Dairy Free

This elegant soup has a depth of flavor, brightened by orange and layered with smoked paprika, that would make it right at home as a dinner party starter. For yourself, pair it with a side salad and a big piece of crusty bread, and it’s dinner tonight, while you plan the party for another day.

I got the idea from Lidia Bastianich to make soup bases that pack a lot of flavor on the weekend, then freeze them and thaw them as needed, adding various ingredients on the fly to take them in different directions. I like to concentrate the base, which saves freezer space, and then thin it out when I make a finished soup. Before you thin it out (and jazz it up) for the final soup, this base may remind you of a certain fluffy Thanksgiving side dish (minus the mini-marshmallows, thankfully), but there are some key differences. Besides the lack of cream or sugar, the most important one is the cooking method: Rather than boiling peeled cubes of sweet potato, I like to roast them, concentrating the complex flavor, which is highlighted by subtle hints of thyme and curry. This makes an especially vibrant backdrop to such treatments as Sweet Potato Soup with Chorizo, Chickpeas, and Kale (page 43). There are many other possibilities. You can sprinkle ground chipotle or pimenton (smoked Spanish paprika) for heat and/or smoke, or add toasted pecans, yogurt (or sour cream or crème fraîche), and other sausages or cured meats.

I don’t make a habit of having potato chips in the house, because I really don’t have much self-control around them. But when I read in Anya von Bremzen’s go-to cookbook, The New Spanish Table, that chef-genius Ferran Adrià makes a tortilla de patatas (that glorious traditional Spanish omelet) with potato chips, I was tempted to buy some. That same year, 2005, my friend, chef José Andrés, a protégé of Adrià’s, also included a potato-chip tortilla recipe in his energetic book, Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America, so the decision was obvious. It turns out that this humblest of dishes, one of my favorites when I traveled in Spain, was perfectly easy to scale down to single-serving size. To justify its place on my dinner table, though, I added shrimp to make it a meal. Eat with a green salad or other crisp vegetables on the side. If desired, spoon some Red Pepper Chutney (page 17) on top.

Why didn’t I think of these? I’ve long been in love with pickled (fresh) jalapeños, and I’ve certainly spent enough time hydrating dried chile peppers. This recipe, from chef David Suarez of Rosa Mexicano restaurant in Washington, D.C., combines both ideas in one. They’re simple to make and last for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator. You’ll want to pull them out for anything that needs a sharp and spicy touch: tacos and nachos, of course, but also on Three-Pepper Pizza with Goat Cheese (page 118). Ancho chiles are easy to find, but if you have access to a wider selection of chile peppers, try this recipe with moritas, which have a unique fruity complexity.

Like many food-oriented folk, I have a serious kimchi obsession going. But I didn’t want just any old kimchi recipe in this book. And I knew just where to turn in search of a recipe that has a little something extra: my friend Deb Samuels, cooking teacher and coauthor with Taekyung Chung of The Korean Table: From Barbecue to Bibimbap. Deb keeps up on all things Korean, and she told me that not only is it becoming more fashionable to salt kimchi less than traditional recipes call for, but also that the water-soaking process probably can be skipped entirely. She also said one of her favorites is a white kimchi with a main ingredient of Asian pear, which happened to already feature strongly in my Korean Short Rib Tacos (page 92). Why not try a kimchi with cabbage and pear together? Of course, she was right on the money. Look for Korean chili powder, which has a distinctive heat but a mellow, sweet undertone, in Asian supermarkets; for kimchi, there really is no substitute. Once you have your ingredients, this kimchi could hardly be simpler to make, and the slight sweetness and crunch it gets from the pear make it positively haunting. Besides using it on the tacos, use it on Kimchi, Ham, and Fried Egg Pizza (page 107) and Fried Rice with Cauliflower and Kimchi (page 136).

