One of the great pleasures of salting lies in not salting. Salt cure your lemons beforehand, cook and assemble your ingredients, serve, and let the lemon’s super-salted flavors hop around the plate like Taskiouine dancers. The citrus and salt goad each other on in a warrior’s dance, all white tunics and turbans and powder horns, and in your mind ring the bells of camels and the beat of rawhide tambourines. Simmer chicken in diced preserved lemon, olives, and fresh coriander for a superb tagine. Make a compound butter of minced preserved lemon, ancho or espanola peppers, and cilantro to serve over pan-fried fish. Chop preserved lemon with parsley, dill, shallots, and olive oil for a relish to top anything from rack of lamb to a goat cheese tart. And cut a strip of rind to garnish a negroni cocktail.
Turn humble onions into this thrifty yet luxe pasta dinner.
This pasta has some really big energy about it. It’s so extra, it’s the type of thing you should be eating in your bikini while drinking a magnum of rosé, not in Hebden Bridge (or wherever you live), but on a beach on Mykonos.
Caramelized onions, melty Gruyère, and a deeply savory broth deliver the kind of comfort that doesn’t need improving.
This is what I call a fridge-eater recipe. The key here is getting a nice sear on the sausage and cooking the tomato down until it coats the sausage and vegetables well.
This classic 15-minute sauce is your secret weapon for homemade mac and cheese, chowder, lasagna, and more.
A dash of cocoa powder adds depth and richness to the broth of this easy turkey chili.
This is the type of soup that, at first glance, might seem a little…unexciting. But you’re underestimating the power of mushrooms, which do the heavy lifting.
I should address the awkward truth that I don’t use butter here but cream instead. You could, if you’re a stickler for tradition (and not a heretic like me), add a big slab of butter to the finished curry.