Vegan

Sautéing is an exciting cooking experience. All your senses are engaged with the high heat, the loud sizzle of the pan, the active stirring and tossing, and the delightful smells of browning food and the perfumes of aromatics added at the end. Sautéing is best suited to small pieces of meat, fish, shellfish, and vegetables. The pieces are tossed or stirred in a hot pan with a small amount of oil. This cooks them quickly; meat stays succulent and vegetables fresh and juicy. A sauté pan has rounded sides, which makes it easier to toss the food than if you use a classic frying pan or skillet—although in a pinch, a frying pan will do a fine job. When sautéing, ingredients are added in quantity—though not in quantities that can’t be easily tossed or stirred—and need to be moved about quickly so that all sides of all the pieces make contact with the hot pan right away. The pan must be quite hot and the heat turned up before the cooking begins to ensure that the food is seared immediately. Otherwise it will start to sweat, lowering the chances of browning and raising the chances of sticking. There should be a gratifying sizzle when the food hits the pan. To check if the pan is hot enough, add a drop or two of water beforehand. Use an oil with a high smoking point to sauté. Clarified butter also works well, but whole butter will eventually burn, even when mixed with oil. Only a small amount of fat is needed, just enough to coat the pan and keep the food from sticking. Occasionally, some ingredients absorb all the oil and threaten to stick; add more oil right away, pouring it down the side of the pan so it has a chance to heat up on its way in. Meat and vegetables are seasoned with salt and pepper either in advance or right at the start of the cooking; most other seasonings are added towards the end to keep them from burning. In some recipes, garlic or ginger is cooked briefly in hot oil for flavor and removed before the main ingredients are added to the pan. Have all your ingredients ready to go before you start cooking, as there will be no time to gather them once you start to sauté.

A pilaf is a savory dish of rice that has first been sautéed in fat and then cooked in a seasoned liquid. (It differs from a risotto in that the liquid is entirely absorbed.) Depending on the recipe, a pilaf may also include nuts, spices, a few vegetables, or even a complex meat stew. I make mostly simple pilafs, such as the red rice pilaf that follows, to go with quesadillas and black beans, or a basmati rice pilaf with saffron and onions to eat with a vegetable ragout. Long-grain rice is usually used in pilafs, although some cuisines use short-grain rice. Sautéing the rice before adding the liquid enriches the flavor of the dish and coats each grain in fat. This, along with thorough washing, keeps the rice from sticking together or clumping. Olive oil and butter are the most commonly used fats. To avoid burning the butter while sautéing the rice, add a little oil to it, or use clarified butter (see page 125). Onion is usually sautéed for a few minutes in the fat before the rice is added. After the rice is sautéed, a flavorful liquid is poured over it and brought to a boil. The pilaf is simmered, covered, until all the liquid has been absorbed, about 15 minutes. Depending on their cooking times, vegetables and meats are added sometimes with the liquid, sometimes after the rice has been cooking for a while. The tomato in the red rice pilaf here is added at the beginning to color the rice evenly. When done, pilafs should be allowed to rest for about 10 minutes before serving.

Fava beans are a harbinger of spring. Like other kinds of beans, they form in pods, but they are also covered in a tough, rather bitter skin. The earliest harvests offer beans that are tiny, brilliant green, and so tender they don’t need to be peeled. When not eaten raw, straight from the pod, these are best cooked briefly with a little water and oil or butter. As the season progresses, the beans continue to mature, and they become larger and starchier. At this point they can be popped out of their pods, skinned, and cooked into a luscious, bright green purée that I adore slathering on crisp croutons or serving alongside roasted meats. Still later in the season the beans turn yellow and dry out and are too mature to use this way. Fava beans do require a bit of preparation, but their delicate taste and splash of color are well worth the effort. Popping the beans from their thick soft pods is an enjoyable group project that even little children can join. An easy way to pop the beans out of the pod is to grasp one with both hands; bend the pod back against your thumbs and press out, snapping the beans out of the pod. After the beans are shelled the opaque outer skin of the bean needs to be removed. (Although in Mediterranean cooking the skins are sometimes left on, this increases the cooking time and results in a different taste.) To do so, plunge the beans into boiling water and leave them until the skin is easy to remove. This will take less than a minute, so check one right away. (If you cook the beans too long they will get mashed when you try to slip them out of their skins.) Drain the beans and put them in a bowl of icy cold water. When they are cool, drain them, and pop out the beans, using a fingernail to slit the skin and squeezing the bean out with the fingers of the other hand. Don’t cook the skinned beans too quickly; medium-low heat is best. Stir them occasionally as they are cooking, and, if you notice that they are drying out, add a bit of water. They are done when they can be crushed into a smooth paste when pressed with a spoon. All kinds of beans, fresh or dried, can be flavored and made into tasty purées. I love cannellini bean purée, fresh cranberry bean purée, and refried pinto beans, too. Another favorite hors d’oeuvre is chickpeas with olive oil and hot pepper puréed and served with flatbread or crackers.

