Gluten Free

Of all the recipes in the cookbook I cowrote with Boston chef Andy Husbands, The Fearless Chef, the one for slow-roasted pork is the one I’m asked for the most. A new round of requests came after my friend Josh and I made it for my own birthday party a few years ago in Washington. We served it simply, with salsa, sour cream, and tortillas on the side, but trust me, this meat can go into all sorts of recipes, such as in Cochinita Pibil Tacos (page 95), Faux-lognese with Pappardelle (page 140), and Pulled Pork Sandwich with Green Mango Slaw (page 121). I’ve simplified this recipe a little from Andy’s original version, cutting out a 24-hour marinating step, replacing the traditional banana leaves with good old aluminum foil, and using one of my favorite smoke stand-ins, Spanish pimenton (smoked Spanish paprika), instead of oregano. The pork is spicy and deeply flavored and colored, thanks in no small part to the large quantity of annatto seeds (also called achiote) that goes into the paste. These little brick-colored pebbles are worth seeking out at good Latin markets or online through such sources as Penzeys.com.

This is a recipe payoff from having made the Stewed Cauliflower, Butternut Squash, and Tomatoes (page 55), beefed up with the addition of white beans, crunchy croutons, fresh thyme, and cheese. The soup is a beautiful orange color and tastes of cream, even though it has no such thing in it.

I never liked raw spinach that much until I started eating it from my sister’s huge garden in southern Maine, where she and her husband grow almost everything they eat—a year-round endeavor, thanks to lots of canning, freezing, and the smart use of greenhouses and the like. She even brought me spinach seeds so I could start growing it in my own community garden. My garden is a tiny fraction of the size of hers, but the spinach comes out of it just as tender and sweet. This recipe barely wilts the spinach, so it still has that fresh flavor, but helps compensate for the sturdier texture of supermarket spinach, if that’s what you need to use, by softening it slightly. If you have tender garden-fresh spinach, you can feel free to let the topping cool before adding it to the spinach for a cold salad instead.

One of the smartest things you can do when cooking for one is make large quantities of pasta sauce to freeze and then defrost and adapt into quick weeknight meals. Such sauces can go well beyond a simple marinara. When I asked the queen of Italian cooking in America, Lidia Bastianich, for her favorite approaches to such a thing, she quickly came to me with this hearty vegetable stew that can do triple, quadruple, even quintuple duty: Use a cup of it to dress pasta, of course, but also spoon it onto charred bread for bruschetta, use it as a base on which to nestle grilled fish or chicken, or try one of the companion recipes: Baked Egg in Fall Vegetables (page 33) or Fall Vegetable Soup with White Beans (page 58). I couldn’t resist putting my stamp on this recipe: I did what I do with many tomato sauces and splashed in some fish sauce to deepen the flavor.

This is like a taco in soup form. It is not a traditional tortilla soup, but a black bean backdrop for a double or triple hit of corn (stock, tortillas, and fresh kernels), plus just-cooked shrimp. Like a taco, it’s hearty and satisfying without being fussy, and once you have the black bean soup base (page 52) ready and waiting, it’s a snap to put together.

Scallops are a solo cook’s friend because, like shrimp, they come in easy-to-manage amounts, cook quickly, and take well to all sorts of preparations. Here, they help bulk up black bean soup into a meal. Look for “dry-packed” scallops, which are shipped without the extra water and additives that dull the flavor of wet-packed scallops, making them sweeter and easier to get a nice crust on. If you can find them, you don’t need to rinse and pat them dry.

