Dairy

All of the brassica family have an affinity with cream and cheese, yet it is those grown for their heads rather than their leaves that seem to get the comfort of dairy produce. Cauliflower and broccoli have long been served under a blanket of cheese and cream, but less so cabbage and the leafier greens. The reason, I have always assumed, is that the cabbage would be overcooked by the time the sauce has formed a crust in the hot oven. In practice, the “white” cabbages that sit on supermarket shelves like rock-hard footballs can be put to good use in a gratin. Their leaves and stalks are juicy when blanched in boiling water and the thicker leaves hold up very well under a sharp cheese sauce, flecked with nutmeg and hot white pepper. I mostly use a cabbage gratin as a friend for a piece of boiled ham or bacon, especially one that has been simmered in apple juice with juniper berries and onion, but sometimes we eat it as it comes, as a TV dinner, like cauliflower cheese. My suggestion of Cornish Yarg is only because I have used it here to good effect. Any briskly flavored cheese is suitable.

One of the gifts of the nouvelle cuisine movement was the puréed vegetable. At its worst, a sad puddle of unidentifiable beige gunk; at its most successful, a moreish pool of intensely flavored, silk-textured essence. Sprouts, which marry so happily with cream, tend to look like baby food when given this treatment, so I keep them coarsely chopped instead of whizzed to a pulp. I am exceptionally fond of this little side dish.

Any blue cheese will melt into the sauce for these sprouts, but I have been using a lot of Stichelton recently, a relatively new, gratifyingly buttery cheese made from unpasteurized milk. A main course with rice or plainly cooked pasta, and a particularly satisfying side dish for boiled ham.

Pasta sends me to sleep. Actually, it always has. It’s just that for years I failed to make the connection between my postprandial tiredness and what had been on my plate. I now take my dough of flour, eggs, and water in much smaller quantities, using it as the supporting actor rather than the lead. The result is a fresher, less heavy plate, yet somehow just as comforting. In many cases the pasta is padded out with vegetables: spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, eggplants, peas, cavolo nero, or broccoli. Members of the broccoli family work rather well with pasta, the folds and hollows of the cooked dough neatly holding onto crumbs of green vegetable. In what follows, we get a lot of pleasure for very little work: a plateful of soothing carbs with a creamy, cheesy sauce and masses of lightly cooked green vegetables. In short, a cheap, quick weekday supper.

In the 1980s, puréed beets, snipped chives, and swirls of sour cream made a startling chilled soup that became an almost permanent fixture at the café in which I cooked for much of the decade. The most outrageous Schiaparelli pink, it was a picture in its deep white-porcelain tureen. I wish now I had had the nerve to include the finely chopped gherkins whose sweet-sour pickle notes could have lifted the soup from its candy-cane sweetness. One glance at a Russian or Swedish cookbook would have been enough.

The chickpea possesses a dry, earthy quality and a knobbly texture that I find endlessly useful and pleasing to eat. No other member of the legume family has quite the same mealy, warm nuttiness. This is the bean I want bubbling on the stove when there is pouring rain outside, filling the kitchen with its curiously homey steam as it slowly simmers its way to tenderness. Unlike its more svelte cousins, the flageolet and the cannellini, the chickpea is almost impossible to overcook. The length of time it takes to soften rules it out of weekday cooking for me, so I sometimes resort to opening a can. Chickpeas, often labeled ceci or garbanzo, leave their can relatively unharmed, which is more than you can say for a flageolet. They make good patties that you can season with cumin, chile, garlic, sesame, or coriander and fry until lightly crisp on the outside. Chickpea patties need a little texture if they are to be of interest. I process them only so far, leaving them with a texture that is partly as smooth as hummus with, here and there, a little crunchiness. The patty mixture needs a good ten minutes to rest before cooking. To calm the garlic notes, I spoon over a sauce of yogurt, grated cucumber, and mint or a similar one of shredded beets, taking care not to overmix it to a lurid pink.

A good contrast here between the sweetly warm beets, nutty hemp, and tangy goat cheese. Any crisp, slightly bitter salad leaf will work. The English-grown ivory and crimson chicory, crunchy, juicy, and appealing to the eye, works well but the classic white would be just as welcome.

I have used Taleggio, Camembert, and English Tunworth from Hampshire as an impromptu “sauce” for warm asparagus with great success. A very soft blue would work as well.

Because the cheese may bubble and run out of this bread while in the oven, I advise baking the loaves on a parchment-lined sheet pan rather than directly on a baking stone. Any cheese that does run out onto the pan will be like a crispy little cheese snack, so it won’t go to waste.

You can use any kind of beer in this recipe, as both light and dark brews add subtle flavors that will complement the cheese.

