Easy

It’s hard to imagine five minutes in the kitchen better spent than those spent making vinaigrette, the closest thing to an all-purpose sauce. The standard ratio for making vinaigrette is three parts oil to one part vinegar, but because the vinegars I use are mild and extra virgin olive oil is quite assertive, I usually wind up at about two parts oil to one part vinegar, or even a little stronger. Somewhere in that range you’re going to find a home for your own taste; start by using a ratio of three to one and taste, adding more vinegar until you’re happy. (You may even prefer more vinegar than olive oil; there’s nothing wrong with that.) Be sure to use good wine vinegar; balsamic and sherry vinegars, while delicious, are too dominant for some salads, fine for others. Lemon juice is a fine substitute, but because it is less acidic than most vinegars—3 or 4 percent compared to 6 or 7 percent—you will need more of it. The ingredients may be combined with a spoon, a fork, a whisk, or a blender. Hand tools give you an unconvincing emulsion that must be used immediately. Blenders produce vinaigrettes that very much resemble thin mayonnaise in color and thickness—without using egg. They also dispose of the job of mincing the shallot; just peel, chop, and dump it into the container at the last minute (if you add it earlier, it will be pureed, depriving you of the pleasure of its distinctive crunch). This is best made fresh but will keep, refrigerated, for a few days. Bring it back to room temperature and whisk briefly before using it.

While the best way to eat figs is out of hand—few fruits are as delicious when ripe—there are rewarding ways to use them in recipes; this fig relish is one of them. It is especially brilliant on grilled swordfish or tuna (try it on Grilled Fish the Mediterranean Way, page 98), but nearly as good with grilled or broiled chicken (especially dark meat), pork, lamb, or beef. Note that all of these foods contain some fat; because the relish is so lean, combining it with nonfatty meats or fish—such as boneless chicken or flounder—produces a dish that seems to lack substance.

Roasted red pepper puree is incredibly useful, easy to make, and delicious—you can eat it with a spoon. It contains two basic ingredients, red bell peppers and olive oil, and both are always readily available. And since making a batch is about as difficult as scrambling an egg, and the puree keeps fairly well, there’s little reason not to have some on hand. If you are so inclined, you can flavor it with any number of herbs (thyme, basil, and parsley are fine) or spices, like cumin or chile powder (or minced chiles). I usually leave the sauce unadulterated. Of course you can use bottled or canned preroasted peppers (“pimientos”) here, though the results will not be as fresh tasting.

It isn’t often that you can make a condiment with a single dried ingredient, but since dried mushrooms have become widely available, that occurrence has become more common. If you simmer dried mushrooms until tender, then toss them in a blender with their cooking liquid, you get a thick puree, potent and delicious, something you can use wherever you’d use salsa or even ketchup. You can use any dried mushrooms for this condiment, from the extremely inexpensive shiitakes (also called “black mushrooms”) sold at Asian markets to the prince of dried mushrooms, the porcini. Smoky porcini (usually imported from Chile or Poland) are really good here.

This is a rich cocktail sauce, laced with butter but made spiky with vinegar and horseradish. Make it as hot as you like and serve it warm or cold. It is a natural partner for poached, grilled, or otherwise cooked shrimp.

You can buy sun-dried tomatoes already reconstituted and soaked in olive oil, but they’re expensive. It’s certainly easy enough—and only slightly less convenient if you think ahead—to begin with dried tomatoes. They’re almost as tough as shoe leather when you buy them but can easily be reconstituted: Soak them in hot water to cover until they’re soft, about an hour. (You might change the water once it cools to hasten the softening.) Drain the tomatoes and marinate them in a good fruity olive oil to cover (a half cup or more) for at least an hour. After that, making the tomato paste takes just a moment. Traditionally, the tomatoes are pounded, usually with garlic, in a mortar and pestle. I use a small food processor and like the resulting texture very much.

Parsley is the most reliable and underrated herb in the western culinary world. Although we’ve come a long way from the days when its major role was as a decorative sprig on the side of a plate, we still don’t use it in the kinds of quantities we could. Here it is cooked like a vegetable like spinach, really—to create a delicious, fresh-tasting sauce that I frequently serve over pasta but that also makes an interesting foil for simply grilled or broiled chicken breasts.

