Simmer

This is not a stir-fry but a simmered dish, easy and fast. The cooking time totals about ten minutes, and the preparation time is about the same, so be sure to start the rice first.

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.

To season boiled potatoes, I like to use delicate herbs like mint, tarragon, or parsley. Mint makes a huge difference here, countering the potatoes’ earthiness with its bright flavor.

This dish of slow-cooked green beans yields soft and sweet beans. It is a perfect side dish for a midwinter meal because it does not depend on sun-ripened tomatoes or crisp just-picked beans for its appeal.

This is my favorite way of making a side of carrots to go with a meal. Part of its appeal is its ease and quickness; the other is how easy it is to vary. You can add almost any flavoring you like to these carrots during their final minutes in the pan, like a healthy grating of lemon or orange zest or a tablespoon of grated ginger or a clove of minced garlic, to flavor them to your taste.

In its homeland of Alsace, choucroute garnie is no more special than a frank and sauerkraut, with which it has much in common. But while the French treat this archetypally hearty combination of sauerkraut, spices, wine, and smoked meats as common fare, here it has become the province of restaurants. In any case, choucroute is a flexible combination of wintertime staples, the perfect cold-weather dish, featuring sauerkraut cooked in a little goose fat (or duck fat or lard) and wine, then “garnished”—this is some garnish—with a variety of candidly heavy meats, some smoked, some fresh or salted. Note that good sauerkraut does not come in cans but is sold fresh from barrels or in plastic. It should contain no more than cabbage and salt—beyond that, the less the better.

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.

The smaller the pieces you cut, the shorter the cooking time, but I wouldn’t make them too small or you’ll rob yourself of some of the satisfaction of eating them. This stew is also excellent made with lamb shoulder.

Beef stewed in dashi and mirin seems lighter and more delicate than beef stewed in stock or wine. It’s a dish that’s filling enough to satisfy on a fall or winter day but doesn’t have the heaviness sometimes associated with pot roasts and stews. Serve it with prepared Japanese mustard or wasabi on the side.

The charm of most braised dishes is that they result in succulent, tender meat and require little attention after an initial browning. The sad truth, however, is that most meats need hours—sometimes many hours—before they become truly tender. Not so with veal chunks taken from the shoulder or leg, which become tender in less than an hour and produce a superb stew. And the smaller the chunks of meat, the shorter the cooking time. (This is a very basic and oft-ignored general principle of cooking: spend a little more time with the knife and you sometimes spend a lot less time at the stove.) Smaller chunks have another advantage as well: in just a few minutes, enough of their surface area browns that you can move to the next step of the recipe. This guarantees a full-flavored stew—the browning step is not essential but very desirable—and reduces stovetop mess.

Unless you’ve made your own duck confit, you may never have cooked duck legs by themselves; but in many ways they’re superior to both duck breasts and whole birds. They’re quite lean, and just a quick trimming of the excess fat is all that’s necessary. And, given proper cooking—that is, long, slow cooking—they become fork-tender and richly flavorful, reminiscent of some of the “lesser” cuts of beef and pork, like brisket and cheek. Finally, it’s easy enough to cook enough legs for eight—which is hardly the case with whole duck!

This is among my favorite dishes using this plentiful but still under-appreciated cephalopod. (The term, which is also used for octopus and cuttlefish, describes sea creatures whose “feet” grow from their heads.) Like many people, I’m a fan of fried “calamari,” but that dish is best suited to restaurants because of squid’s tendency to spatter when deep-fried. Although sautéing and stir-frying are good, fast techniques for squid, they, too, tend to be messy. A gentle braise in flavorful liquid and seasonings is the perfect alternative, and this one, with its Provençal spirit, is delicious and warming.

Thai Dishes called curries contain curry powder and a combination of herbs and aromatic vegetables. A typical dish might feature a mixture of garlic, shallots, chiles, lime leaf, sugar, and galangal or ginger. This curry, which features coconut milk, is just such a dish. Serve it with white or sticky rice.

This Shrimp dish is based on a combination of ingredients traditionally used to cook tripe in and around Rome. It’s a simple tomato sauce spiked with the powerful flavors of browned garlic, chiles, and mint. When you make it with tripe, it must cook a long time for the tripe to become tender; when you use shrimp, the dish is practically done as soon as the shrimp are added.

The cooking liquid of chickpeas, unlike that of most other beans, tastes so good that it makes the basis of a decent soup. Season the beans and their stock as they cook—with garlic, herbs, and some aromatic vegetables, for example—and you have the basis of a great soup. Puree some of the cooked chickpeas, then stir them back into the soup, and it becomes deceptively, even sublimely, creamy.

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.

A good mushroom barley soup needs no meat, because you can make it with dried porcini, which can be reconstituted in hot water in less than ten minutes, giving you not only the best-tasting mushrooms you can find outside of the woods but an intensely flavored broth that rivals beef stock. A touch of soy sauce is untraditional but really enhances the flavor.

Buy rice “Vermicelli,” the thinnest rice noodles sold. Substitute angel hair pasta (you’ll have to boil it separately) if you like.

This caribbean-inspired sweet potato soup is always appropriate in hot weather and makes an unusual starter for a meal off the grill. Serve it hot or cold; by all means chill it in warm weather, but remember it in winter. Whether you’re reheating it or serving it cold, make the soup as far in advance as you like, up to a couple of days. If you’re so inclined, you can make this soup even richer and sweeter by using half chicken stock and half canned coconut milk.

Chestnuts have a subtle but distinctive flavor; another, less-well-known attribute is their ability to lend a rich, creamy texture to anything in which they’re pureed—making cream completely superfluous. This soup is a perfect example, and if you can find frozen, peeled chestnuts, it’s the work of a moment. But even if you cannot, the chestnut-peeling process takes about twenty minutes start to finish, and much of that time is unattended; you can use it to chop and cook the vegetables. In a way, starting from scratch with whole chestnuts is preferable, because they gain a bit of flavor as you toast them lightly to remove the skins.