Dried beans cook best when soaked for a number of hours. Overnight is best. Cover the beans with plenty of water to keep them from poking up above the surface when they have absorbed water and swelled. I cover them with at least three times as much water as beans. If all the beans were not completely submerged overnight some will cook at a different rate than others and you’ll end up with overdone and underdone beans in the same pot. Drain after soaking and use fresh water for cooking them. All over the world, beans are traditionally cooked in earthenware pots (and for some reason they seem to taste better when they are), but any heavy nonreactive pot will do. Try to choose a wide pot so the layer of beans isn’t too deep; otherwise the beans are hard to stir and the ones on the bottom of the pot get crushed. Be sure to use enough water that stirring them is easy: the water level should always be an inch or so above the level of the beans. If the water is too low, the beans will be crowded and will tend to fall apart when they are stirred. Worst of all they might start to stick and burn on the bottom of the pot. Salt is best added towards the end of the cooking to keep the beans tender. When done, the beans should be tender but not falling apart, though it is better to overcook them than undercook them! You don’t want them to be the least bit al dente, or crunchy. The best way to test them is to bite one. Start testing after an hour. When they are fully cooked, let right away, the skins will crack and they’ll look shaggy. When cooking fresh shell beans there is no need to soak them. Just pop them out of their shells and put them in a pot. Cover with water by no more than about 1 1/2 inches: the beans will not absorb much water. Add the salt at the beginning and begin testing for doneness after about 10 minutes. Depending on the variety, the beans may take as long as an hour to cook, but usually they are done in much less time. Beans can be flavored at the end of their cooking and served right away; or once cooked, they can be cooled, flavored or not, refrigerated (or frozen) in their liquid, and used later.

The simple soup I make most often starts with a base of softened onions to which one or two vegetables are added. The soup is moistened with broth or water and simmered until the vegetables are tender. First, onions are gently cooked in butter or oil until soft and flavorful. A heavy-bottomed pot makes all the difference for this: it disperses the heat evenly, making it easier to cook vegetables slowly without browning. The amount of fat is important, too. You want enough butter or oil to really coat the onions. After 15 minutes or so of slow cooking, the onions will be transformed into a very soft, translucent, sweet base for the soup. Next, add a vegetable, such as carrots, sliced uniformly for even cooking. (Otherwise you will have underdone and overdone vegetables in your soup.) Salt generously (enough for the vegetables to taste good on their own) and continue cooking for a few minutes. This preliminary seasoning and cooking infuses the fat with the perfume and flavor of the vegetables. (The fat disperses the flavor throughout the soup.) This is an important technique, not just for soup but for cooking in general: building and developing flavor at each step before moving on. Now add broth or water, bring to a boil, and reduce to a simmer. Cook until the vegetables are tender but not falling apart. The soup will not taste finished until the vegetables have cooked through and given their flavor to the broth. Keep tasting. It is wonderful to discover how the flavors change and develop as the soup cooks. Does it need more salt? If you’re unsure, season a small spoonful and see if it tastes better with more. This is the only way you can find out. Many, many vegetables will make great soup when you follow this formula. The only variable is the length of time they take to cook. The best way to keep track is to keep tasting as you go. Some favorite vegetable soups that jump to mind are: turnip and turnip greens, corn, potato and leek, butternut squash, and onion. A vegetable soup made this way, with a flavorful stock rather than water, and served as a rustic “brothy” soup, will be delicious. (In fact, if the broth is rich enough, I sometimes skip any precooking in butter and add both onions and vegetables directly to the simmering broth.) If the soup is made with water instead of broth, and puréed to a uniform texture, the result will be a more delicate soup dominated by the pure flavor of the vegetables themselves. This is especially desirable for soups made from such sweet, tender vegetables as fava beans, peas, or corn. I purée such soups through a food mill, but you can also use a blender, which generates finer purées. Do be careful when using a blender to purée hot soup: always make sure the lid has an open vent hole to let the steam escape so that the whole lot doesn’t explode. Various garnishes and enrichments can be added when you serve the soup. Many cooks finish a puréed soup by spooning in a dollop of cream or stirring in a lump of butter, and a last-minute addition of herbs and spices or a squeeze of lemon can be enlivening. But use discretion; a garnish can overcomplicate or overpower the flavor of the soup itself.