After struan, wild rice and onion bread was the most popular bread at Brother Juniper’s Bakery, and a version of this recipe appears in my first book, Brother Juniper’s Bread Book. The recipe calls for wild rice, but it can also be made with brown rice or a combination of wild and brown rice, or any other cooked grain. At Brother Juniper’s, during the holiday season we even added parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, garlic powder, and black pepper, which made for a wonderful bread for stuffing turkey. Note that it only takes about 1/4 cup of uncooked wild rice to make 1 cup (6 oz, by weight) of cooked wild rice; still, if you’re going to cook wild rice especially for this recipe, you might as well make a bigger batch and freeze 1-cup packets for future use—or have it with dinner! This new version uses the overnight fermentation method. The yeast is added directly to the bowl, not rehydrated with the warm water and buttermilk. You can use either dried or fresh onions, and you can form the loaves into any size or shape. Dried onions are about one-tenth the weight of fresh onions and will absorb water from the dough, while fresh onions will leach moisture back into the dough. If you use dried onions, don’t rehydrate them before adding them to the dough, but do be aware that you may have to add an extra 2 to 4 tablespoons (1 to 2 oz) of water while mixing.

Every book I write has yet another variation of this soft, enriched multigrain loaf, my all-time favorite bread. The name comes from western Scotland, probably the town called Struanmoor, on the Isle of Skye, and also from a Gaelic clan name that means “a convergence of streams.” It was originally conceived of as a once-a-year harvest bread, incorporating whatever grains and seeds were available from the previous day’s harvest. Because the notion of a harvest bread offers a great deal of formula flexibility, I’m always looking for ways to push the struan envelope in search of better or easier versions. This recipe is very similar to the version I originally made at my bakery, Brother Juniper’s, and it was by far the most popular bread we made. This time around, I’ve taken advantage of the overnight, cold fermentation method to come up with a recipe that’s more flexible, particularly in regard to time options. This is the ultimate toasting bread. There’s something about the combination of ingredients that creates the perfect balance of flavor and texture when toasted and spread with butter, jam, or both. It also works beautifully as a sandwich bread with fillings like tuna salad, chicken salad, or egg salad. You can reduce the amount of sugar or honey if you prefer, but I like the sweetness of this bread and think the combination of brown sugar and honey enhances the toasting qualities. Still, sweetness is a very personal matter, so follow your heart and your palate.

Start this recipe the night before you serve it if you are straining the yogurt. To convert one cup of regular yogurt to 1/2 cup of thick Greek-style yogurt, set a strainer over a bowl and line it with a clean, lint-free dish towel or a coffee filter and pour in one cup of yogurt. Put the bowl in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, discard the liquid and scrape the thickened yogurt into a bowl. Serve this dip with bread or raw vegetables, or as part of a Middle Eastern spread with Cucumber Yogurt (page 184), Cucumber and Pomegranate Salad (page 85), and Chickpea Cakes (page 39).

From Greece to India, a variation of this condiment is a standard accompaniment to most meals. It’s a versatile recipe to have in your arsenal, as it lends a light richness to grilled chicken or fish, bean soups, and almost any dish of Mediterranean origin. Try adding a little minced garlic, currants, raisins, fresh dill, or lemon juice. If you can’t find fresh mint, use dried

These poblanos are stuffed with tempeh, a traditional Indonesian food made from fermented soybeans. Tempeh tastes rich and meaty when seasoned and cooked properly. The chiles can be either grilled or roasted. You can prepare the filling and even stuff the chiles the night before cooking. For a memorable summer meal, serve with Pickled Mango and Habanero Relish or Mango and Habanero Salsa Cruda (page 183) and grilled corn on the cob.

Apricots seem exotic and rare because they disappear from the market before peaches and plums, their stone fruit cousins. Light grilling keeps their pleasing shape intact, and the fruit’s natural sweetness is accentuated by the fat and sourness of the goat cheese. If you don’t have a grill, sear the apricots in a pan, following the same instructions for grilling. For a sweeter take on this recipe, reduce the salt and pepper and, after topping the apricots with the goat cheese, drizzle them with honey and garnish with a few mint leaves.

This dish pops with the bright flavor of fresh ingredients cooked quickly; but while the final “zap” is quick, preparation of this aromatic salad takes time. Enjoy it: you’ll use several cooking techniques, from searing zucchini to making croutons to preparing favas. For a shortcut, use store-bought croutons or buy shelled favas. Favas need to be peeled twice: First, pull the beans out of the pod by pulling on the stem and unzipping the side; then, after cooking, peel the thin layer of skin from each bean.

Barley replaces the traditional Arborio rice here for a textured, nutty-tasting whole-grain risotto. Soaking the barley overnight reduces its cooking time. Gold beets have a sweet, mellow flavor. When roasted with the skin intact, their beautiful color is preserved. Wait to salt the risotto until you’ve added the ricotta salata; as the name implies, it is quite salty. This aged ricotta does not melt, but instead retains a pleasant firm chewiness.