Make Ahead

These hoecakes have become a favorite with our guests. Use them to soak up that good pot liquor from turnip or collard greens. After the plate is completely sopped clean, save one to eat as a dessert along with maple syrup.

This recipe can be frozen and whipped out whenever company comes over. Also try stuffing the potatoes with different kinds of cheese, sautéed shrimp, etc. Makes a great meal with a green salad.

To me, the secret to good slaw is the way you cut your cabbage. I have found that I prefer half of the cabbage coarsely chopped in a food processor and half hand-sliced very thin. Use outside dark green leaves, too, for color.

This is a traditional favorite down here. We try to use female crabs, but you can use either male or female.

This also makes a wonderful dressing for salads.

One of the mistakes I see many cooks making is automatically reaching for a can of chicken broth whenever a recipe calls for a bit of stock or a sauce needs an additional 1/3 cup of liquid. But the strong flavors of a broth—and the saltiness of canned broth in particular—can often change the flavor direction from where you want to go. And it’s an unnecessarily expensive and sometimes wasteful habit, if you only use a bit of the can and discard the rest. Instead, I encourage you to adopt one of my favorite thrifty kitchen practices: making your own simple vegetable broth when you are cooking, using it as a multi-purpose “moistening agent” for a host of dishes.

This dough is one I use for both the apricot and chocolate tarts given above and other dessert tarts formed in a shallow tart mold. It has a delicate, cookie-crumb texture (with lightness from the baking powder) and great buttery taste. And it takes no time to make in the food processor. This recipe gives you just the right amount of dough to form into a 9-inch tart shell—multiply the formula if you are making a larger tart.

This soft dough is a pleasure to knead on the table. You could mix it in a food processor, but since it only requires 3 or 4 minutes of kneading, and feels so good, I prefer to do it by hand.

This simple quince preserve is a specialty in many Italian regions. It seems to have its origins in the fourteenth century, when some of the most noted were from Reggio Emilia and Genova. The translucent, pastel fruit in a jellied syrup is a delightful accompaniment to all sorts of sweet and savory dishes. If you have a large batch of fresh quince, just multiply this recipe and make a big pan of cotognata. It will keep for a month refrigerated. Pack it in little jelly jars and give as a gift: cotognata is a colorful and delicious way to introduce others to the pleasures of quince!

If you haven’t cooked quince before, this is a good way to start. The sauce is tangy, not overly sweet, and because the fruit pieces tend to stay intact when cooked, you will enjoy the distinctive taste and texture. Though it is not as sweet as cotognata (the quince sauce that follows), you can enjoy it in many of the same ways, such as spooned onto buttered toast or stirred into a bowl of yogurt, for a tangy snack.