Easy

One of my go-to sandwiches in Washington, D.C., is the chicken cutlet at Taylor Gourmet, where the owners hail from Philadelphia and the sandwiches are all homages to the way things are done in the City of Brotherly Love. Their sandwiches are studies in simplicity: not too many ingredients, but they’re high-quality ones, treated well. I love their combination of crunchy chicken, bitter and spicy broccoli rabe, and slightly melting provolone. But at home I like to jazz things up by adding a mayonnaise spiked with peppadews, those miniature red peppers from South Africa that are pickled to sweet-and-sour perfection. If you can’t find them, substitute your favorite bread-and-butter pickle

The ginger packs a double-edged spicy punch in this sandwich, as fresh pieces in the chicken-poaching liquid and in powdered form in the avocado spread. Mango adds its sweet-tart, cooling magic.

This is a pie that you can put together in a flash, because it depends on the idea that you’ve got some great condiments and accompaniments already made and just waiting for such a use as this. Like all my favorite pizzas, it depends on relatively spare but high-quality toppings.

If you haven’t eaten tacos in Mexico City, then as far as I’m concerned, you haven’t really eaten tacos. Countless joints there specialize in tacos al pastor, carved off a spit like the shawarma from which it is derived, but with the delectable addition of pineapple (and with tortillas, naturally, instead of pita). They usually make a bit of a show of it, too: At El Califa, my sister and I watched the taco guy hold a plate with two tortillas on it in one hand, then use a long knife in the other to swipe off a chunk of pork, which fell right onto one of the tortillas. He quickly reached higher and sliced off a bit of the pineapple ring that was sitting on top of the spit, catching the fruit, too, on the tortilla. One of El Califa’s other specialties is a steak cutlet taco: The single piece of meat is longer than the tortilla, but it’s so tender it folds up inside and you can bite through it with your teeth. I like to combine the two ideas into one: using a thin cutlet of pork that I quickly marinate in pineapple juice and combining the traditional garnishes of onion, cilantro, pineapple, and lime into a quick salsa.

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.

These simple, satisfying tacos were inspired by breakfast tacos in Austin, roasted sweet potatoes sold by street vendors in Mexico City, and the need for a quick, spicy meal to be devoured in front of the TV after a long workday.

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 got the idea for packing pungent combinations of toppings onto fish before it cooks from Nate Appleman’s gorgeous book, A16: Food + Wine. I like to take it a step further and cook the fish over saffron-infused beads of Israeli couscous. This recipe is a great use for my 12-Hour Tomatoes (page 2), but if you don’t already have some in your refrigerator, you can substitute three or four sun-dried tomato halves packed in oil. Eat this fish with sautéed greens or a salad.

When the cooking times match up, it only makes sense to cook a protein and a starch together, as in this combination of fish and rice. It’s almost a one-dish meal, and I say almost because you do need to pull out a little bowl to make the spicy-sweet salsa while the pot simmers on the stovetop. This features my favorite way to make rice, an adaptation of the traditional coconut-milk rice that tastes good but is high in fat. The proliferation of coconut water as a healthful drink found in most supermarkets gave me a lighter—and, frankly, better—way to do it, and I haven’t looked back. Be sure to buy juice labeled 100% coconut water, as some juice-pack brands have other flavorings you wouldn’t want here, and some canned products include sugar and preservatives, defeating the purpose altogether.

If you’re like me and prefer dark meat, the easiest way to satisfy your roast-chicken urges without tackling a whole bird is to take advantage of one of my favorite cuts: the whole leg, with thigh and drumstick attached. It makes a hearty meal, and it takes well to the same kind of classic preparations a whole chicken does, including roasting with the magical trio of parsley, lemon, and garlic. If you don’t have a jar of Herbed Lemon Confit (page 4) in the refrigerator, you can substitute store-bought preserved lemon or even just two fresh lemon slices (peel and pith included) plus an extra 1 teaspoon of olive oil. Feel free to roast more sunchokes and use the leftovers to toss into salads, mash like potatoes, or puree in soups.

Apples, pork, and cabbage would seem best for fall, but I confess to making this dish anytime I get a hankering for a pork chop and see Brussels sprouts in the market. The tart apple and spicy ginger give it an appealing lightness. I like to use Brussels sprouts for single-serving dishes for an obvious reason: There’s less possible waste than with a big head of cabbage.