Pickled onions are the magic fix-it condiment in my refrigerator. You could serve me the worst dish ever, and if it had a few pickled onions on top, I’d probably say, “Hmm. Not bad.” Of course, that means that they can also take something that’s already delicious and make it spectacular. They’re a traditional partner with pibils, the banana leaf–wrapped, pit-cooked meats of the Yucatan. I particularly like them on tacos (see Cochinita Pibil Tacos with Habanero Salsa, page 95, and Tacos de Huevos, page 87), where they give an extra crunch and hit of acidity. I’ve made them all sorts of ways over the years—combining the onions with lime juice, salt, and cumin; blanching the onions first, then tossing in vinegar and Tabasco—but it wasn’t until my delightful friend Patricia Jinich turned me on to her method that I made it mine, too. Pati, who blogs at patismexicantable. com, experimented endlessly (well, sixteen batches) to find the right combination that would substitute for Yucatecan bitter orange juice before she settled on this one. It was worth it, but if you can find bitter orange (labeled naranja agria in Latin stores), use it instead of the juice/vinegar combination here.

My friend Karin and I moved to Boston at about the same time, and of all the things this fellow Tex-pat and I missed the most, at the top of the list was the spicy, smoky, black-flecked salsa at La Fogata restaurant in San Antonio, where Karin grew up and where we both loved to visit when we were in college in nearby Austin. In those days, La Fogata would sell you the stuff to go, but only if you brought your own container. Karin would fly back to Boston with a gallon jug in her carry-on, something that wouldn’t go over too well with the TSA anymore. Nowadays, you can order the salsa online, but it’s not quite the same, no doubt due to the preservatives required to make it shelf stable. After I saw a take on the recipe at SpiceLines.com, I started experimenting and developed my own. In addition to gracing the top of Tacos de Huevos (page 87) and going into Spicy Glazed Mini Meatloaf (page 65), the pungent, garlicky condiment is good on grilled pork chops or steak. Of course, it can be served as an appetizer with tortilla chips. The recipe doubles and triples easily.

I’m a freak for sweet-and-sour flavors and an admitted chile-head. That’s why I like Southeast Asian food so much, but the same combination of flavors characterizes food from other places, such as this rustic Italian-inspired chutney. I first made it when I was looking for single-serving appetizers: something small to calm my raging appetite (what I like to call “hanger”) while I’m cooking. This flavor-packed condiment does the trick, particularly when served on top of good ricotta on toast. But it can also be one of those condiments that you keep around as the basis for main courses. Toss it in hot pasta, slather it on Three-Pepper Pizza with Goat Cheese (page 118), or use it to top Low, Slow, and Custardy Eggs (page 30) or Shrimp and Potato Chip Tortilla (page 35). I got the idea from the fabulous A16: Food + Wine, by Nate Appleman and Shelley Lindgren, but kicked it up by adding a poblano pepper, plus more red pepper flakes and garlic, and balanced it out with a little sugar.

When I spent a day making jams with Stefano Frigerio, a chef-turned-food-producer, I knew I had found a kindred spirit. Frigerio, who sells his Copper Pot Food Co. jams, sauces, and pastas at Washington, D.C., farmers’ markets, resisted set-in-stone recipes and instead cautioned me that the most important thing is to taste, especially if you don’t want the jam to be too sweet. In the true spirit of preserving, use only fresh, local, in-season berries for this jam. (There’s really no reason to preserve something that you can get all year-round, so why use supermarket strawberries?) Without any added pectin, this jam has a slightly loose consistency, which I like, given that my favorite use is to stir it into yogurt.

Some people say that Tex-Mex cooking bears no relation to Mexican. Well, tell that to me and my friend Patricia Jinich, a Mexico City native who now teaches cooking classes through the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C. Pati and I bonded over our mutual love of Mexican food, and even though I have traveled frequently in Mexico, many of the recipes she has shared with me take me right back to my West Texas childhood or Central Texas college days. This salsa—gorgeous to behold and tart and spicy to taste-is the perfect example; its flavors are identical to those served up in little bowls on every table at the best Tex-Mex restaurants I know. It’s perfect on the Catfish Tacos with Chipotle Slaw (page 101) and Shrimp Tacos with Grapefruit–Black Bean Salsa (page 102), and it is a natural pairing with seafood. But, honestly, you can drizzle it on just about anything to decent effect. And, of course, you can just scoop it up with tortilla chips.

