Oven Bake

This is a fast method for producing a delicious potato gratin. I discovered it accidentally, and it’s since become a personal favorite.

This is an almost universal technique for vegetables, an honest, simple gratin with a topping of just a couple of ingredients. Since one of them is rich, flavorful blue cheese, butter isn’t even included. My vegetable of choice here is fennel—an underappreciated and almost always available bulb—but you could put this topping on almost any vegetable. For the cheese, you can use Gorgonzola, the soft Italian cheese; bleu d’Auvergne, a mild cheese from France; Maytag blue, the premier domestic variety; Stilton, the classic English blue; or Roquefort, which is made from sheep’s milk. All are good, but my preferences are for the stronger cheeses, such as Roquefort and Maytag.

Cooking in packages requires a small leap of faith to determine that the food is done, because once you open the packages you want to serve them. This method works well.

Once, for a special occasion, I produced potatoes Anna—a dish in which potatoes are thinly sliced, drenched in butter, and roasted until golden, the ultimate in crisp potato dishes—for my daughter Emma. This was a fatal error, because potatoes Anna are a pain to make, contain about a week’s allotment of butter, and were forever in demand thereafter. So I set about shortcutting the process, creating something approaching an entire meal. I cut back on the butter (when attacks of conscience strike, I substitute olive oil) and enlisted the broiler to speed the browning process. I figured that it would be just as easy to broil something on top of the potatoes during the last few minutes of cooking and, after a few tries, I found a thick fillet of fish to be ideal. The result is this simple weeknight dish that I now make routinely and one that even impresses guests.

This is a dish that is almost too simple to believe, one that combines wonderful textures and flavors with a minimum of ingredients, no added fat, and almost no preparation or cooking time. Like the best minimalist dishes, everything counts here: the fish, the leeks—which remain crisp and assertive thanks to the quick cooking time—and even the wine or stock. The Dijon mustard provides a bit of a kick. You need a tightly covered container to preserve all the liquid and flavors inherent in this dish, but that can be as simple as a pot with a good-fitting lid or a heatproof glass casserole—anything that prevents moisture from escaping.

Some people argue that a true paella must contain only meat or seafood, never both, that a true paella can be prepared only in a paellera, or that true paella must be cooked outdoors over wood. Perhaps they’re all right. What’s clear to me is that you can produce a fabulous rice dish I call paella in just over half an hour, which makes it a great option for weeknights.

This is something like a chicken pot pie, but far more exotic and quite wonderful. Like a chicken pot pie, it is serious work; it will keep you busy for a good solid hour. (You can, however, prepare the chicken filling and almond topping in advance and assemble it just before baking.) The sweet almond topping may deceive your guests into thinking it’s a dessert, but the savory chicken filling counters it perfectly. As always, when working with phyllo dough, make sure you keep the pieces that you are not working with covered with a damp towel; see Baklava (page 628) for more details.

This is a classic taqueria dish that is even better when made at home. Although the preparation takes some time, enchiladas are delicious and fun for parties or potlucks. You can fill and roll the tortillas ahead of time and then top with the sauce and cheese and bake immediately before serving. To make cheese enchiladas, omit the chicken and fill the tortillas with cheese; pour the sauce over all and proceed.

Duck confit is one of those foods that began as a method of preserving and continues because it tastes so damn good. It’s a simple enough process, and the results are dependable. It’s best when you use duck fat as a cooking medium. While not exactly a pantry staple, duck fat isn’t terribly expensive if you buy it from a specialty retailer that makes most of its money from other parts of the duck (like Hudson Valley Foie Gras: www.hudsonvalleyfoiegras.com). Fortunately, confit is not bad with olive oil either, though when you do the math on the two and figure in how delicious potatoes sautéed in leftover confit fat are, duck fat becomes increasingly appealing. My favorite way to serve duck confit is with a simple and strongly flavored salad of bitter greens—like the Green Salad with Vinaigrette, Roquefort, and Walnuts on page 165 minus the blue cheese and made, if possible, with a fifty-fifty walnut oil/olive oil dressing.

As long as you are not a person who eats only sweets for breakfast, there is nothing more satisfying than huevos rancheros, the original “breakfast burrito.” Since you finish the dish in the oven, you can prepare all but the eggs ahead of time, which makes it a great brunch dish when you have guests; the recipe is easily doubled or even tripled.

Shirred eggs with a spicy sauce make a great brunch dish. Serve with toast or Arroz a la Mexicana (page 517).

I love baked eggs, so I was delighted to come across this elaborate version, served as an appetizer before a Spanish dinner (I like it at brunch). When it was made for me, it contained small amounts of asparagus and peas, but you could use bits of any vegetable you like; leftovers are the best option. Use both meats, either, or neither; this is essentially a dish that was created to combine eggs with whatever else is on hand.

A wonderful brunch dish, often served for breakfast in Mexico as a way to use up the previous day’s leftovers. But the combination of crunchy tortillas, spicy tomato sauce, and melted cheese is so irresistible you’ll want to make it just for its own sake. If you do not want to fry the tortillas, you can either bake them until quite crisp—this will take 15 minutes or so—or simply substitute unsalted (or lightly salted) corn tortilla chips.

This is a Mediterranean dish that can be done more authentically if you can get your hands on branches of fresh edible bay (laurel), but that’s not always easy (you could use rosemary or fennel branches quite successfully, and they’re equally traditional, though obviously different in flavor). In the original version, you throw a few branches of bay (laurel) onto a grill and top with sausage. My oven method uses somewhat less bay and is virtually foolproof. Other cuts of meat you can use here: chunks of pork or lamb, cut from the shoulder, or boneless chicken thighs.

Despite its name, this is not a tamale (it’s closer to polenta). It has neither the taste nor the texture of a real tamale, and, strictly speaking, it isn’t even Mexican, unless you remember that Texas is as Mexican as it is American. That being said, tamales are complicated, and this, at the very least, combines the earthy flavors of corn and pork. It’s a true Tex-Mex dish, dating back at least a century. Serve with rice and beans.

I first learned about baeckoffe—“baker’s oven”—from the great chef (also my friend and sometime coauthor) Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who is from Alsace. It’s one of those ancient unattended dishes given, in a pot, to the communal oven and picked up several hours later. Jean-Georges (like his mother) made it with pork, but when I was in Alsace I had it prepared with pork and lamb, which I liked a bit more. “My” version is below. Baeckoffe is great made in advance; that, combined with its flexible cooking time, makes it a very easy dish to prepare. With a salad and some bread, it makes a pretty relaxed meal for a small crowd. Other cuts of meat you can use here: traditionally, baeckoffe is a combination of slow-cooked meats, so with—or instead of—these two, you can use boneless beef (chuck or brisket is best) or veal.

The combination of lamb, thyme, garlic, and lemon is so perfect that this dish—simple as it is—is among my favorites. Needless to say, the slow-cooked potatoes, stewed in the pan juices, become rather fabulous. Other cuts of meat you can use here: boneless lamb or pork shoulder or shoulder lamb chops, all of which will cook more quickly than the shanks; short ribs; beef chuck or brisket; veal shank (osso buco).

A fairly complicated, lasagnelike dish and, like lasagne, perfectly homey. With advance preparation (you can make the sauce a day ahead and sauté the plantains several hours ahead), you can throw this together quickly, but even if you do it all at once you can make quick work of it. Great with a salad, this needs nothing else. Other meat you can use here: ground turkey, chicken, veal, or pork.