When you get past using parsley as a garnish and sprinkle a handful on top of a dish just before serving, you begin to appreciate the bright, clean flavor of this common herb. And when you realize that it remains in season far longer than basil, rosemary, or other popular herbs, you get a further sense of its value. You can also blend parsley with vinegar to make a sharp, spiky sauce that is an ideal accompaniment to the simplest grilled, broiled, or roasted meat—great on well-browned steaks, pork, or chicken, or on Salmon Burgers (page 107).

This relish is good with a bit of minced jalapeño or habanero chile if you like hot food. If you have them on hand, don’t hesitate to add up to a quarter cup of fresh herbs, like basil, oregano, or marjoram.

Marjoram is related to and resembles oregano, but its flavor is better. Oregano is a good but not perfect substitute. This sauce is excellent over simply cooked seafood.

“Chiles in Adobo” are chipotles (wood-smoked jalapeños) in tomato sauce, sold in cans. They’re available at any market with a good selection of Mexican foods. If you can’t find one, substitute hot chile powder or even cayenne. This is lovely with any grilled meat.

This recipe is basic make it a few times and you’ll find ways to vary it to perfectly suit your tastes.

This is what most Americans are talking about when they say salsa. You can make it hot or not, as you like; it’s a good use for less-than-perfect tomatoes and an excellent sauce–side dish accompaniment for anything grilled, particularly seafood.

Here’s my take on Pad Thai. There are a lot of ingredients here, but most of them keep well in your pantry, and substituting is easy—you could use finely chopped cabbage in place of the bean sprouts or substitute soy or hoisin sauce for the nam pla.

You can substitute italian linguine or spaghetti for the rice noodles in this dish. Although the texture will not be the same, the dish will still be good. Boil the noodles nearly to doneness in the normal fashion, then rinse before proceeding

In a stir fry like this, you can get away with simply soaking rice noodles, but I believe boiling the noodles for 30 seconds or so after soaking improves them a bit. Try it and see. Substitute soy sauce for the nam pla if you like. Thai basil, which looks different from regular basil, can be found at many Asian markets; it’s fabulously fragrant.

You can find fresh Chinese-style (and Japanese-style) wheat noodles at most supermarkets these days. They’re a great convenience food and, for some reason, seem to me more successful than prepackaged “fresh” Italian noodles. Here they’re briefly cooked and then combined with a stir-fried mixture of pork, vegetables, and Chinese sauces; it’s very much a Chinese restaurant dish. Both ground bean sauce and hoisin sauce can be found at supermarkets (if you can’t find ground bean sauce, just use a little more hoisin), but you can usually find a better selection (and higher-quality versions) at Chinese markets. Usually, the fewer ingredients they contain, the better they are.

The flour-enriched water in which pasta has cooked is never going to be an essential component of fine cooking, and it seldom appears in recipes. Yet from its origins as a cost-free, effortless substitute for stock, olive oil, butter, cream, or other occasionally scarce or even precious ingredients, pasta-cooking water has become a convenient and zero-calorie addition to simple sauces. When you compare a lightly creamy sauce like the one in this recipe to the highly flavorful and ever-popular Alfredo sauce of butter, cream, eggs, and cheese, the latter seems relatively heavy. Substituting water for much of the butter and all of the cream and eggs produces a sauce with a perfect balance of weight and flavor. The water lends a moist quality, not unlike that produced by tomatoes, as opposed to the slickness contributed by straight fat. This is best as a starter, not a main course, but it’s still pretty rich. I would stick with a light fish preparation to follow, even a big salad.

There is an important and splendid group of pasta recipes that is associated with Rome and the area around it; all the variations begin with bits of cured meat cooked until crisp. Around these delightfully crispy bits—and, of course, their rendered fat—are built a number of different sauces of increasing complexity. The first contains no more than meat and grated cheese and is called pasta alla gricia; the second, in which eggs are added, is the well-known pasta (usually spaghetti) carbonara, one of the first authentic non-tomato sauces to become popular in the United States, about thirty years ago; and the third is pasta all’Amatriciana, which adds the sweetness of cooked onion and the acidity of tomato.

In this dish, the pasta takes on a fruity acidity from the reduced wine—smoothed by the last-minute addition of butter—and a beautiful mahogany glaze that’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. The kind of wine you use is of some importance, although it need not be expensive. Try a decent Chianti Classico, a light wine from the Côtesdu-Rhône, or a good-quality (red) Zinfandel. This is a true starter, not a main course; follow it with something gutsy, like grilled meat or fish, or something grand like Crisp Roasted Rack of Lamb (page 187).