Despite all my big Texas talk, the truth is, I don’t make classic chicken-fried steak for myself. Between the prep work and the calorie count, it’s just not practical. Instead, I make something that requires no pounding, no dredging in egg and flour, no inch of oil in the pan. It’s inspired by my favorite steaks growing up: those at Margaret Heinen’s Western Sky, where the cooks would rub crushed garlic into the steaks, very lightly dredge them in flour, and grill them over wood. The light coating was positively delectable. I pan-fry my steak, pair it with boiled and smashed new potatoes, and finish them both with a quick sauce of anchovies, butter, and parsley. I don’t call this chicken-fried, for obvious reasons, but it tastes like Texas just the same.

My brother Michael once told me the two questions I should ask anyone who claims to make real (i.e., Texasstyle) chili. Question one: What kind of beans do you put in it? Question two: What kind of tomatoes do you use? Both are trick questions, of course, because the answer to both is none. There are no beans and no tomatoes in real Texas chili. The full name is “chili con carne,” and that’s what it means: chile peppers with meat, and very little else. When done right, it’s a beautiful thing. With only one kind of chile and at least 6 hours of simmering, it’s got the round flavors and slow-burning heat that define a “bowl o’ red.” If you want something hotter, add up to 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, or to taste. I usually make at least two servings, because after eating the first one (with saltines, grated Cheddar cheese, chopped onions, and, okay, even pinto beans as long as they’re on the side), I love the second serving on a hot dog or burger, or as part of enchiladas (page 64).

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.

One of the smartest things you can do when cooking for one is make large quantities of pasta sauce to freeze and then defrost and adapt into quick weeknight meals. Such sauces can go well beyond a simple marinara. When I asked the queen of Italian cooking in America, Lidia Bastianich, for her favorite approaches to such a thing, she quickly came to me with this hearty vegetable stew that can do triple, quadruple, even quintuple duty: Use a cup of it to dress pasta, of course, but also spoon it onto charred bread for bruschetta, use it as a base on which to nestle grilled fish or chicken, or try one of the companion recipes: Baked Egg in Fall Vegetables (page 33) or Fall Vegetable Soup with White Beans (page 58). I couldn’t resist putting my stamp on this recipe: I did what I do with many tomato sauces and splashed in some fish sauce to deepen the flavor.

One of my college hangouts was a scruffy Austin restaurant called Les Amis, which my friends and I called “Lazy Me,” in honor of the decidedly unhelpful service. The food was dependable even if the waitstaff wasn’t, and a standby for me was a simple bowl of black beans, rice, and cheese, priced so even students without trust funds could afford it. Later, I learned that the combination of beans and rice is one of the most nutritionally complete vegetarian meals possible. While beans are one of the vegetables that takes better to canning than others, if you make a pot of your own from scratch (page 47), the taste and texture are incomparable. When Les Amis finally closed, torn down to make room for a new Starbucks, I missed not just the peasant’s bowl, but those inattentive waitresses, too.

Beans certainly hold up better in the industrial canning process than many other vegetables, but there are still many good reasons to cook your own, not the least of which is the fact that so many canned varieties come packed with way more sodium than you need. Here’s my adaptation of bean maven Steve Sando’s basic stovetop method for cooking beans. If you have a pressure cooker or a slow cooker, feel free to experiment with it. This recipe gives the beans a relatively neutral seasoning that leaves them easy to take in different directions. If desired, you can add herbs and spices (torn dried chile peppers, toasted and ground cumin seeds, black peppercorns, oregano) to the cooking liquid, but resist the urge to add anything acidic, such as tomatoes, citrus, or vinegar, until the beans are cooked, or the skins of the beans will not soften as they should.

When I visited Tokyo and Kyoto with my friend Devra a couple years back, I didn’t want to leave. I would say it was the beautiful aesthetic, the attention to design and style, the amazingly efficient trains, but really, of course, it was the food. I was especially excited when I learned how much the Japanese revere the sweet potato, one of my all-time favorite foods. In season (fall and winter), street vendors hawk stone-roasted ones—paler-fleshed and sweeter than ours. Famous cookbook author Harumi Kurihara showed me how she loves to mash miso into roasted sweet potatoes, so when I returned home, I knew that even the orange-fleshed varieties here would take beautifully to Japanese flavors. For a kick of bitterness that nicely offsets the earthy miso, use broccoli rabe instead of the broccolini.

This potato topper was inspired by Polynesian and Southeast Asian combinations of shrimp and mashed sweet potatoes. A good-quality Indian curry powder can be substituted for the Thai curry paste.

This elegant soup has a depth of flavor, brightened by orange and layered with smoked paprika, that would make it right at home as a dinner party starter. For yourself, pair it with a side salad and a big piece of crusty bread, and it’s dinner tonight, while you plan the party for another day.