Make Ahead

Remember to start with fresh spices for that sweet, savory, and spicy balance.

This great staple forms the basis for other delicious dishes, including the Mediterranean Mussel and Chickpea Soup with Fennel and Lemon (page 44), and can be used in salads and purées. The simple preparation will win you over to ditching the can and cooking your own, allowing you to fully appreciate the delicate nuttiness and incomparable texture.

This is less a recipe than an idea, but I assure you that it’s an idea that will continue to inspire you. It began with a jar of marinated Sardinian pecorino that I bought and kept at one of the restaurants. Although the price of the cheese made it as precious as gold, I soon found that it enhanced nearly everything it touched, from pastas to carpaccios. (I admit it’s also terrific snitched directly out of the jar.) If kept covered in olive oil, the cheese will keep nearly indefinitely, though it’s so irrisistable that it won’t last that long. Make sure it is allowed to come to room temperature before using. As you use up the cheese, add the olive oil to vinaigrettes, pasta, and more.

The delicate, herbaceous quality of preserved garlic adds a bit of bite where raw garlic would be too harsh and overwhelm more subtle flavors, such as the lobster mushroom recipe on page 119. Make sure you use a peeler to zest the lemon. Using a grater or Microplane would release too many oils and create too strong a flavor. As a bonus, use the oil in vinaigrettes or drizzle on grilled fish.

Mayonnaise has an undeserved reputation for being difficult to make. With an egg yolk and some mustard as binders, and the help of a food processor when adding the oil, homemade mayo is as easy to make as it is delicious.

If you master any one recipe in this book, this should be it. Not only does a bright, fresh tomato sauce turn any freshly made pasta into an event, but it’s also an indispensable component in dishes from basic ragus to Maloreddus with Squid, Tomato Sauce, and Lemon (page 97) and Linguine with Shrimp (page 90). Part of the fun of making your own sauce is squishing the whole tomatoes—and they must be San Marzanos—with your fingers. It can get messy, especially for those of us who wear glasses, but it’s worth it (and a good stress-reduction technique, to boot). Find an apron and get ready for a simple, well-balanced sauce that you’ll always want to have on hand. And when you can have this sauce ready in under an hour, why ever open a jar again?

Cardamom is used everywhere from India to Scandinavia, and I love what the fragrant spice does for these classic French shortbread cookies. Though not traditional, the addition of cornstarch guarantees the delicate, crumbly texture for which the cookies are named (sablé translates as “sand”). Because sablés need time to chill before being baked, they make wonderful icebox cookies and are easy to keep in the fridge or the freezer and you can slice and bake as needed. They make an easy but distinctive finish to a meal, and are a nice accessory for a lonely scoop of ice cream or sorbet. If you like, instead of forming the dough into logs, roll out the dough after chilling and cut out rounds, then baked as directed. Cardamom loses its fragrance quickly, so make sure your ground cardamom is fresh.

This is an Italian classic, with a twist. Traditionally made with Marsala, I like to vary it by using Viognier, or even prosecco, as we do here. The wine adds a dimension to the custard and marries well with the sweet berries. If you don’t have a kitchen torch, skip the step where you sprinkle on the sugar and simply serve the custard spooned over the berries. If you use the broiler instead of a torch, the custard will get too soft.

Rich and earthy, with a haunting flavor that comes from steeping toasted walnuts in cream before making your custard, this makes a very elegant finish to a meal (and it’s good straight from the freezer at midnight, too).

You must believe me when I tell you that making sweet, smoky, succulent bacon with your own two hands is an undertaking you will never regret. It adds something indescribable to dishes like Potato and Asparagus Salad with Home-Cured Bacon and Egg (page 137), and tastes pretty amazing alongside a fried egg. In the restaurants, we cure our own and use it in everything from pastas to panzanella to lentils. Aleppo is a medium-spicy, fruity red pepper that comes from Syria. It has a nice complexity and heat that vanishes almost the minute you notice it’s there. You can find it in Middle Eastern groceries and on the Internet. For this recipe, you’ll need four days, a smoker, and wood chips, preferably hickory.

