Dairy Free

Chimichurri is a simple Argentinean steak sauce made almost entirely from parsley, with huge amounts of chopped garlic and red pepper. In spirit, it’s not unlike pesto, but because everything is hand-chopped rather than ground or mashed, it has a bit more chew to it. And its powerful ingredients set it apart, making it the perfect complement for mild-tasting but meaty tenderloin.

For years, I thought the in-table-grill was such an important part of cooking bul kalbi that I never even tried to make it at home. I realized, however, that the time the meat spends over the coals—certainly less than five minutes—might be long enough to add the mental image of wood flavor, but certainly not the reality. So, with what might be described as typical American arrogance, I set about reinventing this traditional Korean dish, and I’m happy with the results. Grilling remains the best cooking technique—a couple of minutes over a very hot fire is ideal—but a stovetop grill or a very hot skillet works nearly as well, as long as you have a powerful exhaust fan to suck out the smoke. Alternatively, a good broiler will do the trick; just turn the slices once. Finally, if you set an iron skillet or a heavy roasting pan in an oven heated to its maximum, then throw the meat onto that, it will sear the meat and cook it through in a couple of minutes. No matter how you cook the meat, do not sacrifice internal juices for external browning; that is, it’s better to serve lightly browned but moist meat than tough, overcooked meat with a lovely crust.

Maybe you don’t have a grill, maybe it’s freezing outside, maybe you don’t want to eat dinner in the choking cloud of smoke that stovetop steak cookery unfailingly produces. Fear not: a minimalist preparation if ever there was one, this technique will put a great crust on your steaks and keep your kitchen (largely) smoke free.

Here’s a simple procedure for duck in which you first roast the bird and then braise it briefly. It keeps even the breast meat moist while making the legs ultratender. There are many options for the braising medium, but none provides more complementary flavor with less work than sauerkraut. The result is a moist bird with a sauce that doubles as a side vegetable. Although the cooking takes some time, you can practically ignore the duck as it roasts; if the oven temperature is moderate, it will brown more or less automatically and render its fat at the same time.

There are just two reasons for marinating before grilling: to add flavor and promote browning and crispness. Neither of these requires much time, although dunking the meat or fish for a few minutes in what is best labeled a grilling sauce may contribute to a slightly greater penetration of flavor. (On the other hand, if you really have no time at all, simply smear the food with the sauce as it’s going on the grill.) Promoting browning is easy: anything with sugar browns quickly—often too quickly, as you know if you’ve ever slathered a piece of chicken with barbecue sauce before grilling it. Which flavor to add is a matter of taste. My favorite is soy sauce; I love its taste, and it always seems to contribute exactly the right amount of saltiness. Any marinade that is made with a sweetener will need some acid to balance it; lime goes best with soy, but almost any acidic liquid will do, from lemon to white vinegar. One last note about marinades: Marinade that is applied to raw food should not be brushed on during the last few minutes of cooking, nor should it be used as a sauce unless it is boiled for a few minutes. And, as always, marinade brushes and other utensils that are used with raw food should not be used near the end of cooking.

Flank steak, more than most others, is tolerant of medium doneness, but in any case it must be thinly sliced. Slicing meat against the grain is especially important for tougher cuts like flank and skirt: it cuts the long, tough muscles into shorter, easier-to-chew pieces, giving the impression of tenderness. If you have a garden or a windowsill, both rosemary and lavender are easy to grow and maintain (and the small investment you will make in those plants will save you from paying the king’s ransom supermarkets charge for fresh herbs). If you can’t find any lavender, up the rosemary to 2 tablespoons. In any case, do not substitute dried herbs for fresh in this recipe: they will rob it of its charm.

Here’s how to keep a skinless, boneless chicken breast moist while giving it a crust, without using a lot of fat. This technique relies on two properties of the chicken breast that make it more like fish than like other meat: it cooks quickly, and it contains a fair amount of moisture. This enables you to start cooking the breasts with just a bit of fat over fairly high heat to begin browning, then lower the heat and cover the pan, which not only allows the meat to steam in its own juices but maintains the nicely browned exterior (on one side anyway). If you use mass produced commercial chicken, the results will be somewhat cottony. Free-range or kosher chickens are usually considerably better.

