Leafy Greens

We Texans love our queso, and although I’ve seen many a fierce debate over the use of one of its signature ingredients—Velveeta—most of us grew up eating it. For us, queso spells comfort. I don’t use Velveeta for anything else, but there’s something about its ability to melt into a creamy smoothness that makes queso, queso. The dip shows up at so many Texas tables because, for many of us, queso means warmth, ease, and familiarity—just the recipe for an easy, congenial get-together with friends. (Pictured opposite, left side)

I love the simplicity of individual salads in jars. Make the salad, toss it in an ice chest, and off you go. Once you arrive at your destination, the salad is ready to eat right out of the jar. Alternatively, you can skip the jars and toss the salad ingredients together in a large bowl.

My spicy, tangy catfish tacos are a great way to feed a hungry beach crowd without the hassle of frying or grilling. Load up a rimmed baking sheet with fish fillets, pour on the marinade, refrigerate overnight, and just before serving, bake for less than 30 minutes. Heat flour or corn tortillas in a tortilla warmer along with the fish, and set it all out on the table with a bowl of chipotle mayo and a platter of thin-sliced cabbage. Now everybody chow down! The fish is just the way I like it—juicy and flavorful thanks to long marination (at least 6 hours) and oven baking. I’ve allowed two tacos per person to ensure you’ll have enough even for man-size, sun-fueled appetites. (What is it about playing on the beach that makes men so hungry?) If you have a smaller crowd or guests with smaller stomachs, halve the recipe.

Josh Raymer, the creative young chef behind Fredericksburg’s Navajo Grill, enjoys a little low-key partying at home on his days off. He and his wife, Julie, often invite friends in for a relaxed evening with simple food, a few good wines or a cooler full of beer, and some good conversation. Josh describes Hill Country parties as generally laid-back—dressing up means stepping into your “nicer” boots. But even the most casual affair on his stone patio includes music—Willy Nelson and the Texas Tornados are favorites. Decoration often consists of little more than bunches of herbs clipped from his carefully tended herb garden and plunked in jars. “We don’t do much.” Josh and Julie came to my garden party with their two-year-old son Hank and this equally irresistible salad. Don’t let the semi-boneless instructions frighten you. You can order neatly packaged, semi-boned quail from just about any commercial outlet, including Josh’s Bandera, Texas, supplier, Diamond H Ranch (www.texasgourmetquail.com). Semi-boned quail means the back, breast, and thigh bones have been removed, leaving the bird’s skin and its tiny leg bones intact. This allows the birds to be laid out flat for easy grilling.

This elegant appetizer or starter salad for a dinner party celebrates two loves: goat cheese and roasted beets. It takes more time than a simple tossed salad, but all can be done in advance for entertaining. Mixing red beets with golden and candy-striped varieties makes an especially gorgeous presentation. The CKC chèvre that I use is from Chrissy Omo, a local cheesemaking prodigy. (For more about Chrissy, see opposite page.) Although I highly recommend it, CKC cheese is hard to get outside of the Austin–Hill Country area. Support your local cheesemaker by checking out neighborhood farmers’ markets.

This hearty salad is packed with so many vegetables that I often serve it as a main course. It’s a real lifesaver when guests announce, “Oh, by the way, did I mention I’m a vegetarian?” It welcomes just about any edible treasure from the farmers’ market or my garden, from sliced sugar snap peas to colorful nasturtium flowers, slender French green beans to crunchy cucumbers, plus all kinds of peppers. Think seasonally: try fall veggies like roasted acorn squash, steamed broccoli florets, or fall lettuces, or bias-cut and steamed spring asparagus. Any good artisan bread will do, but I prefer a dense white or whole-wheat sourdough; try day-old loaves from your bakery.

Every summer I have out-of-control basil growing in my garden, and it’s a serious challenge to come up with ways to use it all. It sometimes seems to grow faster than I can pick it. Then there is my garden arugula and several bountiful bushes of candy-sweet cherry tomatoes of varying colors. This salad guarantees that no cherry tomato or basil leaf goes to waste. For parties, I take a huge platter-size version of the salad, drizzle the pesto vinaigrette over the fresh mozzarella, and leave a small pitcher of the vinaigrette on the side for those who can never get enough of the deliciously pungent stuff.

This is not the tuna sandwich of your childhood, but it hits all the right notes: richness from the oily tuna, starchy goodness from the chickpeas, bitterness from the arugula, a little tang from the artichoke hearts, and a hell of a tang from the Herbed Lemon Confit (page 4). If you don’t have some of the latter in your refrigerator, store-bought preserved lemon slices will do.

