Simple Cooking

Firming the beef in the freezer makes it easier to cut.

If you can't find freekeh, use another whole grain, like spelt or rye berries.

Super-healthy and really light, this beautiful salad is bright-looking and -tasting. These days it's not too difficult to find great-quality raw salmon. If you ask your local market for sushi-grade salmon, its freshness will be guaranteed. Once you have found the salmon, the hard work is done.

Why have plain white rice when you can have taco rice instead? Taco rice slices, it dices, it juliennes... okay, maybe not, but it does have many different uses. Eat it as a side dish, stuff it into a burrito, use it as a base for a bean-and-rice bowl, or use it as a base for a casserole, like in my Southwest Veggie & Rice Casserole . Taco rice doesn't take much more time than cooking regular white rice, but has so much more to brag about.

Pots de crème are little baked custards with a fancy name. A pinch of salt in these custards heightens the caramel flavor. Cover the baking pan of custard cups with aluminum foil; it makes for the most luxuriously smooth pots de crème you'll ever have.

Koreans celebrate the first one hundred days of life, so for my son, Hudson's, hundredth-day party, we had a bash with lots of Korean food. The next day, with my taste buds toned and thinking of the great Korean tacos I've devoured at food trucks in Los Angeles, I created this version. The marinade for the steak is to die for. I guarantee you'll want to try it with Korean-style short ribs, pork tenderloin, and grilled chicken. A little planning and prep a day ahead is a great way to save time on hurried weeknights. This steak gets even better with an overnight marinade, so you could marinate it on Monday, and it's ready to grill on Tuesday night. If you're doing it all on the same night, use the marinating time to multitask—prep your vegetables and whip up the guacamole. You'll be surprised how quickly it comes together.

I'm probably not supposed to play favorites, but this recipe is definitely my favorite. Pad thai is the epitome of simple ingredients creating dazzling flavor. It's fresh, light, exotic, and faster than any takeout (unless, of course, you happen to live above a restaurant that delivers). Fresh lime is key to creating the unique flavor, but one lime should be enough for a single or even double batch of this noodle dish. Fish sauce, which you can find in the Asian section of most major grocery stores or at Asian markets, gives this pasta a more authentic flavor, but if you can't find any, skip it; this dish will still rock your world.

This curry is doubly rich from the coconut milk and the deep red curry, but the pineapple keeps it from being too heavy and gives a beautiful freshness to the dish. I like to cook the lobster in the shell because it makes for a more flavorful sauce, and I like to serve it that way too. You can be as refined as you like or, like me, pick up the shell and make an animal of yourself. If lobster is going to blow the budget, you can still have a delicious curry by substituting shrimp or monkfish.

I could eat a simple bowl of rice, black beans, salsa, and cheddar cheese any day, but this recipe takes that concept to the next level. Taco Rice gives this casserole an ultra-flavorful base to build upon and a mélange of vegetables provides more texture and flavor than you can shake a maraca at. A little cheddar cheese thrown on top is like icing on the cake to this yummy Southwest casserole. So come on, get your veggie on!

To create this Girl Scout cookie–inspired dessert, grind Thin Mints and use them to make the cookie crust for a luscious mint chocolate cheesecake.

To create this Girl Scout cookie–inspired dessert, combine vanilla ice cream with the coconut, caramel, and chocolate cookies known as Samoas or Caramel deLites. The final touch is a drizzle of chocolate and caramel sauces.

Malcolm Livingston II, the pastry chef at WD~50 in New York City, shared this recipe exclusively with Epicurious. What's the inspiration behind this unusual dessert? "Chef Wylie Dufresne said to me, 'We both love root beer, so let's make it come to life as a dessert,' " Livingston explains. The first challenge was finding the right root beer. Livingston and Dufresne tried making their own, and sampled 12 different sodas before finding Fitz's —that's their preferred brand, but feel free to use your favorite. Consistency and texture were the next obstacles. "I wanted to make a pudding that had the consistency of Jell-O pudding, but with more texture, so I crushed up barrel-shaped root beer candies," says Livingston. The candy was combined with milk, milk powder, cornstarch, root beer, and eggs to create a smooth and creamy pudding that Livingston likens to "a solidified root beer float." Use extra caution when grinding the root beer candy, which can be hard on anything but a commercial or high-powered blender.

