Weeknight Meals

This dish which has zucchini as its focus—is simply amazing when made in midsummer with tender, crisp squash, but it isn’t half bad even when made in midwinter with a limp vegetable that’s traveled halfway around the world to get to your table. Either way, it is an unusual use for zucchini, which here substitutes for meat in a kind of vegetarian spaghetti carbonara, the rich pasta dish featuring eggs, bacon, and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Made with zucchini instead of bacon, the dish becomes a little less fat-laden, obviously, but it is still rich and delicious.

It is pasta’s nature to be simple. I’ve long made a vegetable sauce by poaching greens such as spinach in the pasta water, then removing them and adding the pasta, a neat trick. But my friend Jack Bishop, author of Vegetarian Italian Cooking, mentioned that he’d gone one step further, cooking the greens right in with the pasta and adding seasonings at the last minute. The method relies on the fact that there is a period of two or three minutes between the moment when the pasta’s last traces of chalkiness disappear and the point where it begins to become mushy. If, just before the pasta is done, you add the greens, whose tough stems have been removed, greens and pasta will finish cooking at the same time. When making this dish and others like it, you must adhere to the often ignored canon of allowing at least a gallon of water per pound of pasta, because you need a pot large enough to accommodate the greens and because they cannot be allowed to slow down the cooking too much

This dish is a minimalist’s take on the northern Italian autumn staple of tortelli filled with zucca, a pumpkinlike vegetable whose flesh, like that of butternut or acorn squash, is dense, orange, and somewhat sweet. The flavor and essential nature of that dish can be captured in a thirty-minute preparation that turns the classic inside out, using the squash as a sauce and sparing you the hours it would take to stuff the tortelli.

Given that tofu itself does not add much body to a dish, you need a substantial sauce, like one with canned coconut milk as its base, to make up for the tofu’s blandness. Like heavy cream, coconut milk will thicken a sauce, making it luxurious in almost no time. The onion must be browned carefully and thoroughly: keep the heat high enough so that this happens in a timely fashion—it should take about ten minutes and in no case more than fifteen—but not so high that the onion burns. I call this level of heat “medium-high,” but all stoves are different; the oil should be bubbling but not smoking, and you must stir the onion every minute or so.

Spreading a roast with a sweet coating—apricot jam comes to mind—adds an interesting contrast of flavor, and the sugar encourages browning. But the results are often too sweet. So I decided to experiment with alternative coatings for a small roast of pork—one that would cook quickly enough to be considered for weeknight dinners—and settled on applesauce, which has a not-too-obvious benefit. Because applesauce doesn’t contain nearly the same percentage of sugar as jam, more of it can be used without overwhelming the meat with sweetness, and the thicker coating protects the meat and keeps it moist. This is important, because the superlean pork sold in supermarkets almost inexorably dries out as it cooks.

Miso is a superb thickener, adding a rich, creamy consistency when whisked into a small amount of liquid. With that in mind, it’s the work of a moment to turn the pan juices remaining after searing a piece of meat into a great sauce. My choice here is pork for meat and red wine for liquid; the combination resulting from these three ingredients completely belies the amount of energy put into the dish. Red miso (which is in fact brown) adds terrific color to the sauce and has the strongest flavor of all the misos; it’s also the easiest to find. Miso must be handled gently, because high heat practically destroys its flavor; so be sure to keep the heat low when you stir it in. For the pork, I prefer a bone-in chop, preferably from the rib end of the loin; it’s a little bit fattier than other chops, and these days pork is so lean that the extra fat is a benefit rather than a detriment.

Although I was told this dish—beautifully browned sausages nestled on a bed of grapes in varying stages of doneness, some lightly browned, some collapsed, some whole and nearly raw—is Umbrian in origin, it seems as if many workers of the land who produced sausages and picked grapes would have created this, even if by accident, no matter where they lived. It is an often overlooked recipe in cookbooks, perhaps because there’s almost nothing to it. In any case, the wonderful marriage is incredibly easy to produce and easily worked into anyone’s repertoire. With good bread and a salad, you’ve got a great weeknight meal in about half an hour.

By building this stew one ingredient at a time—in a manner not unlike that of making soup—the process is streamlined and nearly everything is browned. This makes the flavors so much more complex that the stew needs no stock to finish it off. (Should you have some stock on hand, however, by all means use it.) To make this stew even tastier, use a mixture of mushrooms or add a few reconstituted dried porcini and use their soaking liquid to replace some of the water.

It isn’t often you can combine a few winter staples and create a novel, fresh-tasting dish that is easily varied, stands on its own, or forms the base for a variety of other foods. Yet a simple mélange of fennel and orange does all of these things and without a lot of effort. Take some slices of boneless pork, for example, marinate them briefly in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper, pan-roast them, then serve them on a bed of the compote: the mingled juices are sheer delight. (I’ve presented the recipe that way here, but it is easy to cook the fennel-orange combination on its own.) Similarly, the compote works nicely as a bed for simple roasted cod, sautéed duck breast, and grilled chicken. There isn’t much technique to speak of here; you’ll know the dish is done when the orange juice bubbles become scarce. Just be sure not to cook the compote entirely dry; the orange juice sauce is a nice touch.

Lamb chops are among the best meats to grill; although they tend to catch fire, they cook so quickly—three minutes per side is usually more than enough—that there is no time for them to char, and the fire makes the exterior even crisper than it might be otherwise. The cucumbers are best if they’re salted, which removes some of their bitterness and makes them extra-crisp. Start with one or two Kirby (small) cucumbers per person—or half of a medium cucumber or about a third of a long (“English”) cucumber.

Though this is an unusual preparation, in many ways lamb is the meat most suited to this simple treatment. Like all cutlet preparations, it’s lightning-quick.