When I asked friends for their favorite pizza-combination ideas, this one, from former Boston Globe Living Arts editor Fiona Lewis, jumped to the front of the line. First, I’m a freak for figs: fresh when they’re in season, of course, but dried at other times of the year. Second, when Fiona mentioned it, I had just started yielding to an addiction to Taleggio, the pungent, slightly bitter Italian cheese that tastes of mushrooms. I immediately thought walnuts would be a perfect crunchy addition to this party, and I invited along my old friend radicchio to add even more bitterness. Once I got the layering order right (walnuts need to go on the bottom, under the nest of radicchio, to avoid burning under the broiler), this was a keeper. Obviously, if you want to make this when fresh figs are in season, by all means do so; skip the soaking-in-wine step and you’ll be good to go.

I’m as intimidated about making fish tacos for California friends as they would be to make chili for me. But I’ve learned the rules: No baking the fish, no guacamole (makes the fish soggy), no flour tortillas (although there’s some dispute on that point)? And you should hear the unprintable things they say about versions that include mayonnaise! It just so happens that I agree on all those points, except for one, which my Cali-friends will discover when they read this: I have actually made pretty darn crisp catfish in the oven. When it’s just you alone in the kitchen, and you don’t feel like frying, I won’t judge.

Carnivores need a veggie break now and then, and this taco satisfies. The moist mushrooms stand in for the meat, the onions pack a sweet-spicy punch, goat cheese adds a touch of tart richness, good old lettuce gives the crunch, and a final drizzle of Salsa Verde (page 14) reminds you that, well, every taco can benefit from a final drizzle of salsa.

In Buddhism, patience is more than a virtue; it’s one of the “six perfections” that can lead to enlightenment. I thought about that the first several times I tried this dish, which is inspired by a technique developed by chef Eric Ripert. Ripert, a practicing Buddhist, asks you to let the fish very slowly cook on one side, uncovered, in a shallow bath, which is why the French call this a l’unilateral. I guess I’m just not Zen enough, because every time I tried the technique, after 20 or 25 minutes of waiting, I was tempted to either turn up the heat, turn over the fish, or both. Because I’m not nearly as smart (or patient) as Ripert, it took far too long for me to realize that the method that better suits my temperament is a common one: Cover the fish. The most important ingredient, besides the fish, is the delicately seasoned Shaoxing cooking wine, which can be found in Asian supermarkets. It’s worth trying to find, but you can substitute Japanese mirin, dry sherry, or other Chinese rice wine, although you may need to adjust the seasoning with vinegar before you eat it. Just don’t use generic “cooking wine” you see in mainstream supermarkets; you’ll regret that, believe me.

I never liked raw spinach that much until I started eating it from my sister’s huge garden in southern Maine, where she and her husband grow almost everything they eat—a year-round endeavor, thanks to lots of canning, freezing, and the smart use of greenhouses and the like. She even brought me spinach seeds so I could start growing it in my own community garden. My garden is a tiny fraction of the size of hers, but the spinach comes out of it just as tender and sweet. This recipe barely wilts the spinach, so it still has that fresh flavor, but helps compensate for the sturdier texture of supermarket spinach, if that’s what you need to use, by softening it slightly. If you have tender garden-fresh spinach, you can feel free to let the topping cool before adding it to the spinach for a cold salad instead.

When I was growing up, one of my mother’s holiday specialties was something she called “Texas Salad,” similar to something others call taco salad, although hers didn’t include ground beef. It was basically a head of iceberg lettuce, a couple cans of pinto beans, a block of Cheddar cheese, a bag of Fritos, and a whole bottle of Catalina French-style dressing, along with a red onion and a tomato or two. Okay, here’s my confession: I loved it, the first day more than the second (although others in my family would say the reverse). My tastes have gotten a little more sophisticated since then, but I still appreciate what my Mom was going for: sweet and sour, crunchy and fresh, a little protein, and a little fat. I’ve had fun updating it, but, Mom, you’ll notice, I’ve kept all your principles intact.

For the longest time, chile relleno was my favorite dish, and, really, what’s not to like? A cheese-stuffed poblano pepper, battered and fried, with a spicy sauce? Bring it on, right? Making it at home was a different story: Dipping that delicate pepper in the batter without the stuffing falling out was, well, beyond me. This version may seem involved, but believe me, compared to the traditional version, it’s positively streamlined. I like an almost burrito-like filling, with starchy rice or farro included, but there’s no egg binder, no batter, no oil to heat up (and splatter everywhere). It’s oven-roasted and vegetarian, but spicy and cheesy all the same. Eat with a small salad if you like.

