Weeknight Meals

Haaq is actually the name of a bitter green from Kashmir, not unlike spinach but perhaps a little more strongly flavored. In any case, spinach is used as a substitute throughout India, and this simple preparation is widespread. Neither mustard oil nor the amount of chile (I use only one) is key; but asafetida—also known as hing—the odd yellow powder (it’s made from a resin that is exuded by the roots of the plant) with the off putting aroma, most definitely is. In fact, this is the place to use it and learn to love it, as I believe you will. You can serve this as a side dish (in which case halve the quantities) or as a main course,with rice. It’s also often served with fried fish on top of it.

A dish I learned from my good friend Andrea, who is originally from Rome but has collected unusual pasta dishes from all over Italy. This is clearly a peasant dish, but the presence of sausage, butter, and cream makes it special enough for guests. Use well-seasoned “Italian” sausage; it can be hot if you like. That made without casing—in patties or bulk—will save you a step.

A pasta dish kids love and one that became traditional with mine whenever we left them with a sitter for the evening. It’s best if the ham is prosciutto, the cream thick and fresh, and the peas just shelled, but it’s pretty good with supermarket ham and cream and frozen peas, and I’ve made it that way plenty of times. For variety, add about a cup of sliced button mushrooms to the ham mixture.

One of those wonderful from-the-pantry pasta dishes that can be prepared in the time it takes to boil the water and cook the pasta. Canned tuna is not only acceptable but necessary; but the ideal tuna here would be that taken from the tuna’s belly, the fattiest part, and cured (preferably by your Sicilian grandmother) in great olive oil. Assuming you don’t have that, buy tuna packed in olive oil from Italy or Spain. (In a serious specialty store, you might find belly tuna—probably labeled ventresca—packed in olive oil. It’s dynamite.) What you’re looking for is dark, soft meat that will flake nicely and add its rich flavor to the sauce.

There are several types of pasta sauce based on walnuts in northern Italy, including the one on page 550; this is among my favorites. It also happens to be the easiest. If you like, you could throw in a tablespoon of capers, too.

This is a simple preparation that can serve as a side dish or main course (add some cooked sausage if you like) and can be made with any dark green, from spinach to collards to turnip or mustard greens. It needs no cheese.

True pansotti are stuffed, with a mixture like this, but I rarely feel like filling pasta, and this way it makes a very fast meal and tastes just as good (it tastes even better with fresh pasta, page 541). Like Tarator or Skordalia (page 600), a terrific use of nuts as sauce.

A fast, classic pasta sauce popular not only in Rome but throughout central and southern Italy. Arrabbiata means “angry,” and this sauce should be not only spicy but also strong, with the taste of garlic that has been browned, not just colored—as well as a good dose of chile.

I featured this little group of recipes in my New York Times column and in The Minimalist Cooks Dinner, but it’s so instructive, important, and wonderful that I felt it belonged here as well. All (well, almost all) the variations begin with bits of cured meat cooked until crisp, around which are built a number of different sauces of increasing complexity. Most people insist that the “genuine” meat for these recipes is pancetta—salted, cured, and rolled pork belly. Pancetta is available at almost any decent Italian deli and at many specialty stores, but you can use bacon (or even better, if you can find it, guanciale, which is cured pig’s jowl; see the back of the book for mail-order sources). Pecorino Romano is the cheese of choice here, but Parmesan is also good.

Udon noodles are generally made with softer wheat than Italian pasta, giving them a more tender texture. You can find them at Japanese markets and many supermarkets. Like Chinese noodles, they’re great stir-fried. And, as in any stir-fry, you can substitute for the pork, shrimp, or vegetables if you like.

A festive dish that takes a bit of preparation—a simple enough process, but quite a few steps. Nevertheless, it’s a delicious and unusual noodle dish, and because it’s best served at room temperature, you can make it a couple of hours in advance. Substitute shrimp or fish for the meat (or omit it entirely) if you like. Precooked fish cake is available at Korean or Japanese markets. Potato starch noodles are available at Korean markets.

These curried noodles are a standby, and can be prepared much more simply: stir-fry the noodles with onions and curry powder, for example, or with a bit of egg. This is a relatively elaborate version, and can be made more so with the addition of bean sprouts (with the basil), sliced Chinese sausage (with the pork or chicken), egg (as in the Pad Thai on page 536), or vegetables like broccoli or asparagus (parboil it first), or tomato. Information on Asian fish sauces like nam pla is on page 500.

Where the sesame sauce in the recipe on page 532 makes for a rich, hearty dish, this one is elegant and light. In Japan—where it gets plenty hot in the summer—cold soba noodles, served with a dipping sauce, are a common snack or light meal. Soba are brown noodles, made from wheat and buckwheat, and the sauce is based on dashi, the omnipresent Japanese stock. (You can also serve somen, thin wheat noodles, cold; cook them for a little less time, but also until tender.) Dashi is close to essential here, though you can use chicken stock in a pinch. But dashi is so easy to make (and so good) that if you try it once you’ll become devoted to it.

Mandoo are Korean dumplings almost identical to gyoza, though they are more often steamed than panfried. If you don’t feel like making dumplings, you can use this broth to make soup with duk, Korean rice cakes; these are sold fresh or frozen at most Korean markets. Sometimes noodles are added to this soup as well, a nice but unnecessary touch.

This is lovely, strong-tasting, and quite complex. It’s a wonderful side dish but can also serve as the centerpiece of a vegetarian meal.

I didn’t understand paella well until I had this dish in Spain. Rather than a major production, it’s a simple combination of rice and shrimp, a terrific weeknight dish, as it has been in coastal Spain for centuries.

With a couple of good side dishes, this delicious standard makes a satisfying main course.

Rice and lentils are both daily fare in much of India, but rarely are they cooked together. An exception is made for the quite-quick-cooking red lentils, which are prepared in a manner not unlike that used in the Middle East.

Quicker and easier than the preceding recipe, this one usually relies on mushrooms and meat for flavor. Though it’s a cross-cultural technique and not at all traditional, I think adding a small handful of soaked dried porcini to the fresh mushrooms as they cook is a big improvement. You can buy toasted sesame seeds in Korean (and usually Japanese) markets, but toasting them yourself takes less than 5 minutes.

This popular one-pot dish can be made with meat or vegetables and, like most casseroles, is easily varied. There are, of course, similar dishes throughout East Asia (and throughout this chapter), but this one is made distinctively Japanese by the addition of mirin and even more so if you use dashi for the cooking stock—a terrific touch. Aburage—fried tofu—is available, precooked, at Japanese markets; it’s slightly sweet.