If you don’t see lamb ribs in your supermarket, the chances are that they’re being tossed. Both demand and profit are evidently so slim that they are not worth processing and putting out in the case. Which is a shame, because next to pork (spare) ribs, lamb ribs are the best down-and-dirty grill item I know. They’re also the cheapest. Where I live, it’s hard to pay more than a dollar a pound for them. Like spareribs, lamb ribs are the bones of the breast, separated into individual pieces. The supermarket meat department or butcher may give you the entire breast, or he may separate the ribs for you. If he does not, be sure to ask him to at least remove or cut through the breastbone, which will make cutting in between the ribs fast and easy. Lamb ribs require special treatment while grilling, because they are loaded with fat (this is one of the reasons they taste so good, of course). You can grill them very slowly or (my preference) parboil the ribs just for ten minutes or so, long enough to render enough of the fat so that it doesn’t catch fire the instant you put the ribs on the grill. You’ll still need to be careful during grilling; don’t leave the fire for more than a minute or two. Broiling them makes this somewhat easier, but you still have to keep an eye out; left unattended, they will burn. Any brushing sauce or spice rub you like is suitable here. My choice is a sweet but pungent amalgam of raw onion, strong mustard, and honey, marmalade, or maple syrup.

Asparagus may Introduce spring, but mint screams it. The perennial herb is among the first edible greens out of the ground, and it’s rampant enough to be considered a weed for those who aren’t fond of it. Team it with lamb and you have a model spring dish.

Rack of lamb—a row of unseparated rib chops—has been a restaurant feature for so long that many people assume there is some trick to cooking it. But there is not. You trim the rack of excess fat and roast it at high heat. Salt and pepper are good seasonings, there are a number of quick tricks for adding flavor to the exterior, and you can of course make a quick reduction sauce before serving. But these are options and by my standards unnecessary: the distinctive flavor of true lamb is an uncommonly fine treat. Getting true lamb is part of the problem; the mild flavor of baby lamb has a more universal appeal than the gamier flavor of older meat. Be sure to tell the butcher you want a rack that weighs less than two pounds. Because many restaurants offer a whole rack as a serving (six to eight ribs!), many people believe that to be a standard serving size. But there are almost no circumstances where even a small rack will not serve two people; a larger rack can accommodate three and sometimes four. To serve more, just cook two racks at a time; they will fit comfortably side by side in most roasting pans. I like to cut each rack in half before roasting. This makes for slightly more uniform cooking and also relieves you from separating each rack into individual ribs before serving. The roasting itself is child’s play. Your oven should be hot (it should also be well insulated, because high heat produces smoke). Cut the rack most of the way down between the ribs so that more meat is exposed to intense heat and therefore becomes crisp. (“Frenching” the ribs—scraping the meat off the bones to leave them naked and neater in appearance—is counterproductive; the crisp meat on the bones is one of the joys of rack of lamb.) Unless you’re highly experienced, the most reliable method of judging doneness is with an instant-read thermometer; 125°F in the center will give you medium-rare meat.

This recipe which is vaguely related to the classic chili, combines chickpeas, meat, and spices and takes advantage of all of those assets. The cooked chickpeas are sautéed over high heat until browned and slightly crisp, and the pan is ultimately deglazed with the reserved chickpea-cooking liquid.

This dish, which often appears on bistro menus in France, fits the need for a good steak served with something powerfully salty and rich (anchovy butter or a combination of butter, soy sauce, and ginger will also do the trick). Some might consider the sauce overkill, but not those of us who crave it. My favorite cheese for this sauce is Roquefort, which is made from sheep’s milk. But it’s entirely a matter of taste—Stilton, Gorgonzola, Maytag blue, or any high-quality, fairly soft blue cheese will work equally well. Don’t bother, however, trying to make this sauce with commercially produced domestic blue cheese, such as that sold precrumbled for salads. Not only will its taste be inferior, but it will not give the sauce the same creaminess. This is a case where the usually too-lean and mildly flavored tenderloin (filet mignon) will do just fine. Its tenderness is welcome and its blandness more than compensated for by the sauce. I’d still prefer a good strip steak or rib-eye, which are chewier and more flavorful, but you will notice their higher fat content when they’re combined with the rich sauce.

Wrapping one food with another is familiar, especially if meat, cheese, or vegetables make up the filling—think of ravioli, stuffed cabbage, or egg rolls. Making meat the wrapping is a nice role reversal, a neat twist that is extraordinary enough to allow a simple preparation to wow a crowd. Such is the case with the Japanese negima, in which beef is wrapped around chives or scallions, then brushed with soy sauce and grilled.

Chimichurri is a simple Argentinean steak sauce made almost entirely from parsley, with huge amounts of chopped garlic and red pepper. In spirit, it’s not unlike pesto, but because everything is hand-chopped rather than ground or mashed, it has a bit more chew to it. And its powerful ingredients set it apart, making it the perfect complement for mild-tasting but meaty tenderloin.

Another great, simple sauce based on anchovies (there are two in the pasta chapter; see pages 263 and 271). You get acidity, astringency, and fruitiness from the wine, piquancy from the garlic and anchovy, complexity from the thyme, and a smooth finish from the butter—all in about the time it takes to preheat a grill for the steaks. You don’t need great red wine for this sauce, but it should be one with a fair amount of fruit and at least a little structure.

Maybe you don’t have a grill, maybe it’s freezing outside, maybe you don’t want to eat dinner in the choking cloud of smoke that stovetop steak cookery unfailingly produces. Fear not: a minimalist preparation if ever there was one, this technique will put a great crust on your steaks and keep your kitchen (largely) smoke free.