Fry

You can mix and match the listed ingredients to create your own version of this main-course salad. We used store-bought roasted turkey, but chicken also works well.

This Japanese spin on coleslaw is a refreshing salad, and serving it with crispy fried tofu coated with sesame seeds makes for a great, quick dinner. Even though the tofu is fried, you only need a little bit of oil, so it’s still a nice light meal.

I got the idea for this recipe from a Greek restaurant I worked at. The horseradish sauce is my favorite thing about them because I love that rush of spiciness that clears the sinuses.

Make this for your friends. They won’t believe that it didn’t come from that little Mediterranean place around the corner. This is a great recipe to partially prepare in advance and refrigerate until you’re ready to cook and eat, but once you cook the falafel, it’s best to eat it right away. This sauce is good on anything from veggies to bread. I like to make extra just for snacking on.

Whenever our family gets together for dinner at my parents’ house, this dish is usually on the menu. To make it, catfish fillets are cut into pieces and panfried to a golden crisp. When the fish is removed from the pan, the oil that remains is used to sauté onion and ginger into a heady mixture that is finished with fish sauce and water and then served like a relish. Most catfish sold today are farm-raised and thus lean, so don’t skimp on the oil. Also, the fish splatters during frying, so you might want to use a splatter guard and/or put newspaper on the floor around the stove to speed cleanup.

These terrific shallot slices are like bacon bits—a garnish for when you want to add final rich notes. For them to turn out well, you must first remove all the excess moisture from the fresh shallots. Many Viet cooks skip that step and fry up presliced dehydrated shallot. Sold at Chinese and Vietnamese markets, the time-saving alternative sadly lacks flavor and depth, much like the difference between onion soup made from scratch and a packaged mix. However, they are convenient and inexpensive, which perhaps explains why hành phi are sometimes overused to embellish food. I am a traditionalist when it comes to this garnish. I prepare it the day I need it so that it stays crisp, and I always start with fresh shallots to capture their subtle sweetness. I especially like them sprinkled on bánh cuon (steamed rice crepe rolls, page 270) and xôi bap (sticky rice with hominy, page 247).

Long before I knew about Chinese American egg foo yong, I was dipping these tasty pancakes in fish sauce and soy sauce and enjoying them with hot rice. When my mother was short of time, she would prepare a couple of plates full of these yellow, pink, and green pancakes for dinner. They are incredibly easy to whip up and yet taste fancy. The edges get fluffy and crispy from frying in a liberal amount of oil, and each rich bite contains a bit of tasty shrimp. I don’t devein the shrimp for these pancakes because I have found that it leaves unattractive lumps. But if you prefer to devein them, do so.

A Mexican-inspired brunch is my favorite way to recover from a long night out, and this spin on huevos rancheros is how we serve it up at Bar Americain. This plate is layered with taste and texture, from the crisp, salty tortillas up to the cool and chunky guacamole on top. Savory black beans make this dish extra satisfying, while the chile sauces pump up the color—and heat. I like the slightly sweet, nutty flavor of blue corn tortillas, but if you can’t find them, yellow ones are an easy substitute.

You could certainly serve these hash browns with eggs, but I didn’t find the inspiration for this dish at my local diner. These belong right next to a juicy steak. I mix sweet caramelized onions with cooked potatoes seasoned with smoky paprika. Cooked in butter and oil, the bottom layer of potatoes becomes amazingly crisp and is browned to perfection. Serve this bottom side up so that everyone can see what crispy potato goodness awaits.

This dish is Louisiana all the way. Crawfish are eaten in other states, to be sure, but no one is as passionate about these crustaceans as are Louisianans. And rightfully so; the state is responsible for producing more than 80 percent of the world’s crawfish! Crawfish look like tiny, clawless lobsters, and though they are not directly related, their taste is similar. The lobster stock in the rich, creamy sauce enhances that similarity. Sweet trout fillets get an old-fashioned cornmeal crust and are panfried to a light golden brown before being set down on a pool of the pink sauce.

This dish is brought to you straight from Harlem. Fried chicken and waffles was invented by the singers and musicians who performed in Harlem’s storied jazz age. Those gigs would last until the early hours of the morning, when the musicians spilled out into the neighborhood’s restaurants. Hungry after a long night and still in their evening clothes and mind-sets, they found fried chicken fit the bill. At the same time, the sun would be rising, and a breakfast of waffles sounded pretty good, too. And so waffles became a bed for fried chicken, and a soul-food classic was born. I put my own riff on the dish by adding nutty wild rice to the waffles and serving the whole thing up with a sauce of honey and sweet, mildly peppery pink peppercorns.

This fresh and satisfying salad gets its inspiration from two very different locales: the sweet and sour dressing is indebted to the Pennsylvania Dutch, while the fried green tomatoes come straight from the South. The brightly hued dressing is just the thing to enhance the interplay of tart green tomatoes; sweet, earthy beets; buttery fava beans; and tangy, creamy goat cheese. Green tomatoes and fava beans are two crops that I particularly look forward to seeing at the first farmers’ markets of spring, and this salad is a delicious way to celebrate the best of that season. If you can’t find fava beans, lima beans are a fair substitute.

Chicken-fried tenderloin steak was a top seller at Rebecca’s Table, but I have my bartender to thank for the idea that led to this variation. One night, a couple sat down to eat dinner at the bar, and the husband ordered chicken-fried steak. His wife liked the idea, just not the red meat part of it. So the bartender says, “Why don’t we do some shrimp for you?” She was thrilled. Served with chipotle ketchup, adapted from a recipe by Texas chef and author Terry Thompson-Anderson, chicken-fried shrimp became a best-selling appetizer. It’s also a natural for informal entertaining. Once guests arrive, fire up the skillet, and enlist a helper to dip the buttermilk-soaked shrimp in the seasoned flour mixture. Other guests would be well advised to stay nearby. Chicken-fried anything is best fresh from the frying pan. Set the shrimp on a communal platter accompanied with a big bowl of chipotle ketchup and let guests serve themselves. I guarantee the shrimp won’t last long.

If you really want to replicate the Chef Shack’s most popular fall dish, go organic with the eggs and milk, try to get your hands on some bacon beer brats (they use Fischer Farms), and crisp up the bread in a deep fryer. If that sounds out of reach for you, your favorite pork sausage links will do, and a griddle or frying pan should work almost as well.

They use deep-fat fryers at the Pirates’ House. If you have one at home, by all means use it.

These pancakes are delicious with a dollop of sour cream.

You may substitute beef round steak (have butcher run through cubing machine to tenderize) for venison if you like.