When I was growing up, one of my mother’s holiday specialties was something she called “Texas Salad,” similar to something others call taco salad, although hers didn’t include ground beef. It was basically a head of iceberg lettuce, a couple cans of pinto beans, a block of Cheddar cheese, a bag of Fritos, and a whole bottle of Catalina French-style dressing, along with a red onion and a tomato or two. Okay, here’s my confession: I loved it, the first day more than the second (although others in my family would say the reverse). My tastes have gotten a little more sophisticated since then, but I still appreciate what my Mom was going for: sweet and sour, crunchy and fresh, a little protein, and a little fat. I’ve had fun updating it, but, Mom, you’ll notice, I’ve kept all your principles intact.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to make just enough soup for one serving, especially when the soup is based on long-cooking beans. But that doesn’t mean solo cooks have to go without their soup fix. This base uses two of my favorite ingredients, black beans and ancho chiles, to provide the backdrop for Black Bean Tortilla Soup with Shrimp (on page 53) and Black Bean Soup with Seared Scallops and Green Salsa (page 54). But that’s not your only option. Once the base is made, you could also add shrimp, chicken, corn, potatoes, crushed tortilla chips, leftover rice, and/or other salsas, in whatever combination calls out to you.

One of my college hangouts was a scruffy Austin restaurant called Les Amis, which my friends and I called “Lazy Me,” in honor of the decidedly unhelpful service. The food was dependable even if the waitstaff wasn’t, and a standby for me was a simple bowl of black beans, rice, and cheese, priced so even students without trust funds could afford it. Later, I learned that the combination of beans and rice is one of the most nutritionally complete vegetarian meals possible. While beans are one of the vegetables that takes better to canning than others, if you make a pot of your own from scratch (page 47), the taste and texture are incomparable. When Les Amis finally closed, torn down to make room for a new Starbucks, I missed not just the peasant’s bowl, but those inattentive waitresses, too.

For the longest time, chile relleno was my favorite dish, and, really, what’s not to like? A cheese-stuffed poblano pepper, battered and fried, with a spicy sauce? Bring it on, right? Making it at home was a different story: Dipping that delicate pepper in the batter without the stuffing falling out was, well, beyond me. This version may seem involved, but believe me, compared to the traditional version, it’s positively streamlined. I like an almost burrito-like filling, with starchy rice or farro included, but there’s no egg binder, no batter, no oil to heat up (and splatter everywhere). It’s oven-roasted and vegetarian, but spicy and cheesy all the same. Eat with a small salad if you like.

Beans certainly hold up better in the industrial canning process than many other vegetables, but there are still many good reasons to cook your own, not the least of which is the fact that so many canned varieties come packed with way more sodium than you need. Here’s my adaptation of bean maven Steve Sando’s basic stovetop method for cooking beans. If you have a pressure cooker or a slow cooker, feel free to experiment with it. This recipe gives the beans a relatively neutral seasoning that leaves them easy to take in different directions. If desired, you can add herbs and spices (torn dried chile peppers, toasted and ground cumin seeds, black peppercorns, oregano) to the cooking liquid, but resist the urge to add anything acidic, such as tomatoes, citrus, or vinegar, until the beans are cooked, or the skins of the beans will not soften as they should.

This potato topper was inspired by Polynesian and Southeast Asian combinations of shrimp and mashed sweet potatoes. A good-quality Indian curry powder can be substituted for the Thai curry paste.

This elegant soup has a depth of flavor, brightened by orange and layered with smoked paprika, that would make it right at home as a dinner party starter. For yourself, pair it with a side salad and a big piece of crusty bread, and it’s dinner tonight, while you plan the party for another day.

I got the idea from Lidia Bastianich to make soup bases that pack a lot of flavor on the weekend, then freeze them and thaw them as needed, adding various ingredients on the fly to take them in different directions. I like to concentrate the base, which saves freezer space, and then thin it out when I make a finished soup. Before you thin it out (and jazz it up) for the final soup, this base may remind you of a certain fluffy Thanksgiving side dish (minus the mini-marshmallows, thankfully), but there are some key differences. Besides the lack of cream or sugar, the most important one is the cooking method: Rather than boiling peeled cubes of sweet potato, I like to roast them, concentrating the complex flavor, which is highlighted by subtle hints of thyme and curry. This makes an especially vibrant backdrop to such treatments as Sweet Potato Soup with Chorizo, Chickpeas, and Kale (page 43). There are many other possibilities. You can sprinkle ground chipotle or pimenton (smoked Spanish paprika) for heat and/or smoke, or add toasted pecans, yogurt (or sour cream or crème fraîche), and other sausages or cured meats.