Turn the Sweet Potato Soup Base into a meal with spicy chorizo, hearty chickpeas, and vibrant green kale. This makes a truly beautiful bowl of soup. If you’d rather keep this soup vegetarian, try the grain-based chorizo substitute from Field Roast, one of the first meat substitutes I’ve actually liked. It’s available in natural food stores in almost every state and through www.fieldroast.com.

Try as I might, I just couldn’t leave the bacon out of this omelet. Obviously, nothing goes better with eggs. But beyond that, bacon gives the slightly bitter chard an addictive smoky and, well, meaty flavor, while the goat cheese offsets it all with a tart creaminess. The result: a hearty, one-dish meal.

Like many food-oriented folk, I have a serious kimchi obsession going. But I didn’t want just any old kimchi recipe in this book. And I knew just where to turn in search of a recipe that has a little something extra: my friend Deb Samuels, cooking teacher and coauthor with Taekyung Chung of The Korean Table: From Barbecue to Bibimbap. Deb keeps up on all things Korean, and she told me that not only is it becoming more fashionable to salt kimchi less than traditional recipes call for, but also that the water-soaking process probably can be skipped entirely. She also said one of her favorites is a white kimchi with a main ingredient of Asian pear, which happened to already feature strongly in my Korean Short Rib Tacos (page 92). Why not try a kimchi with cabbage and pear together? Of course, she was right on the money. Look for Korean chili powder, which has a distinctive heat but a mellow, sweet undertone, in Asian supermarkets; for kimchi, there really is no substitute. Once you have your ingredients, this kimchi could hardly be simpler to make, and the slight sweetness and crunch it gets from the pear make it positively haunting. Besides using it on the tacos, use it on Kimchi, Ham, and Fried Egg Pizza (page 107) and Fried Rice with Cauliflower and Kimchi (page 136).

Instructed by my mother to feed the cats, I would push the door open, inch by inch, watching the sliver of light from the kitchen stab into the darkness, waiting for it to widen gradually into a triangle across the floor, bright enough to reassure me that nothing was going to attack my hand as it darted through the gap to flip on the light switch inside the garage. For a month every year, our garage changed from a dark and hazardous clutter of bikes, chainsaws, and gardening equipment to a truly terrifying place. Even in daylight I avoided the place, but when obliged to enter—such as when forced to feed the cats (whom I’d gladly have let starve), or if I really needed a bike or a skateboard—I kept a keen eye on the cinder block and plank shelves at the back, where malevolent orange enamel pots burped with sinister unpredictability. Days went by. Cobwebs formed (the better to ensnare the cats). Whenever I might show the slightest hint of getting on familiar terms with this horror—of letting down my guard—the pots would burp again, the lids would clatter, the cats would scatter, trailing cobwebs into the attic, and I would fly to my mother’s legs and cling to them so tightly that she’d shriek in alarm. My reward for surviving? A measured respect for the mysteries of fermentation and a tangy mound of steaming sauerkraut bedded with boiled Polish and German sausages. It was worth it.

If there is any dish that could be served with every meal, every day, morning, noon, and night, it’s butter leaf lettuce salad. Eggs Benedict with butter leaf lettuce salad; cheeseburgers with butter leaf lettuce salad; pasta alla carbonara with butter leaf lettuce salad. Or, for a snack, just butter leaf lettuce salad. Its acidic elegance balances out the heartiness of any meal. The trick is the dressing. Making your own vinaigrette is among the biggest single improvements you can do in the kitchen—it becomes a distillation of your aesthetic defined by acid, oil, sweetness, and salt. Jennifer’s mastery of the vinaigrette has done more to promote the advancement of cuisine in our house than anything else: the shallots discover a plump, inner sweetness in the vinegar; the olive oil expresses its spicy-green spirit in response to the pepper; and the mustard emulsifies so that the dressing coats the lettuce in silkiness. Then the Maldon, strewn across the surface of the dressed salad—a glittering fencework of flakes perched along the crests and vales of lettuce—snaps like static electricity to stimulate the palate—a flash of pungency that illuminates everything so quickly and clearly that it is gone before you have time to fully comprehend what happened. This is Maldon’s raison d’etre: to reveal and amplify, then vanish, leaving you with only the desire for another bite.