Unless you’ve made your own duck confit, you may never have cooked duck legs by themselves; but in many ways they’re superior to both duck breasts and whole birds. They’re quite lean, and just a quick trimming of the excess fat is all that’s necessary. And, given proper cooking—that is, long, slow cooking—they become fork-tender and richly flavorful, reminiscent of some of the “lesser” cuts of beef and pork, like brisket and cheek. Finally, it’s easy enough to cook enough legs for eight—which is hardly the case with whole duck!

This traditional Chinese dish is simple to make: You boil the soy and wine along with some water, ginger, and crushed sugar and add star anise and scallion for flavor. The chicken is boiled too—not simmered, really boiled—but only for ten minutes; it finishes cooking in the liquid with the heat turned off. There are unusual but inexpensive ingredients that make this dish slightly better: mushroom-flavored soy sauce, which is dark and heavy; yellow rock sugar, a not-especially-sweet, lumpy sugar that must be broken up with a hammer before use; and mei kuei lu chiew, or “rose wine,” a floral wine that smells like rose water and costs two bucks a bottle. But don’t knock yourself out looking for any of these—I give substitutions in the recipe. But if you can easily acquire them, do, because this sauce can be used time and again, as long as you freeze it between uses (or refrigerate it and bring it to a rolling boil every few days) and top up the liquids now and then.

It may seem absurd, even insulting, to attempt to reduce an entire cuisine to a few flavors, but with just a handful of Thai ingredients—nearly all of which are available at most supermarkets—you can duplicate or even improve on many of the dishes found in your typical neighborhood Thai restaurant. A few ingredients will be unfamiliar to most American cooks, but no complicated techniques are involved in either preparation or cooking. This chicken dish, which can be taken in many directions, is a good example.

There is no more celebratory food than goose, but when it is roasted it is difficult to carve and can be disappointing. Braising it, especially with fruit, is a different approach that works brilliantly. Any dried fruit can be used in this preparation, but dried pears hold their shape better and are a little less sweet than prunes and apricots; there’s no reason you can’t substitute, however, or combine.

Chicken with dried apricots is hardly a new idea, but it’s almost always too sweet, and the routine addition of cinnamon and cloves makes the whole thing taste more like dessert than dinner. Take them away, add a little vinegar to counter the fruit’s sweetness, improve and simplify the cooking technique, and you have a beautiful dish for a winter meal.

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.

Here’s a method that takes less than an hour and results in a crisp bird from which nearly all of the fat has been rendered. It’s accomplished by the simple procedure of cutting up the duck, then cooking it, covered, on top of the stove. Served hot or at room temperature, the bird is crisp, tender, and far more flavorful than any chicken.

Stir-frying—the fastest cooking method there is—can change your life. You can use it for almost anything, and it can be so fast that the first thing you need to do is start a batch of white rice. In the fifteen or twenty minutes it takes for that to cook, you can not only prepare the stir-fry but set the table and have a drink. For many stir-fries made at home, it’s necessary to parboil—essentially precook—“hard” vegetables like broccoli or asparagus. So in this fastest possible stir-fry, I use red bell peppers, onions, or both; they need no parboiling and become tender and sweet in three or four minutes. If you cut the meat into small cubes or thin slices, the cooking time is even shorter. I include nuts here for three reasons: I love their flavor, their chunkiness adds great texture (I don’t chop them at all), and the preparation time is zero.

Sauteed chicken should be crisp, moist, and flavorful, and you can accomplish this easily. Use a large skillet, or two smaller ones, because crowding the chicken pieces prevents them from browning. There should be sufficient room in the skillet so that the pieces barely touch each other, and they should certainly not overlap. This recipe contains no added fat—the bird provides plenty of its own—so the skillet should be nonstick, or at least well seasoned.

All Sourness is all not the same, as this simple preparation of broiled Cornish hens with lemon and vinegar demonstrates. I love the taste of lemon and sometimes grill or broil poultry completely unadorned, finishing it with nothing but fresh lemon juice. But I wanted to develop a dish that would take advantage of the complex flavor of the entire lemon, rind and all, and offset it with another, equally gentle sourness. The result is a crisp-skinned Cornish hen (you could use chicken, of course), topped with nicely browned lemon slices (sweet and tender enough to eat) and drizzled with just enough balsamic vinegar to make you wonder where the extra flavor is coming from. There are no other ingredients, though a garnish of parsley or a hint of rosemary and garlic make nice additions.

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.