Linguine with clams, white wine, fresh garlic, lemon, and parsley– Francis Lam’s One is a nod to a childhood dish his parents used to make when family or friends came for dinner. It’s a simple and loose recipe that can be adjusted based on desire– add more wine and butter to make it more saucy, use additional clams for extra dinner guests, add herbs, or not depending on what you have on hand.
When I was growing up, we ate several dishes that I thought were really unusual and unique to my mother. Macaroni soup was one of them. Small pasta shapes swimming in chicken or veggie broth, flavored with shiitake mushrooms, peas, carrots and ham. Sometimes Spam was also in that bowl. To me, this didn’t feel like a distinctly Chinese dish, so I assumed it was just something my mum made when she was short on time. I continued to think it was a family recipe until a very recent trip to Hong Kong, where I saw it on the breakfast menu at McDonald’s and practically every other cafe and cha chaan teng menu. I was shocked. Only then did I realize it was actually known as “Hong Kong–style breakfast”; it dawned on me that I still had much to learn about my family culture.
At a cafe close to my hotel in Hong Kong, I ordered a variation of this dish—tomato soup brimming with macaroni pasta, topped with scrambled egg. My love for this dish was instant, inspiring a childlike wonder for a bowl full of textures and childhood memories, just with a little twist.
GLUTEN FREE, DAIRY FREE, PESCATARIAN
The One recipe that has served me most and best over the course of my life is toast. Think of toast as a canvas for creativity.
When I apprenticed at Taillevent in Paris, the pastry chef spiked his chestnut cakes with vintage rum. I prefer to drizzle them with melted chocolate or eat them with chocolate ice cream or Milk Chocolate Sorbet. The dense, rich consistency of these mini cakes may remind you of flourless chocolate cake—except they’re less sweet. They keep well, so the recipe makes three. Wrap the extras tightly in plastic and stash them in the refrigerator for up to 4 days or in the freezer for up to 2 months for a ready-made treat when a friend drops by for coffee. Unwrap and pop them into a 350°F oven for 6 to 8 minutes before serving. Chestnut cream is a sweetened chestnut puree. It’s available—as are candied chestnuts (marrons glacés)—from gourmet shops and online sources including amazon.com, which carries my favorite brand, Clément Faugier chestnut spread with vanilla.
When I lived in Peterborough, N.H., in the early 1990s, I had two obsessions: One was the lettuce mix from organic farming pioneer Rosaly Bass, who charmed me so much I signed up for a subscription that let me and a handful of others pick what we wanted off her land all season long. (I tended to swing by at midnight after a long day as editor of the weekly Monadnock Ledger and shovel up carrots by moonlight.) The other was this addictively pungent salad dressing, made by chef Hiroshi Hayashi at his elegant, health-minded Japanese restaurant, Latacarta. While Rosaly's farm is still going strong (it’s the state’s oldest certified organic farm), Hayashi long ago closed the restaurant and started the Monadnock School of Natural Cooking and Philosophy, where he continued making this vegan dressing for many years. He died in 2012. I use the concoction to dress simple salads of butter lettuce with cherry tomatoes and carrots, taking care to slice them into perfect julienne the way I remember Hayashi did, and I have since learned that you can substitute in any herb you like, any vinegar, any oil, and have played around with many a combination. This also makes an excellent dip for crudites.
What Santibañez wants cooks to realize, he told me, is this: "There is a very important textural thing to guacamole -- we never really mush up the avocado. You want to feel everything." He crushes only enough of the avocado to warrant it consideration as a dip rather than a salad, but leaves the rest of the cubes intact, bathing them in the vividly flavored chile sauce, "a bit like salad properly dressed in vinaigrette," he writes. Recipe adapted slightly from Truly Mexican (Wiley, 2011). —Genius Recipes
Sauce can be made 1 week ahead. Transfer to an airtight container; cover and chill.
Have you ever had one of those nights when you’re almost too exhausted to cook or even think about what to make for dinner? Enter Tammie Teclemariam’s minty pork meatball recipe. Two ingredients to pick up from the grocery store and you’re well on your way to a delicious and quick dinner.
Try serving these minty meatballs with rice, and yogurt that’s been thinned down with lemon juice and grated garlic. You’ll thank Tammie later for your new go-to meal.
Indian cheese, known as paneer or chenna, is a delicacy that all Indians- particularly northerners-love. Its use in the preparation of savory dishes is limited, but the few dishes created with it are absolute masterpieces. The most popular, without doubt, is Matar Paneer--moist pieces of sautéed cheese with sweet green peas wrapped in a luscious red sauce bursting with the fragrance of spices and fresh coriander leaves. Matar Paneer, a classic North Indian dish, is popular with vegetarians and nonvegetarians alike. The flavor and texture of the paneer are of prime importance here. The cheese should be sweet and fresh-smelling; it should feel firm to the touch but not hard; it should be moist but not wet; and finally, its texture should be close and compact, not porous. (If the paneer is dry and too solid, the cheese pieces will taste hard and rubbery, and the sauce will not penetrate the paneer, leaving it with a bland taste. If the paneer is too wet and loose-textured, it will not hold its shape, but will fall apart while it is being fried, disintegrating into the oil.)