Cookbooks

Panzanella is a rustic Italian bread salad, created to use leftover bread. The vibrant tomatoes add moisture to the stale bread for a great summer main course or side dish. In this version, the bread is grilled for extra flavor. If your tomatoes are not at the peak of flavor, grill them, cut side down, until marked to bring out their natural sugars. Cut them into chunks and toss in the dressing before adding to the salad.

This is a dish you can make with little preparation or cooking time. Anyone can be a successful shrimp griller. The key things to remember are: (1) brine the shrimp to assure moistness; (2) grill them with the shells on; (3) don’t overcook them. The brightly flavored vinaigrette can be served with any other grilled fish or even chicken.

This combination of sweet, succulent halibut and spring vegetables in a golden saffron broth is visually seductive, while the earthy fragrance of saffron, favas, and mushrooms is intoxicating! Paula Wolfert’s easy method of preparing fava beans makes this dish much easier to prepare.

This recipe from award-winning cookbook author John Ash features plank roasting, an old technique used by the Northwest Indians who tied or nailed salmon to cedar or alder planks and tilted them over an open fire to cook. The cure in this recipe flavors the fish and acts as a brine to keep it moist.

Tandoori chicken is easily identified by its red color and is named for the oven it’s cooked in. The tandoor is a cylindrical clay or ceramic oven heated to temperatures of 550° to 750°F or more. Meat and vegetables are skewered, then lowered into the oven. The high heat creates a crisp crust and leaves the meat moist. For the best flavor, marinate overnight. The red food coloring is optional. This recipe is adapted to a grill or Big Green egg ceramic cooker, which is the next best thing to an actual tandoor oven.

The Swiss chard in this dish has a slightly bitter flavor that works well with the fragrant fennel and salty olives. The sliced meat is topped with a delicious uncooked Italian sauce thickened with leftover bread and pulverized toasted nuts.

Lamb, pomegranate, and apricots is a classic Mediterranean combination. Pomegranate molasses, which is sometimes called pomegranate concentrate, is a pantry staple in parts of the Mediterranean. It serves as a meat tenderizer as well as a flavor enhancer. Look for it in specialty foods stores, or online (see Resources). Serve this dish with a rice pilaf or couscous. Note: You will need 16 wooden skewers for this recipe.

A rich, fragrant dish, these duck breasts are perfumed with the aromatics of southwest France, then grilled to crisp the fatty skin. Served sliced and fanned over tender baby greens lightly dressed with citrus vinaigrette, this is a wonderful dish to serve as a first course or as a light main course.

Italian cuisine often features stuffed and rolled meat or fish. This recipe uses inexpensive yet flavorful flank steak. Pounded chicken or turkey breast, pork loin, or fish can be substituted. The grilled rolls are sliced into beautiful spirals and serve with gremolata reserved from the stuffing and a wonderful wood-roasted wine sauce.

Cookbook author Joanne Weir is known for her flavor-packed Mediterranean-inspired food. Her book From Tapas to Meze shows the breadth of her Mediterranean influences. Here, Joanne shares a favorite pizza recipe that we adapted for grilling using a Tuscan grill that fits into the fireplace of her home in San Francisco. The bitter escarole on this pizza is balanced by the sweet pine nuts, creamy cheeses, and the salty olives. The dough for a grilled pizza needs a bit more structure from gluten to keep it from oozing through the grates of the grill, which is why this one is kneaded for a longer time than other pizza doughs.

Jerry Traunfeld was the executive chef for many years at the HerbFarm in Woodinville, Washington, near seattle and now owns Seattle’s Poppy Restaurant. Jerry’s finely tuned palate served him well in the development of an expansive herb-focused menu at the award-winning restaurant. Jerry’s version of naan, a simple flatbread from India by way of Afghanistan, was created for this book. Filled with a combination of flavor-packed herbs and richly flavored cashews, it’s wonderful!

Peter Reinhart is a well-known cookbook author; his Crust and Crumb, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, and Whole Grain Breads have been graced with prestigious awards. At Ramekins, where he occasionally teaches bread classes, Peter and I baked bread and pizzas together in the wood-fired oven after his last class. This recipe came from his The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. It is an amazing formula that can be turned into baguettes, ciabatta, focaccia, and pizza. That baking session was about a lot more than the recipe. It was about the primary message of this book: joyfully cooking and sharing with others at the fire.

These stuffed flatbreads are shaped much like meat-filled galettes. Lamb is the meat of choice in many Mediterranean cuisines, and here it is combined with other key ingredients of the region—eggplant and pomegranate—along with the warm aromatics often used in Turkish cuisine.

Though pita bread is made throughout the Middle East, we have come to identify it with Greece. When baking, it puffs up like a small balloon and then deflates when removed from the oven. This version has a bit of whole-wheat flour in it for extra nuttiness and added flavor. Make a batch or two ahead and freeze some to use later; these pita reheat easily. Try these filled with strips of roasted Mustard and Lemon Chicken (page 92) and topped with a dollop of Greek yogurt.

Coca is the Spanish version of pizza. Here, it is spread with my Smoky Romesco Sauce, a basic in the Spanish pantry. When topped with green onions, roasted potatoes, and sliced hard-cooked eggs, it is an edible canvas of the sunny colors and flavors of this part of the Mediterranean.

This multilayered flatbread is made by spreading the dough with the filling, then folding, rolling, and cooking quickly on both sides on a hot cast-iron griddle or stone. I love to serve them as an appetizer and often add a bit of salty crumbled cheese such as sheep’s milk feta to the filling.

Tim Decker and his wife, Crystal, are the owners of Bennett valley Bakery in Sonoma County. A former apprentice of Peter Reinhart’s, Tim makes artisan breads with a beautifully browned crust by baking them in a wood-fired oven at unusually high temperatures. You can also make this bread successfully in a conventional oven, with the heat as high as it will go.