I got this recipe from Patricia Jinich, chef-instructor at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C., who got it from her sister. Don’t be fooled by its simplicity; it is perfectly balanced. It will keep its lively color for about a week in the refrigerator, but the flavor will last another week or two, meaning you can feel free to splash it onto all manner of salads, plus avocados, tomatoes, green beans, even cold rice. You can also use other leafy herbs, particularly parsley, basil, or mint, instead of the cilantro.

This recipe started the way all jam recipes should: I came into a bounty of stunningly delicious, in-season fruit. It wasn’t from a blueberry patch like those in southern Maine my homesteading sister, Rebekah, picks from, but it was the closest thing I have to such: the Dupont Circle FreshFarm Market. One of my favorite vendors there, Tree and Leaf, had blueberries one summer that were better than any I’ve tasted outside Maine. I paid a pretty penny for them, went home, and broke open Mes Confitures, the tome by famous French jam maker Christine Ferber. I found her take on a wild blueberry–lemon jam, and I took shameless liberties with it, as anybody working with much different fruit should. I used much less sugar (her wild ones must be very tart), and streamlined the process. The result is a celebration of the blueberry, brightened with slices of candied lemon, peel and all. Use it anytime you want good jam: on toast, stirred into yogurt, and even as the basis of such desserts as Blueberry-Lemon Tart with Toasted Coconut (page 165).

When I lived in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in the early 1990s, I had two obsessions. The first was the lettuce mix from organic farming pioneer Rosaly Bass, who charmed me so much I signed up for a subscription that let me pick what I wanted off her land all season long. (I tended to swing by at midnight after a long day as editor of the weekly Monadnock Ledger and shovel up carrots by moonlight.) The second was this powerfully sharp dressing, made by chef Hiroshi Hayashi at his elegant, health-minded Japanese restaurant, Latacarta. While Rosaly’s farm is still going strong, Hayashi long ago closed the restaurant and started the Monadnock School of Natural Cooking and Philosophy, but he still makes this vegan dressing. I use it to dress simple salads of butter lettuce with cherry tomatoes and carrots, taking care to slice the carrots into a perfect julienne the way I remember Hayashi did. The dressing also makes an excellent dip for crudités.

While I was in college (along with 49,999 of my closest friends at the University of Texas at Austin), I was one of the many nonvegetarian fans of Mother’s, an iconic vegetarian restaurant in Hyde Park, where I’d pretty much always get a smoothie and a huge spinach salad with this pungent dressing. Besides cashews, the main ingredient is tamari, a richer version of soy sauce that’s traditionally (but not always) made without wheat. Decades later, Mother’s is still going strong, reopening after a 2007 fire and still serving this dressing (bottling it for retail sale, even). Thanks to the glories of Google, I was able to track down a recipe for it from Rachel MacIntyre, a personal chef in Austin who blogs at thefriendlykitchen.com and used to work at Mother’s precursor, West Lynn Cafe. I lightened it a little bit, but it’s as addictive as ever. I toss it onto spinach and other salads, of course, but also baked potatoes, broiled asparagus, steamed carrots, and more, including Charred Asparagus, Tofu, and Farro Salad (page 144).

I love hummus, but ever since I had the justifiably famous spicy version at Sahadi’s, a Middle Eastern specialty foods shop in Brooklyn, I’m not satisfied with the tame stuff anymore. This is not their recipe, but it wasn’t hard to add a little fire to my favorite one, which uses more water than you might think, resulting in a particularly silky hummus. Eat some immediately, of course, with crackers or bread or whatever suits your fancy, but make sure to save some for Eggplant and Spicy Hummus Flatbread (page 115), and refrigerate the rest for up to 2 weeks, during which time you can use it as a sandwich spread or even thin it out with vinegar to make a salad dressing. A shortcut, obviously, is to add the pepper-infused olive oil to your favorite store-bought hummus.

