Dairy Free

Here’s a dish I concocted when I had some leftover rare lamb from a roast. I had stripped most of the meat from the bone, but there was enough still clinging in the crevices to make a meaty broth, so I put the meat and the bone in a pot with an onion and a carrot, poured cold water over, and let it simmer for an hour or so. It made about 5 cups of lamb broth, most of which I stored in the freezer.

This is apt to be a messy-looking pancake. But who cares? It’s just for you, and it’s delicious. I particularly like it with a slice or two of smoked salmon and a dollop of sour cream, or of the creamy top of good whole-milk yogurt. But the pancake goes with so many things.

Wild rice isn’t really a rice—it’s a grain—and the best of it comes from Native Americans in the upper Midwest who harvest it in the traditional way, beating the ripened grains into their canoes at harvest time. The cultivated variety is all right and takes a little less time to cook, but it doesn’t have the texture of the wild variety. Evan, being a loyal Minnesotan, always sent for wild rice from Blackduck, Minnesota, and I have kept up the tradition, ordering Slindee wild rice, as the producers are now known. It takes about an hour for wild rice to cook, so it’s not for a quick dinner. But it reheats perfectly, and I always make extra and enjoy it in a number of ways.

Here’s a simple Japanese way with cooked rice that Hiroko Shimbo showed me when I asked her one day what she would do with leftover rice. It’s called sushi salad because it’s made with sushi rice. As Hiroko points out so persuasively in her book The Sushi Experience, it’s the rice that makes it sushi, not all the various garnishes or tasty bits that are wrapped—or, in this case, tossed—in the seasoned rice. This is one of those dishes that are subject to variations depending on the season, but it’s hard to improve on the following intoxicatingly delicious summer version.

There’s nothing like knowing you have stashed away in your freezer good tomato sauce made from sweet San Marzano canned tomatoes. It comes in handy in so many ways. I usually make 3 cups of thick sauce, to freeze in 1-cup containers. You can easily double or triple that amount if you’re feeling ambitious and have enough freezer space.

This is a good way to make use of those unnecessarily large bouquets of parsley that we get at our supermarkets, as well as fennel fronds that usually go to waste.

This nourishing bulgur-wheat salad provides a satisfying way of using up some of the huge bunch of parsley that the supermarket foisted on you. If it’s wintertime and you don’t have access to fresh mint, use 1/2 teaspoon dried mint and stir it into the still-warm bulgur after you’ve drained it, so the mint will have a chance to expand and release its flavor.

This is a sauce to have on hand at all times. It keeps well in the refrigerator for at least a week if you film the top of it with olive oil (and refilm after you have dipped into it and taken some from the jar), and it keeps its bloom for a couple of months frozen. It’s a good idea to freeze it in an ice tray, and then store the cubes in plastic storage bags. That way, you easily can get at just the amount you need.

I prefer this sauce to any other for cold meats, fish, and poultry, or those innards that I like so much.

One of my favorite suppers is a good sausage with warm potato salad. I love the way the sausage juices mingle with the tender new potatoes bathed in a mustardy vinaigrette—a very French taste that makes me nostalgic.

Here’s a sparkling salad that makes superb use of that one-third or so of a plump fennel bulb that you couldn’t consume in one sitting.

Stir-frying a combination of vegetables quickly in a small wok gives them a more intense flavor and a pleasing texture, and they benefit from being cooked together. It’s a good way to use small amounts of vegetables you may have stored away. You can mix and match as you wish, aiming for good color and flavor complements. You can even poach an egg on top of your stir-fry (see page 105).

Here is a good way to use up leftover chicken that makes a full, satisfying meal.

It is so easy to make a vinaigrette, the classic French salad dressing, that I can’t fathom why so many people living alone go out and buy bottled dressings. Not only do they pay more, but the dressing never tastes as fresh, and you can’t vary the seasonings as you wish. So I beg you to make your own vinaigrette as part of your cooking life. The amounts I’m giving will be enough to dress two or three small salads, but you can double or triple the quantities if you’re an avid salad consumer and want enough dressing to see you through the week. Just refrigerate the extra in a jar, tightly sealed.