Turn the Sweet Potato Soup Base into a meal with spicy chorizo, hearty chickpeas, and vibrant green kale. This makes a truly beautiful bowl of soup. If you’d rather keep this soup vegetarian, try the grain-based chorizo substitute from Field Roast, one of the first meat substitutes I’ve actually liked. It’s available in natural food stores in almost every state and through www.fieldroast.com.

I’ll admit to a tendency toward obsession, especially when it comes to food, as my experience with duck eggs proves. I bought my first dozen a few years ago at the Saturday farmers’ market at 14th and U Streets in Washington, D.C., and from the first time I fried one, I was pretty much hooked, buying duck eggs and only duck eggs and going through a dozen every week or two, at least while the ducks were laying. I’ve since veered back toward moderation, especially after remembering that these richer, more flavorful eggs are also higher in saturated fat and much higher in cholesterol. Still, I like to splurge every now and then, and this puffy frittata is one of my favorite ways. It also illustrates the magical properties of egg whites as a leavener; the simple process of separating whites from yolks, beating the whites to the soft-peak stage, and folding the two together results in a light-as-air texture, something between a frittata and a soufflé. Nonetheless, you can use these same ingredients in a more straightforward frittata; instead of separating the eggs, just follow the method for the Mushroom and Green Garlic Frittata (page 32). And if you can’t find duck eggs, chicken eggs work fine here, too.

I don’t make a habit of having potato chips in the house, because I really don’t have much self-control around them. But when I read in Anya von Bremzen’s go-to cookbook, The New Spanish Table, that chef-genius Ferran Adrià makes a tortilla de patatas (that glorious traditional Spanish omelet) with potato chips, I was tempted to buy some. That same year, 2005, my friend, chef José Andrés, a protégé of Adrià’s, also included a potato-chip tortilla recipe in his energetic book, Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America, so the decision was obvious. It turns out that this humblest of dishes, one of my favorites when I traveled in Spain, was perfectly easy to scale down to single-serving size. To justify its place on my dinner table, though, I added shrimp to make it a meal. Eat with a green salad or other crisp vegetables on the side. If desired, spoon some Red Pepper Chutney (page 17) on top.

Try as I might, I just couldn’t leave the bacon out of this omelet. Obviously, nothing goes better with eggs. But beyond that, bacon gives the slightly bitter chard an addictive smoky and, well, meaty flavor, while the goat cheese offsets it all with a tart creaminess. The result: a hearty, one-dish meal.

I spend a bundle on mushrooms from a bountiful display at the Dupont Circle FreshFarm Market just about every Sunday—but not in the summer. That’s because mushrooms are available practically year-round (many of them are cultivated), while tomatoes, corn, broccoli, and the like have a shorter season. So I reserve my mushroom purchases for when the bulk of the other seasonal produce has faded or hasn’t quite arrived. In the spring, I love to combine them with one of the items I spend all winter looking forward to: green garlic, basically an immature form of the plant, picked before it has fully formed its bulbous collection of cloves. You can use the whole thing like a leek or green onion (both of them in the same family), but it has the addictive taste of fresh, pungent garlic throughout. Since I also associate spring with eggs, I like to pair them with mushrooms and green garlic in a simple frittata. If you can’t find green garlic or want to make this in another season, feel free to substitute a small leek. Eat this frittata with a side dish, such as salad, bread, and/or hash browns, for a filling meal.

Why didn’t I think of these? I’ve long been in love with pickled (fresh) jalapeños, and I’ve certainly spent enough time hydrating dried chile peppers. This recipe, from chef David Suarez of Rosa Mexicano restaurant in Washington, D.C., combines both ideas in one. They’re simple to make and last for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator. You’ll want to pull them out for anything that needs a sharp and spicy touch: tacos and nachos, of course, but also on Three-Pepper Pizza with Goat Cheese (page 118). Ancho chiles are easy to find, but if you have access to a wider selection of chile peppers, try this recipe with moritas, which have a unique fruity complexity.