It’s too bad so many cooks, when presented with a basket of beautifully fresh and local corn, strip off those husks and toss them. That’s a lot of flavor headed for the compost pile or, worse, the trash. I got the idea to use the husks to make corn broth from Vitaly Paley of Paley’s Place in Portland, Oregon, as mentioned in The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. I was already using the cobs, so I threw the husks in the pot along with the silks, too, to get as much corn flavor as possible. This broth is best made in the very height of local corn season and won’t be as vibrant with supermarket corn. Once you have the broth on hand, use it as the base for soups, especially as a stand-in for chicken broth in Corn Risotto with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes (page 135) and add it in increments to sauces for a boost of summer flavor.

Preserved lemons can spike up the flavor of any dish, particularly something rich that needs the cut-through-the-fat talents only an acidic ingredient can bring. This method, which I based on a recipe in Tom Colicchio’s ’wichcraft (Clarkson Potter, 2009), drastically reduces the amount of time it takes to preserve lemons by slicing them first, allowing the salt/sugar mixture to penetrate that much more quickly. And that’s a good thing, because you won’t want to wait too long for these. They need 3 days of curing time, but they will keep in an airtight container in your refrigerator for a month. Use them in Smoked Trout, Potato, and Fennel Pizza (page 113); Roast Chicken Leg with Gremolata and Sunchokes (page 72); and Tuna, Chickpea, and Arugula Sandwich (page 126); or anywhere else you want a sharp hit of salty lemon.

I have made these tomatoes for more than a decade now, but it wasn’t until my sister’s homegrown Maine wedding, where I made hundreds of them for the appetizer table, that I realized how perfect a technique this is for “putting up” local tomatoes in the peak season. The low heat of the oven turns the tomatoes almost jammy, concentrating the flavor beautifully, which makes them perfect as a topping for bruschetta, pasta, or pizza (see Smoky Pizza Margherita, page 106). They also can be served on an antipasti platter with mixed olives, cheese, pickles, and/or smoked fish. I call them 12-hour tomatoes, but the amount of time it takes depends greatly on the size and juiciness of the tomatoes. So for the least fuss, don’t mix varieties or sizes in one batch, but feel free to multiply this recipe as you wish. Left in the oven long enough, the tomatoes will start to become a little chewy around the edges, which make a nice counterpoint to the moisture inside. Try other spices instead of the cumin: regular paprika, smoked Spanish paprika (pimenton), and cinnamon also work well with the tomatoes, or you can stick with just salt and pepper for the purest tomato flavor.

The true taste of a place is found in its little oddities, and northern India is no exception. Nowhere are the distinctive attitudes and sensibilities of a people better captured than in the lemonade of northern India. Jal jeera is Hindi for “cumin water,” but it’s the wild and unruly yet ultimately constructive influence of India’s famous, sulfuric kala namak salt that lends this drink its edge. It’s traditionally drunk before a meal, but any hot day provides a great excuse to duck into the shade, mix up a tall iced glass of jal jeera, and tilt your face up to the sun to offer a prayer to the sun god Surya.

Salting is a way. It’s the path you take. It lets you discover a passage through the brambles, defines the terrain ahead, sets you on a lost trail, and, toward the summit, reveals key ledges and handholds. The better your use of salt, the higher you can climb and the more enjoyable the ascent. And the view from up top is worth it. The Meadow Martini is a diamond-perfect expression of salt’s power to offer the clearest imaginable view of the most magical possible vista. Crushed Tasmanian pepperberries send blossoms of hydrangea crimson into the translucent liquid of the gin, unleashing extravagant botanical flavors. Tasmanian pepperberry (Tasmannia lanceolata) is sometimes used as a substitute for Szechuan pepper, though it harbors none of the heat and frankly bears no resemblance. If you can’t locate any, substitute a few petals of dried hibiscus or just enjoy your martini in its classic perfection, an arc of Shinkai Deep Sea salt as its only embellishment. Shinkai imparts to the lips the felicitous texture of confetti, and the unalloyed flavor of happiness itself.