This soup uses a very simple technique that is time-consuming, to be sure, but requires very little attention and rewards you with loads of rich flavor. Consider this a Sunday afternoon on the back of the stove kind of dish. Although I use carrots, celery, celery root, and one of my favorite underutilized vegetables here—parsnips—you can use any variety of root vegetables that you have on hand or that look good at the market. Just be sure to use at least a few different kinds to lend real depth of flavor to the soup. I add the vegetables toward the end of cooking to keep the flavors bright and save them from turning to mush. Any leftovers will make Monday night dinner a snap, and the soup even improves if made in advance. Be sure to cool it properly in the fridge and taste for seasoning the next day. You may want to thin it with a little additional water if it’s too thick upon reheating.

Instead of cutting your knuckles trying to grate Parmesan close to the rind, keep your scraps in a resealable bag in your fridge. Once you’ve saved up about a pound’s worth of odds and ends—which wouldn’t take too long in my house—use them to make this rich, perfumed broth. Mushroom trimmings or pancetta pieces would also make nice additions, but avoid any vegetables that are too strongly flavored or they will overwhelm the flavor of the cheese.

I don’t generally use chicken stock in soups. I prefer the cleaner flavor that water brings to the soup, especially with such a fantastic vegetable as the artichoke. Farro is a chewy Italian grain somewhat like spelt, but with a firmer texture. If you want to prepare the soup ahead of time, be sure to chill it immediately after cooking, transferring it to a shallow container so that it cools quickly. You’ll need to adjust the water levels when you reheat the soup because the farro will absorb some of the water as it sits. For a nice variation, you could add some fava beans or peas.

These quick pickles make nice nibbles with drinks, and are great served with charcuterie. You can vary the vegetables according to what looks best in the market—just make sure they are fresh and attractive and that you cut them into roughly the same size so they become tender at the same time.

My Aunt June used to make this boiled vanilla custard almost constantly from Thanksgiving to Christmas so as to keep a steady supply on hand. Ever the ready hostess, June kept the custard stored not in the refrigerator, as you might expect, but in a Tupperware container in the trunk of her car. This ensured that she was never without party supplies, whether she was entertaining at home or calling on friends. We were always glad to see Aunt June coming at that time of year, not least because we knew her famous custard was sure to follow.

My mom’s vinegar-based barbecue sauce, which she made to go along with my dad’s pulled pig, is utterly addictive. Sprinkle it over Wood-Smoked Backyard Barbecued Pig (page 170) or Slow-Roasted Pulled Pork Butt (page 177).

A staple of barbecue and “meat-and-three” joints everywhere, hot pepper vinegar is one of the most ubiquitous of all the Southern condiments. It’s doused liberally over greens, pulled pig, field peas, gumbo, beans and rice—you name it.

Any recipe for barbecue sauce is bound to be contentious, no matter the formula. That’s because there are as many versions of this master sauce as there are Southerners willing to defend them as definitive. Whether thick or runny, tomato-based or vinegar, all Southern barbecue sauces get their complex flavor by playing on the contrasts between spicy and sweet, tangy and smoky. I’m nonpartisan enough to appreciate them all, but of course I’m partial to the western Tennessee strains—one sharp and vinegary, the other sweet and tomato-thick—I grew up on. With tomato, vinegar, and a dash of mustard, this all-purpose hybrid version offers the best of all worlds.

Homemade fruit jam is one of life’s great pleasures, so thank goodness it’s also one of life’s easiest. Although many people think of the summer months as canning season, excellent fruit jam can be made any time of year. But, while doing so is always fun, it makes good economic sense only when you have access to large quantities of fruit at relatively low prices. Assuming you aren’t working from your own garden, you can save money and make it a fun family outing by visiting your local farmer’s market or picking your own fruit at one of the “pick-your-own” farms in your area. The prices can’t be beat, and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing exactly where the fruit came from. Keep in mind that you may need to adjust the sugar depending on the sweetness of the fruit.