Dairy Free

The Hindus paint a red dot, or bindi, on their foreheads as an ancient form of ornamentation that also indicates a focal point of meditation: the third eye, the site of the bright inner flame that burns in our mind’s eye. People living in the warmer climates of Latin America wear a bindi of another sort, a cucumber slice stuck to their forehead to keep cool on a hot day. This practice has always fascinated me. The sure knowledge that as the afternoon wore on the wearer’s sweat would salt that cucumber also made me hungry. The crisp, acidic rush of tsukemono, or Japanese pickles, brings focus and refreshment as an accompaniment to grilled fish, rice dishes, and sashimi. It can also be eaten on its own in a meditative moment.

If there is any dish that could be served with every meal, every day, morning, noon, and night, it’s butter leaf lettuce salad. Eggs Benedict with butter leaf lettuce salad; cheeseburgers with butter leaf lettuce salad; pasta alla carbonara with butter leaf lettuce salad. Or, for a snack, just butter leaf lettuce salad. Its acidic elegance balances out the heartiness of any meal. The trick is the dressing. Making your own vinaigrette is among the biggest single improvements you can do in the kitchen—it becomes a distillation of your aesthetic defined by acid, oil, sweetness, and salt. Jennifer’s mastery of the vinaigrette has done more to promote the advancement of cuisine in our house than anything else: the shallots discover a plump, inner sweetness in the vinegar; the olive oil expresses its spicy-green spirit in response to the pepper; and the mustard emulsifies so that the dressing coats the lettuce in silkiness. Then the Maldon, strewn across the surface of the dressed salad—a glittering fencework of flakes perched along the crests and vales of lettuce—snaps like static electricity to stimulate the palate—a flash of pungency that illuminates everything so quickly and clearly that it is gone before you have time to fully comprehend what happened. This is Maldon’s raison d’etre: to reveal and amplify, then vanish, leaving you with only the desire for another bite.

Whether in food or in adventure, our great life-affirming moments often come when nature and sentience find themselves suddenly on intimate terms. Gulping a fresh oyster from the half-shell can be as exhilarating as sailing headlong into white-capped seas with only the song of steel-cold air in the rigging to keep you company. This is why I never tire of the fall season’s promise for new discoveries in oysters. I recently discovered the Totten Inlet Virginicas from the southern Puget Sound: minerally, fresh, and clean with a consistently firm meaty texture. Introducing Shinkai deep sea salt to the Totten was an opportunity for a culinary adventure I could not pass up. The mineral flavors of the oysters amplify the abundant steely flavors already apparent in the salt, and bring to light glints of sweetness and kelp that you might never find on your own. A drop of mignonette and a pinch of Shinkai deep sea salt; the sea god Neptune never had better.

With a feast of raw meat, the only things separating a gritty fifth-century encampment at the foothills of the Altai Mountains in Kazakhstan and a bistro in Paris, Buenos Aires, New York, or Tokyo are the rimmings. In the modern case, these might involve a glowing egg yolk cradled in a caldera of flesh, slivers of oily anchovy, the pickled plumpness of capers—an interplay of texture and flavor, of raw and cured, oils and acids, aromatics and salt. The spectral freshness and crackling crunch of Halen Môn penetrates through this wonderful exchange and substantiates it—footnotes in the secret life your mind leads during the most intense moments of pleasure at the table.

I love caramelized onions. I make them constantly at home and put them in everything from sandwiches to nachos piled high to scrambled eggs. They add a roasted depth of flavor and an unbelievable sweetness.

All of our nut brittles are extraordinarily simple. We use skinned (blanched) nuts, unroasted and unsalted. They take one part nuts to two parts sugar and about ten minutes of time. Nut brittles are one of few things we measure by volume, so no gram weights are needed here. There will always be a small amount of caramel and nut left in the bottom of your pan after making the brittle. No worries! We’ve never met a person who can make this brittle without leaving a trace of it behind. Here’s a hint: the best way to clean hardened caramel out of a pan is by putting water in it and boiling it. The hot water will dissolve the caramel and the pan will be a snap to clean.

Fresh guava always tastes a little funny to me, but I love guava nectar, which is why we chose to use it here in place of making our own puree from scratch. Guava nectar is easily found in the Goya aisle of nearly any grocery store. .

This classic Argentine condiment gets a bit of a Southwestern spin, making it ideal for brisket barbacoa tacos.

You can find ground bean sauce, a gloopy paste of fermented soybeans, salt, sugar, and sesame oil, in Asian grocery stores or order a jar online.

All of the optional condiments for serving are available at most Indian grocery stores.