Quick

It doesn’t take much to cook salmon or to dress it up, and there’s no way simpler than this: cook fillets by any of a number of methods, then finish them with flavored oil. Here I focus on a spicy soy oil that contains slivered garlic, peanut and sesame oils, and soy sauce, but it’s easy enough to change the spirit from Asian to European. Although oil is the basis for this sauce, the quantity is minimal because heating the oil thins it, enabling even a small amount to coat and flavor the fish.

This mysterious, dark extraordinarily delicious sauce is a kind of gastrique, a relatively simple sauce based on caramelized sugar. Note that if the sugar turns black and begins to smoke, you have burned rather than caramelized it. Throw it out and start again, with lower heat and more patience this time. And if the caramel sticks to your pan and utensils when you’re done, boil some water in the pan, with the utensils in there if necessary. The caramel will loosen right away.

Leeks, one of the first legitimate spring vegetables, are the highlight here (in fact this recipe is great without the shrimp; see page 230). In place of the shrimp, you could use scallops, tofu, chunks of chicken or pork, or slices of beef.

The sea scallop is one of the most perfect of nature’s convenience foods—almost nothing cooks faster. This is especially true if you opt to heat the mollusk until it remains rare in the center, as do most scallop admirers. Sea scallops are also large enough to stuff, not with bread crumbs or other fish, as is common with clams or lobsters, but with herbs, garlic, and other flavorings. As long as a scallop is a good inch across and roughly three-quarters of an inch thick, you can make an equatorial slit in it and fill it with any number of stuffings.

Dealing with the lemongrass is the sole challenge of this dish, and only if you’ve never done it before. Maximum flavor is released from whole lemongrass stalks when they are beaten up a bit; bruising the length of each stalk with the blunt edge of a knife takes care of this in seconds. But to include lemongrass in a sauce you must first remove the tough outer layers—this is not unlike peeling a woody scallion—and then carefully and finely mince the inner core.

This is an old New Orleans recipe that has nothing to do with grilling or barbecuing. Its name comes from the spicy, slightly smoky flavor the shrimp gain while being cooked with Worcestershire sauce and lots of black pepper. It’s a fine and almost absurdly fast dish—once the shrimp are peeled, you can have it on the table in ten minutes, and that’s no exaggeration with a creamy, rich, savory sauce that completely belies the amount of effort required on your part.

You can buy peeled shrimp, but shrimp poached in their shells have more flavor (as do shrimp poached in salt; the water should taste salty). If you’re going to peel the shrimp yourself, as I recommend, it pays to buy larger shrimp and cut down on the work. Go for those in the range of 30 to 40 per pound (sometimes labeled U-40 as in “under 40”), or even larger if the cost is not prohibitive. To subtly improve the flavor of the shrimp, add other seasonings to the poaching liquid—the easiest thing is to grab a handful of pickling mix, which usually contains peppercorns, allspice, bay leaf, and coriander and dill seeds. Throw in a couple of cloves of garlic or a piece of onion if you like.

Most steamed mussel preparations contain parsley, garlic, and white wine, with the occasional addition of tomatoes and herbs. There are, however, other directions to take with no additional effort. Generally, there are two easy changes to make: First, use distinctive Asian seasonings like ginger, soy, or curry powder. And second, omit the cooking liquid. By relying only on the mussels’ natural juices, you can add fewer seasonings (and less of each) and still produce a flavorful sauce that is less watery than most. I always serve Asian-style mussels with a bowl of rice on the side.

The perfect whole-meal salad features as much flavor, texture, and bulk as any other well-prepared meal, and the fact that the base is a pile of greens makes me feel like I’m getting away with something. This one takes about ten minutes longer than a plain green salad and by changing the topping can be made in different ways every time, always with a minimum of effort. Use a blender for the dressing; it makes quick work of dispersing the sesame paste or peanut butter throughout the liquid ingredients—something that can be a real hassle with a fork or a whisk—creating a perfect emulsion. And because the blender purees the garlic and ginger, there’s no need to mince them; just peel, chop roughly, and drop them into the blender with the other ingredients. My first choice for topping this salad is grilled scallops—they’re almost ludicrously fast and easy, and their texture and flavor complement both greens and dressing—though shrimp, steak, or chicken thighs all could be substituted.

