heat the mollusk until it remains rare in the center, as do most scallop admirers. Sea scallops are also large enough to stuff, not with bread crumbs or other fish, as is common with clams or lobsters, but with herbs, garlic, and other flavorings. As long as a scallop is a good inch across and roughly three-quarters of an inch thick, you can make an equatorial slit in it and fill it with any number of stuffings.

Dealing with the lemongrass is the sole challenge of this dish, and only if you’ve never done it before. Maximum flavor is released from whole lemongrass stalks when they are beaten up a bit; bruising the length of each stalk with the blunt edge of a knife takes care of this in seconds. But to include lemongrass in a sauce you must first remove the tough outer layers—this is not unlike peeling a woody scallion—and then carefully and finely mince the inner core.

Despite its name, this dish isn’t fiery hot, but the addition of a fair amount of paprika gives the shrimp a bright red color that makes people think they’re eating spicy food. The real key here is fresh paprika, not that tin you inherited from your mother. After you buy it, taste it; if it is hot, use half a teaspoon. You can let the shrimp sit in the spice paste for hours. (In fact, I like to dump both shrimp and paste into a covered plastic container, shake them together to coat the shrimp, then carry the container to a party and grill the shrimp there.) But you can also mix the two together right before cooking.

This Shrimp dish is based on a combination of ingredients traditionally used to cook tripe in and around Rome. It’s a simple tomato sauce spiked with the powerful flavors of browned garlic, chiles, and mint. When you make it with tripe, it must cook a long time for the tripe to become tender; when you use shrimp, the dish is practically done as soon as the shrimp are added.

Much of the flavor of shrimp can be lost in the cooking, especially when you’re grilling or broiling, which allows the juices exuded by the shrimp to escape. Far better at preserving the crustacean’s essence is cooking it in liquid, and among the best of those liquids is olive oil. This is not sautéing, but cooking the shrimp slowly in the oil, to tease out its liquids without evaporating them, so these juices combine with the oil to create an irresistible sauce. I usually peel shrimp before cooking, but in this instance the shrimp are better left unpeeled, for the simple reason that the shells contain as much flavor as the meat (maybe more), and you want that flavor in the sauce. The results are a little messier, and certainly more difficult to eat, but they are tastier—and the dish is easier to prepare.

Most steamed mussel preparations contain parsley, garlic, and white wine, with the occasional addition of tomatoes and herbs. There are, however, other directions to take with no additional effort. Generally, there are two easy changes to make: First, use distinctive Asian seasonings like ginger, soy, or curry powder. And second, omit the cooking liquid. By relying only on the mussels’ natural juices, you can add fewer seasonings (and less of each) and still produce a flavorful sauce that is less watery than most. I always serve Asian-style mussels with a bowl of rice on the side.