One whiff of this hearty, fragrant sauce bubbling on your stove and you'll think you've just parachuted into the Apennines right in front of a trattoria, in sheep country. The mountains of central Italy—notably in the Abruzzo and Molise regions—have always been populated by shepherds. Consequently, lamb is the basic meat, and the cheeses are made from sheep's milk. Shoulder would be our cut of choice, but really any lamb stew meat will do. Even though the recipe calls for boneless meat, if you have some lamb on the bone, throw it in. The bones will add flavor and will be easy to remove once the sauce is cooked. Lamb is fatty, so the sauce will benefit from overnight chilling and subsequent degreasing. But if you can't bear to throw away that yummy lamb fat, roast some potatoes Italian style—cut up in small pieces with lots of rosemary—and use the lamb fat instead of olive oil.

The best tagliatelle made in Bologna, as by Oretta's mentor, the legendary Sister Attilia, are transparent. In southern Italy, the sfoglia is a bit thicker, but the pasta is just as good.

Use the best, freshest eggs you can find, and don't even think of making this dish with eggs from stressed-out battery chickens. You can taste the difference. If you can find real guanciale, so much the better. Once the eggs have been added to the pasta, do not let the pan touch the heat directly or you will wind up with scrambled eggs.

This simple but delicious sauce is named for the town of Amatrice, in the mountainous northeastern panhandle of Lazio, near Abruzzo and the Marche. It seems incredible for such an easy, humble sauce, but this is one of the dishes self-appointed purists (read fanatics) will fight over to the death, or at least death by boredom. You have to use spaghetti or bucatini, they say—nor is it that simple, since there are spaghetti-only and bucatini-only factions. No cheese but pecorino is permitted. And woe betide you if you use pancetta in place of guanciale. There is, however, some room for individual expression. Some cooks use onion and chile, some not. A few swear by a splash of white wine "to cut the fat." The pecorino should ideally be that made in Amatrice or Abruzzo or Sicily, milder and fattier than pecorino romano, but pecorino romano is certainly what you'll find used in Rome. (Pecorino romano is a kind of cheese from a large designated area that includes the entire Lazio and Sardegna regions and the province of Grosseto in Tuscany, not just Rome; it is widely available in the United States.) Parmigiano is not used in amatriciana; it's made with cow's milk, and Rome and its mountainous hinterland is traditionally a land of sheep, after all. The shepherds of yesteryear, who spent months in the hills with their flocks, would make this flavorful dish for themselves. You can imagine that they were not worried about someone calling the food police if they grabbed a piece of pancetta instead of guanciale or one kind of sheep cheese instead of another. But they would never have used smoked bacon, which is not part of their tradition. Like many rustic, simple sauces that have found immortality on trattoria menus throughout Italy (and beyond), this dish is only as good as its ingredients. Take the tomatoes. The rugged mountainous area of northeastern Lazio where Amatrice is located was never great tomato-growing territory, or at least not for most of the year, so it was normal to use canned or jarred tomatoes. But the most delicious amatriciana I've ever tasted was made by Oretta (of course) at her house about halfway between Rome and Amatrice with tomatoes from her garden. After her ecstatic guests had practically licked their plates, she announced with an air of regret that this delicious dish was "not really l'amatriciana" because she had used fresh tomatoes. She later revised the statement to the more reasonable pronouncement that if you have a basketful of gorgeous San Marzano tomatoes from your garden, of course you should peel and seed them and make the sauce, and handed me a jar of her home-canned tomatoes to use in the winter. Whether you use fresh or canned, the result is a red sauce studded with bits of lightly fried pork, but you don't want it too red. The pasta and guanciale should be coated with a thin mantle of sauce, not hidden. Don't let the gloppy, oversauced trattoria version be your model. The cheese is sharp and salty, but, again, don't use too much. Many people consider onion a deviation from the sacred original, but hardly anyone thinks it doesn't taste good. In fact, it is delicious. If you use it, add a small chopped onion to the guanciale fat and sauté until transparent, then add the tomato.

This classic pie combines sweet Red Anjou pears with the subtle tartness of dried apricots and the distinct crunch of pecans.

Start your week off right with this delicious weeknight dinner of pork chops, potatoes, and sauteed pears. This dish will please the entire family - and it makes delicious leftovers, too!

Tender spinach is tossed with sliced fennel bulb and sweet pears in this simple salad that delivers complex flavor. Make it an entree salad by adding 4 ounces of grilled chicken per person.

This simple weeknight dinner brings together the natural sweetness of pears with earthy spinach and juicy chicken cutlets in a simple dish with explosive flavor.