Fresh-made, homemade breadcrumbs have some obvious uses: sprinkled over a gratin to form a crust; as a coating for about-to-be-fried meats, fish, and vegetables; and to give a lighter texture to stuffings and meatballs. But in my kitchen they also have a major role as a sort of endlessly versatile crunchy sauce: golden, fresh-toasted breadcrumbs, tossed with almost any chopped fresh tender herb or combination of herbs (parsley, marjoram, thyme) and perhaps a little fine-chopped garlic, and then strewn over almost anything—pasta, vegetables, roasts, salads—as a finishing touch. Recently I’ve started to embellish toasted breadcrumbs with fried herbs. I fry the leaves of herbs such as rosemary, sage, and winter savory in olive oil for a minute (or less), just until crisp and then toss them with the crumbs. Not all breads make good fresh breadcrumbs. Most bagged, sliced, commercial breads—the kinds with preservatives and added sweeteners—simply won’t work: the additives reduce bread’s natural crumbiness and the sweeteners add the wrong flavor and cause overrapid browning. Breadcrumbs are best made from bread that has had a day or two to dry out just a little. Fresh bread has too much internal moisture to make good crumbs. Instead it clumps, forming moist wads of bread instead of integral crumbs. For breading and frying, loaves of fine-textured white bread such as pain de mie or pullman bread make the best crumbs. For toasted breadcrumbs, however, I prefer to use levain bread or another coarse-textured, country-style bread. These kinds of breadcrumbs are different from breadcrumbs made from completely dried out bread, and are totally different from the crumbs sold in boxes at the grocery, which are too fine, don’t taste good, and just won’t work for the recipes in this book. The easiest way to turn bread into breadcrumbs is with a blender or food processor. First remove the crust; it’s too tough and crumbs with crust in them brown unevenly. Cut the crustless bread into cubes and process them in batches. The bread should be thoroughly ground up so the crumbs are more or less the same size; this will ensure even browning while cooking. Crumbs to be used for breading need to be ground very fine, so they will stick to and evenly coat whatever is being breaded. Crumbs to be toasted can be coarse or fine, depending on the end use. When toasting crumbs, toss them first with olive oil (or melted butter or duck fat) and spread them evenly on a baking sheet. Every few minutes or so, stir them with a metal spatula. The crumbs along the edges of the pan always brown first, so mix these in well, moving them into the center away from the outer edges. The crumbs brown slowly at first, because they must dry before they brown, but they finish quickly during the last minute or two of toasting. Keep a close eye on them towards the end of their cooking time to prevent overbrowning. If you find you have more old bread than you can use, turn it into crumbs and freeze them for future use. When there is no dried-out bread and you need to make crumbs, cut thick slices of fresh bread and put them on a baking sheet in a warm oven to dry out slightly before processing.

I wanted to be sure to include a few words about fruit salads—not sweet fruit cocktails in heavy syrup, but savory salads made like other composed salads. These may consist of fresh fruit alone, or fresh fruit combined with lettuces or other salad greens, with nuts and cheese often added for richness and texture. When there are no greens available and I desperately want something fresh, fruit salads are refreshing alternatives, either at the beginning or the end of a meal. Figs, apples, pears, pomegranates, persimmons, and almost all of the citrus fruits make good salads, with or without greens. All these fruits of fall and winter have an affinity for hearty chicories such as escarole, radicchio, and curly endive. Among my favorite fruit salads are an orange salad with black olives; avocado slices and grapefruit sections; persimmons or Asian pears with nuts and balsamic vinegar; and orange slices with marinated beets. Oranges and other citrus fruits need to be peeled and sectioned for a salad. When skinning the fruit, you want to remove all the outer peel and the membranes that enclose the sections, exposing the juicy fruit inside. You will need a small, sharp knife to do this. First, slice off the top and bottom of each fruit, slicing deeply enough to expose the inner flesh. Then, position your knife blade at the top where the fruit and peel meet, and carefully cut down following the contours of the fruit. Continue around the fruit, cutting from top to bottom, rotating the orange, until all the peel and membrane is removed. Trim away any remaining white bits of membrane. You can then slice the orange crosswise or cut between the membranes to free the individual sections. Apples and pears can be peeled or not, but to avoid oxidation, which turns the cut surfaces brown, they should be prepared just before serving. Persimmons must be peeled; this can be done in advance, but keep them covered so they don’t dry out. Fruit salads are usually dressed very simply, sometimes with nothing more than a drizzle of olive oil or vinegar, or with a vinaigrette made of some citrus juice and a touch of vinegar, a little chopped shallot, salt, pepper, and olive oil.

