Quick

The richest, most elegant dessert you can make with so little work.

I make these skewers, the creation of my friend Johnny Earles, several times each summer. The bananas, especially, drive everyone wild.

If you take soft, ripe fruit, top it with a fancy sauce like crème Anglaise, and run the whole thing under the broiler, you have a four-star dessert. But if you top the fruit with something like sweetened heavy cream, whipped just enough so that it holds some body when broiled, or sweetened sour cream—which hardly needs to be whisked—you can produce a similarly glorious dessert in less than half the time. Although this preparation is lightning-quick, it has to be constantly watched while cooking. Get the broiler hot, put the dish right under the heating element, and keep your eyes open. You want the topping to burn a little bit—it will smell like toasting marshmallows—but obviously not too much. When the topping is nearly uniformly brown, with a few black spots, it’s done. The fruit will not have cooked at all.

A simple, traditional, and super-rich dessert.

Here’s a strawberry dessert that not only is delicious and intriguing but also can compete with plain fruit in lightness. Strawberries are sugared to juice them up a bit, then drizzled with balsamic vinegar and sprinkled with a pinch of black pepper. The result is so elegant that you’ll find it in great restaurants from here to Emilia-Romagna, the home of balsamic vinegar. It’s an ideal dessert after a heavy meal. Serve, if you like, with a few crisp cookies or a slice of pound, sponge, or angel food cake. This will not hold for any length of time; you can sugar the berries an hour or two before you want to serve them, but no longer.

This mixture of sour and whipped cream is akin to crème fraîche, but I find it more delicious. It’s killer on strawberries.

Compound Butters can be stored, well wrapped, in the freezer for two or three weeks.

This recipe and the four that follow share one basic requirement: in-season, preferably locally grown strawberries. In the event that you can’t find strawberries that match that description, substitute any other berries—blackberries, blueberries, raspberries—that are at their peak. Look for strawberries that are dark red, inside and out. The sugar will juice up any strawberries and make them sweeter of course, but it cannot work miracles.

Whether you work by hand or with a blender or food processor, it takes just five minutes to make mayonnaise, and when you’re done you have a flavorful, creamy dressing that is so far superior to the bottled stuff you may not recognize it as the same thing. Next to vinaigrette, it’s the most useful of all dressings, and despite its luxurious nature it contains little saturated fat. If you’re worried about the health aspects of using a raw egg, start with bottled mayonnaise and beat in a little oil and/or any of the suggested additions.

It’s hard to imagine five minutes in the kitchen better spent than those spent making vinaigrette, the closest thing to an all-purpose sauce. The standard ratio for making vinaigrette is three parts oil to one part vinegar, but because the vinegars I use are mild and extra virgin olive oil is quite assertive, I usually wind up at about two parts oil to one part vinegar, or even a little stronger. Somewhere in that range you’re going to find a home for your own taste; start by using a ratio of three to one and taste, adding more vinegar until you’re happy. (You may even prefer more vinegar than olive oil; there’s nothing wrong with that.) Be sure to use good wine vinegar; balsamic and sherry vinegars, while delicious, are too dominant for some salads, fine for others. Lemon juice is a fine substitute, but because it is less acidic than most vinegars—3 or 4 percent compared to 6 or 7 percent—you will need more of it. The ingredients may be combined with a spoon, a fork, a whisk, or a blender. Hand tools give you an unconvincing emulsion that must be used immediately. Blenders produce vinaigrettes that very much resemble thin mayonnaise in color and thickness—without using egg. They also dispose of the job of mincing the shallot; just peel, chop, and dump it into the container at the last minute (if you add it earlier, it will be pureed, depriving you of the pleasure of its distinctive crunch). This is best made fresh but will keep, refrigerated, for a few days. Bring it back to room temperature and whisk briefly before using it.

While the best way to eat figs is out of hand—few fruits are as delicious when ripe—there are rewarding ways to use them in recipes; this fig relish is one of them. It is especially brilliant on grilled swordfish or tuna (try it on Grilled Fish the Mediterranean Way, page 98), but nearly as good with grilled or broiled chicken (especially dark meat), pork, lamb, or beef. Note that all of these foods contain some fat; because the relish is so lean, combining it with nonfatty meats or fish—such as boneless chicken or flounder—produces a dish that seems to lack substance.

Roasted red pepper puree is incredibly useful, easy to make, and delicious—you can eat it with a spoon. It contains two basic ingredients, red bell peppers and olive oil, and both are always readily available. And since making a batch is about as difficult as scrambling an egg, and the puree keeps fairly well, there’s little reason not to have some on hand. If you are so inclined, you can flavor it with any number of herbs (thyme, basil, and parsley are fine) or spices, like cumin or chile powder (or minced chiles). I usually leave the sauce unadulterated. Of course you can use bottled or canned preroasted peppers (“pimientos”) here, though the results will not be as fresh tasting.

This is a rich cocktail sauce, laced with butter but made spiky with vinegar and horseradish. Make it as hot as you like and serve it warm or cold. It is a natural partner for poached, grilled, or otherwise cooked shrimp.

You can buy sun-dried tomatoes already reconstituted and soaked in olive oil, but they’re expensive. It’s certainly easy enough—and only slightly less convenient if you think ahead—to begin with dried tomatoes. They’re almost as tough as shoe leather when you buy them but can easily be reconstituted: Soak them in hot water to cover until they’re soft, about an hour. (You might change the water once it cools to hasten the softening.) Drain the tomatoes and marinate them in a good fruity olive oil to cover (a half cup or more) for at least an hour. After that, making the tomato paste takes just a moment. Traditionally, the tomatoes are pounded, usually with garlic, in a mortar and pestle. I use a small food processor and like the resulting texture very much.

Parsley is the most reliable and underrated herb in the western culinary world. Although we’ve come a long way from the days when its major role was as a decorative sprig on the side of a plate, we still don’t use it in the kinds of quantities we could. Here it is cooked like a vegetable like spinach, really—to create a delicious, fresh-tasting sauce that I frequently serve over pasta but that also makes an interesting foil for simply grilled or broiled chicken breasts.