Easy

Don’t be deceived by this salad’s simplicity: the lemon dressing and fresh herbs bring out the complex flavors of the tomatoes and onions, and if the ingredients are good, the results are practically miraculous. Note the extremely useful technique of “killing” the onions—as they say in Turkey—which you might try whenever you use raw onions, to tame their harshness. You can make this salad an hour ahead of time, refrigerate, and toss again before serving.

Usually served as a panchan (side dish or small appetizer), this makes a fine little salad, too. Like many panchan, it contains sesame oil. To trim bean sprouts—a process I consider unnecessary but many people worldwide believe essential—simply pull off the thin little tail.

Crunchy, mildly sweet, and lightly spicy, this is a lovely little salad I learned in Kyoto. If you can find myoga—a lily root that looks something like garlic and is sold at some Asian markets—use it instead of the onion. Like onion, it’s spicy and peppery; unlike onion, if you eat too much of it, you forget everything— or so I was told.

Stale bread is not only okay for this dish but preferable. You can make a similar dish (called fattoush and Middle Eastern in origin) using pita bread; make sure it’s nice and crunchy before tossing with the tomatoes and olive oil. Use ripe, flavorful tomatoes here. And add some chopped shallots or red onion to the mix if you like.

Throughout the eastern Mediterranean, you’ll find cool cooked greens sprinkled with olive oil and doused with lemon. Every green you can cook is used in this way, from spinach to wild greens I’d never heard of. It’s great with collards, dandelions, mustard, broccoli raab . . . you get the idea. If you know you’re cooking greens one night, make a double batch and prepare these the next day. Juicy, tart, and refreshing, this is the ideal summer vegetable dish.

Packaged croutons may lead the way in useless foods sold at the supermarket. For the price of a box of croutons you can buy a loaf of good bread, let it get stale, and make the equivalent of five boxes of terrific croutons, without chemistry-class additives—just olive oil and salt. Croutons, of course, are one of the many ways to use up leftover day-old bread (bread pudding, bread crumbs, and bread salad are some others), and to make really good ones you need the kind of bread that will actually get stale, not bagged, sliced sandwich loaves that just start growing mold once they’re past their prime. Really, any French- or Italian-style loaf will do, though the better the bread, the better the crouton. This is a recipe for the most basic of croutons—you could rub the torn bread with a peeled garlic clove or scatter some chopped fresh rosemary over it before it goes in the oven—but this is the place to start. Many people remove the crust from bread before making croutons; I do not.

Fresh bread crumbs are superior to packaged ones in many ways. First of all, you can start with good bread. Second, you can keep them coarse, and coarse bread crumbs are almost always preferable to fine. Finally, you can season and toast them as you like.

This is a condiment. Set it on the table and use it whenever the mood strikes. I’ve put it on everything from scrambled eggs to tuna salad, but I like it best on plain steamed vegetables.

A sprinkling of this mixture works wonders on stir-fries, even steamed vegetables. It takes no time to make and can simply be set on your table and used as the whim strikes you.

A popular accompaniment for White Cut Chicken (page 273), this is also good stirred into soups.

The spicy sweetness of this Mexican salad is super-refreshing and delicious as long as you have ripe fruit; vary the ingredients depending on what you find. Really, any fruit is suitable, from oranges and apples to pineapples and papayas; peaches and melons are wonderful summer options.

So basic yet so wonderful, this sauce has literally dozens of possible permutations. Especially good with spring, summer, or egg rolls, it’s also terrific with grilled fish or meats. If you have the time, let it sit for a few minutes before serving to allow the flavors to come together. Information on Asian fish sauces like nam pla is on page 500.

This is no more than hoisin sauce spiced up. It’s great with Spring Rolls (page 38) or Lumpia Rolls (page 68) and makes an acceptable substitute for Sesame-Chile Paste (page 591). Like every other bottled condiment, hoisin varies in quality: look for a jar that lists soy as the first ingredient and little more than that, sugar, chile, and spices. As for chili sauce, look for Vietnamese chili-garlic sauce, sold at almost every Asian food store; like hoisin sauce, it keeps indefinitely in your refrigerator.

Canned coconut milk is great stuff—I use it all the time. But fresh coconut milk—made from dried, unsweetened coconut, which is sold at every health food store (and many Indian, Latin, and Caribbean markets)—is cheap, easy, delicious, and pure. You can make coconut milk thick or thin, depending on the proportions of water to coconut; this is a fairly rich blend, equivalent to canned coconut milk. The coconut also can be reused to make a thinner milk from a second pressing.

An unusually versatile preparation, good as an appetizer, a side dish, or a salad, and as appropriate over lettuce as it is solo. Can be made days and days in advance.

The strong, unusual aroma of nam pla (Thai fish sauce, page 500) is not something that instantly appeals to many Westerners. But when you cook with it, or mix it with other flavors, its wonderful, characteristic saltiness blossoms. This incredibly simple dressing is great with seafood or mixed greens.

This is an essential, basic, slightly sweet Thai sauce (the Vietnamese nuoc cham is almost identical) used as a dressing for vegetables, noodles, meats, and fish and as a dipping sauce for almost any tidbit of food. Addictive, if you ask me. (Try it with plain grilled shrimp and you’ll see.) Many people make this blazingly hot; my version is much tamer. If you add five, or even ten, small Thai chiles, you won’t be breaking with tradition. See page 500 for information on Asian fish sauces like nam pla, page 185 for a description of dried shrimp.

Who knew something so simple could be so good? Ground, toasted sticky rice is an ingredient used as a binder in some Thai dishes, but it’s also sprinkled over sticky rice as a seasoning, contributing a toasty, smoky note. Unless you make Thai food with unusual frequency, I think it’s best to make single-meal batches, though you could easily multiply this recipe. Use it in Laarb (page 199), or sprinkle over sticky rice any time you make it.

Used widely for spring rolls, this also tastes great with plain grilled meat or chicken or spooned over lightly steamed vegetables. You can substitute soy sauce for the nuoc mam (usually called nam pla in this book and described on page 500, but in any case Southeast Asian fish sauce) if you prefer.

Morocco’s oranges are renowned for their distinctive sweetness, but they’re not common here. Use good California or Florida navels or clementines (you’ll need six or eight) instead. Removing the thin membranes from the individual segments is an optional refinement.