For me, making a garden lettuce salad—washing beautiful fresh-picked lettuces and tossing them together with a scattering of herbs and a vinaigrette—is as much of a joy as eating one. I love the colorful variety of lettuces, bitter and sweet; the flavor and complexity of herbs such as chervil and chives; and the brightness of a simple vinaigrette made with red wine vinegar, olive oil, and a whisper of garlic, which highlights the lettuces and herbs without overwhelming them. For a salad to have flavor and life, you have to start with fresh, just-picked lettuces. I’m fortunate to have a small kitchen garden in my backyard where I grow various lettuces and herbs for salad, but if you don’t have such a garden it can take some real dedication to find good greens. Farmers’ markets are the best places to start. When my garden is not producing, or when I’m away from home, I shop for head lettuces and try to create my own combinations of lettuces, arugula, chicories, and whatever tender herbs I can find. I generally avoid the salad mixes, especially the pre-bagged ones, which usually seem to include one or two kinds of greens that don’t belong with the others. If there is a lovely mixture from a local salad grower, fine, but otherwise try to buy the best head lettuces you can find and make your own mix. Wash the lettuce, gently but thoroughly, in a basin or bowl of cold water. First cull through the lettuces, pulling off and throwing into the compost bin any outer leaves that are tough, yellowed, or damaged. Then cut out the stem end, separating the rest of the leaves into the water. Gently swish the leaves in the water with your open hands and lift the lettuce out of the water and into a colander. If the lettuces are very dirty, change the water, and wash again. Dry the lettuces in a salad spinner, but don’t overfill it. It’s much more effective to spin-dry a few small batches than one or two large ones. Empty the water from the spinner after each batch. Any water clinging to the leaves will dilute the vinaigrette, so check the leaves and spin them again if they’re still a little wet. I spread out each batch of leaves in a single layer on a dish towel as I go. Then I gently roll up the towel and put it in the refrigerator until it’s time to serve the salad. You can do this a few hours ahead. When the time comes, put the lettuce in a bowl big enough to allow you to toss the salad. If you have some, add a small handful of chives or chervil, or both, either chopped quickly or snipped with scissors. Toss everything with the vinaigrette, using just enough sauce to coat the leaves lightly, so they glisten. Beware of overdressing small, tender lettuces: they will wilt and turn soggy. I usually toss salads with my hands. (I eat salads with my hands, too.) That way I can be gentle and precise and make sure that each leaf is evenly dressed. Taste, and if needed, finish the salad with a sprinkling of salt or brighten it with a splash of vinegar or a squeeze of lemon juice. Taste again and see what you think, then toss one last time and serve the salad right away.

When it comes to making bread, many things affect the outcome, some more obvious than others. Most important is the flour. You cannot make good bread from mediocre flour. Choose flour that is unbleached, untreated, and free of additives. All flours, and especially whole-grain flours, will eventually spoil and taste and smell rancid. Try to buy flour that’s relatively fresh; your best bet is to look for a local organic food retailer with a rapid turnover who sells in bulk. The water makes a difference, too; both its temperature and its quantity influence texture. The type of leavening agent and the length of time bread is allowed to sit and rise will both affect the outcome enormously: quickbreads made with baking soda or powder are tender and almost cakelike, while breads leavened with wild yeast and given repeated slow risings will be the chewiest and crustiest, with the most complex flavors. Weather also affects bread: humidity, heat, and cold each exert their influence. All this makes baking ever-changing and forever fascinating. There is a world of breads: quickbreads such as cornbread and Irish soda bread that are easy to put on the table on relatively short notice; wonderful flatbreads such as tortillas fresh off the griddle or whole-wheat-flour puris that puff up when they’re fried or pita bread grilled over a fire; and the classic yeasted breads of France and Italy—including my everyday favorite, levain bread. Levain bread is leavened with a natural starter of wild yeast and allowed a long, slow fermentation and rising period in canvas-lined baskets. Traditionally, before each batch is baked, some of the starter is held back to leaven the next batch. Rather than give a recipe for a levain-type bread (which is a little complicated to make at home), I offer instead a recipe for a dough that’s versatile enough to be formed and baked as a flat crusty focaccia or a traditional pizza. (Kids love to stretch out the dough and make their own pizzas.)