Sometimes a simple salad features such powerful flavors that by adding a couple of straightforward ingredients a whole meal appears as if by magic. Here the starting place is a Southeast Asian–style cucumber salad, with a dressing made from lime juice, lemongrass, fish sauce (called nam pla in Thailand and nuoc mam in Vietnam), and a few other strong seasonings. This dressing commingles perfectly with the natural juices of the cucumbers to moisten the greens. Top all with grilled scallops—or other fish or meat—and you create an easy one-dish meal whose flavor really jumps off the plate. It looks lovely, too, especially if your cucumbers are good enough to leave unpeeled. And (although not by design, I assure you), this salad is extremely low in fat.

I devised this recipe to harness the delicious juices shrimp exude as they’re cooking—the shrimp essence. Not wanting to completely overwhelm delicately flavored greens with the powerfully spiced shrimp, I use a mixture of arugula, lettuce, and a high proportion of mint, dressed with olive oil and lemon juice. The result is a nice, juicy, big, flavorful and easy salad.

So few ingredients and so much flavor—as long as the ingredients are of high quality! Omit the basil if you can’t find any, but where there are good tomatoes there is probably good basil. Add slices of mozzarella to make this more substantial.

A frequently seen snack in Bangkok and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

This is simply a kind of sea-based mesclun with a distinctively sesame-flavored dressing. The only challenge in making it lies in the shopping. Few supermarkets carry any seaweed at all, so you need to hit an Asian or health food market for any kind of selection. At most Japanese markets and some health food stores, you can find what amounts to a prepackaged assortment of seaweed salad greens; these are a little more expensive than buying individual seaweeds but will give you a good variety without a big investment.

Fresh asian-style noodles are everywhere these days—even supermarkets—and they’re ideal for soups, because you can cook them right in the broth. It takes only a few minutes, and, unlike dried noodles, they won’t make the broth too starchy. Do not overcook the noodles; if you use thin ones, they’ll be ready almost immediately after you add them to the simmering stock. Start with canned chicken stock if you must, but don’t skip the step of simmering it briefly with the garlic and ginger, which will give it a decidedly Asian flavor.

Egg Drop Soup, a cliché in American-Chinese restaurants for at least fifty years, has a less-well-known Italian counterpart called stracciatella. Both are based on the simple fact that eggs scramble or curdle in boiling water or stock, and each demonstrates the ease with which a basic dish can be transformed in spirit, moving from one cuisine to the other almost as quickly as you can change your mind about which you prefer.

I like gazpacho, but the ultimate minimalist version—take a few tomatoes, a red pepper, some onion, oil, and vinegar, and whiz it in a blender—doesn’t always cut it for me. When I confessed this to my friend and sometime co-author Jean-Georges Vongerichten, he suggested I abandon tradition entirely and combine tomatoes with another fruit of the season: cantaloupe. These, combined with basil and lemon—in place of vinegar—produce the mildest, most delicious, creamiest gazpacho I’ve ever tasted. Make sure to use ripe cantaloupe and tomato at the height of the summer for the best results.

Like Japan, Korea makes good use of fermented beans, in the form of soy sauce and the terrific chilibean paste known as go chu jang (page 591). If you cannot find that, use the Sesame-Chile Paste on page 591 or hoisin, spiked with a couple of pinches of cayenne or dried red chile flakes, but don’t make the dish too hot—it should be predominantly sweet, sticky, and spicy. Serve with white rice, preferably short grain (page 507), and a salad or vegetable.

This sauce is lovely layered with tomatoes or cucumbers. Thinned with more water, oil, or yogurt, it also makes a great salad dressing. You can buy canned or bottled tahini—ground sesame seed paste—at any Middle Eastern or health food store.

I like this one quite sweet, but you can eliminate the sugar entirely if you prefer. Add a little vodka if you’re in the mood.