Alcohol

Pickled veggies show up on tables in many restaurants, bars, and homes across Mexico. These are great alongside meat, atop a quesadilla, or alone as a happy hour snack.

This recipe is one of my favorites ever. It comes from my aunt Marcela, a chef who inspired me to enter the magical world of the culinary arts. We not only share the same name and the same career, we also agree that sweet and spicy is one of the best combinations when preparing Mexican food. Store-bought apricot preserves, used here, work well; just be sure to buy the best you can find. A kitchen syringe is a useful tool for injecting the hens with a flavorful mixture of broth, butter, and tequila. The result is a moist and succulent dish.

There was always a roast chicken in our fridge when I was growing up—but I’d be lying if I said my mom cooked it. There was a wonderful rotisserie place a few blocks from my house and they would deliver a succulent roast chicken, fresh salsa, homemade tortillas, and frijoles charros (like the frijoles on page 155 but with tons of bacon in the mix). We’d all stand around the kitchen table and make soft tacos, adding a few slices of avocado. We used leftovers for chicken salad, flautas (rolled up and fried chicken tacos), or tostadas (fried tortillas spread with refried beans, topped with shredded chicken, shredded iceberg lettuce, crema, salsa, avocado slices, and, in my house, a drizzle of olive oil and red wine vinegar). This recipe is so easy and yields such a flavorful, succulent chicken that I doubt any rotisserie place in your neighborhood can rival it. And I doubt you’ll have leftovers. But if you do, go to town with tortillas, beans, avocado, and any of the salsas in this book and make tacos.

Serve this over rice, which will soak up the rich cream sauce. This dish is for the spicy-lover in you; if you want to prepare a milder version for guests or kids, you can use just the adobo sauce that accompanies the canned chipotles, and save the chiles for when you are preparing it for yourself. They’ll last for months in a covered container in the fridge.

Crack open a cold Mexican cerveza, like a Negra Modelo or a Dos Equis (XX) Amber, to make this tasty beer batter. It will also change the way you think about fried fish.

In Tijuana, as soon as the days get a little warmer, the street vendors start to appear with giant bunches of squash blossoms. I grew up eating squash blossoms sautéed and stuffed in quesadillas, served with fresh raspberries. The addition of mascarpone, an Italian triple-cream cheese, takes the dish to a whole new level.

Caffè latte is classic Italian, and for a Sunday brunch it would be the obvious choice over a regular pot of coffee. And while vanilla whipped cream is a small departure from the way you would find it served in any Italian café, it’s a nice way to make the jolt of caffeine a little richer and more special.

Compared to American Christmas cookies, Italian cookies are a bit less sweet. They bake up nice and buttery, and the dried apricots make them moist and chewy rather than crisp and crunchy. The dough freezes well, so I like to make a double batch and store some to bake when unexpected guests drop by (just be sure to increase the baking time by two minutes if baking from frozen). The cookies will fill the whole house with an alluring fragrance and make you look like a superstar, even if you don’t have time to make the glaze.

This homey one-pot meal is reminiscent of the stews you find in Tuscany and Umbria, which are loaded with vegetables, potatoes, and herbs. It’s a great choice if you’re looking for a dish to serve to a crowd; the succulent stew can simmer for a long time—the sauce just becomes richer and more intense—and it’s hard to believe you can get so much flavor from a relatively inexpensive piece of meat. Just be sure to use a Chianti that’s good enough to serve along with the meal.

This dish has become very popular on restaurant menus, because it seems extra-special—and tricky to make at home. Special it is, but in fact it’s quite easy to pull off, as it uses frozen lobster tails—no live lobsters to boil. The key is to brown the butter well for a deep, nutty flavor.

Liguria is a coastal region in northern Italy known for its fresh seafood and many variations of fish stew, among other things. My version uses just white fish with lots of veggies so it is lighter than many traditional fish stews. It is still sophisticated and is made with white wine, which is a perfect pairing with seafood.

You need not use your best olive oil for these cookies, but extra virgin olive oil will make them more interesting than “pure” or “light” olive oil.

Nothing can match dried fruit for convenience and intensity of flavor. And when you poach an assortment with port and a few spices, the results belie the ease of preparation. This is not a summer dessert—no one would mistake this for fresh fruit—but it is delicious, low-fat, and a welcome change from heavy winter desserts. One tip: Use a port you’ll enjoy drinking (or buy a half bottle), because you’re going to use less than a third of a full-size bottle in this recipe.

In this dish, the pasta takes on a fruity acidity from the reduced wine—smoothed by the last-minute addition of butter—and a beautiful mahogany glaze that’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. The kind of wine you use is of some importance, although it need not be expensive. Try a decent Chianti Classico, a light wine from the Côtesdu-Rhône, or a good-quality (red) Zinfandel. This is a true starter, not a main course; follow it with something gutsy, like grilled meat or fish, or something grand like Crisp Roasted Rack of Lamb (page 187).

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.

This is a classic spring or fall dish, times when you can get good, fresh turnips but don’t mind long, slow cooking. Here turnips and pork are both browned for perfect color and then simmered in a little liquid until tender. Don’t ignore the instruction to preheat the skillet for at least a minute, then allow the butter and/or oil to become hot, and don’t crowd the meat, or it won’t brown properly. Make sure the first side of the pork cubes browns well and that the second is on its way to being browned before adding the turnips. The turnips themselves are so high in natural sugars that they brown almost instantly and continue to gain color as they braise.

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.

A logical combination and glorious once you taste it, with the sweet juice of the peaches deftly cutting through the richness of the lamb without being piercing. A hint of cinnamon (or an even smaller one of allspice—maybe an eighth of a teaspoon) gives the dish a great aroma as it cooks and a slightly mysterious flavor at the table. A pinch of cayenne or other red pepper makes a nice addition. Whereas most braises begin with browning, this one ends with it, like the Braised and Grilled Lamb Shanks on page 188. This method reduces both spattering and time—since the lamb’s liquid is mostly gone by the end of cooking, it doesn’t go flying from the hot fat, and the meat browns faster. And the peaches, browning lightly in the same cooking liquid, contribute some of their juices to the pan while becoming meltingly tender.

Why do so many recipes have you brown lamb shanks and other tough meats when the long braising needed to make them tender ends up breaking down the lovely, crisp crust? The simple answer is that browning creates complex flavors, but it also creates a spattery mess. So here’s a solution: grill or broil the shanks after braising. This will give them the ultimate crust, and the braising liquid will serve as a succulent sauce.