Salsa verde, the classic green sauce of Italy, is a sauce of olive oil and chopped parsley flavored with lemon zest, garlic, and capers. It adds lively freshness to almost any simple dish. Flat-leaved Italian parsley is preferable, but curly parsley is good, too. Fresh parsley—the fresher the better—is the majority herb, but almost any other fresh, tender herb can enhance a salsa verde: tarragon, chervil, and chives are good choices. Use a sharp knife when you chop parsley (and other herbs). A sharp knife slices cleanly through the leaves, preserving both flavor and color, while a dull knife mashes and bruises them. The zest is the thin yellow outer layer of the lemon’s skin; avoid grating any of the bitter white part (called the pith) beneath. The zest brightens the flavor of the sauce, so don’t be shy with it; you may need more than one lemon’s worth. Don’t hesitate to experiment. I make salsa verde more or less thick depending on what I am using it for. I tend to use less oil when it’s for roasted meats and grilled vegetables and more for fish.

This is the sauce I make most often, and if it’s made out of good olive oil and good wine vinegar, it’s the best salad dressing I can imagine. At its simplest, vinaigrette is a mixture of vinegar and oil in a ratio of 1 part vinegar to about 3 or 4 parts oil. Start by estimating roughly how much vinaigrette you will need. This depends on what you’re using it for; a quarter cup is more than enough for four servings of green salad, for example, but you really never need to measure out exact amounts. Start by pouring the vinegar into a bowl. Dissolve a pinch of salt in it and taste for balance. The salt has a real relationship with the vinegar. When you add just enough salt, it subdues the acid of the vinegar and brings it into a wonderful balance. Try adding salt bit by bit and tasting to see what happens. How much salt is too much? How much is too little? What tastes best? If you add too much salt, just add a touch more vinegar. Grind in some black pepper and whisk in the oil. The vinaigrette should taste brightly balanced, neither too oily nor overly acidic. Adjust the sauce, adding more vinegar if you’ve added too much oil, and more salt, if it needs it.

Gloria Linss, grandmother of my editorial assistant, Valeria, was kind enough to provide us with the perfect ratio of sugar and cinnamon to squash for this recipe. She also pointed out that at her house they did not chop the squash; she would literally smash the whole gourd onto the kitchen floor until it broke into pieces. You can keep it old-school and do that, but I suggest you go with a very sharp knife: it makes cleanup easier. For a sweet finish, do as Gloria does and drizzle the squash with chilled evaporated milk before serving. The cold milk is the perfect counterpoint to the extravagantly sweet, melt-in-your-mouth cinnamon-scented squash.

The smell of fried tortillas and cinnamon engulfed our home during the Christmas season as my mom made dozens of these crunchy treats and wrapped them in cellophane to give to friends and family. I’ve now taken over the tradition, and my son loves to help me cut the tortillas into holiday shapes with cookie cutters or scissors before I fry them. Using authentic Mexican tortillas (lard and all) makes all the difference.

In Mexico, pickled onions are to taco stands what pickle relish is to a hot dog cart in the U.S.—a condiment that taco-lovers can’t do without. Make it at home and save yourself the trip across the border.

In Mexico pico de gallo is used to describe a wide variety of regional salsas, which are always made with cubed fresh fruit and/ or vegetables. Pico de gallo is also known as salsa picada, which means minced or chopped sauce. The most common version is made with red tomatoes, onion, and green chiles and is sometimes called salsa mexicana or salsa bandera, because the colors in the salsa represent those of the Mexican flag. I like to make mine with yellow tomatoes when I am in the mood for a sweeter salsa. Feel free to use red tomatoes if you want to keep it traditional.

Mangoes sprinkled with a mixture of chile and salt and served on a stick are popular street-corner fare in Mexico. I love the combination of flavors so much that I used it to create this salsa, with the addition of avocado for extra richness. Mangoes come in several varieties, and any type will work as long as the fruit is ripe but firm enough that it won’t fall apart in the salsa.

Tomatillo salsas vary greatly from region to region in Mexico. Some are boiled, some are fried, some are roasted, but all of them have the same distinct acidic taste that makes the tomatillo one of Mexico’s trademark ingredients. A batch of this salsa is made daily at my house; it’s always in my fridge. It’s my topping of choice for quesadillas.

Traditional basil pesto gets a run for its money with this bright, flavorful Mexican version of the Italian original. Cilantro pesto is best on cold pasta salads and is great as a topping on grilled chicken or fish.

What’s better than one chile? Three! Mexican food owes much of its flair to the chile, which has been around since about 7500 B.C. Chiles add heat and depth to almost everything I make at home. (As an added bonus, some scientists believe the chile has miraculous disease-fighting powers, with the ability to promote weight loss and to prevent everything from heart disease to cancer.) Here you have the cascabel chile, which adds a slightly nutty flavor, the árbol chile, which brings heat, and my favorite, the sweet and smoky guajillo, to create a salsa that is in perfect harmony.