The sauce here is rather like a vegetarian version of the Piedmontese anchovy sauce, bagna cauda (though it’s even more umami-packed). It’s not one of those vegetable recipes that feels like a side dish, where you keep searching for the focus, but has enough different flavors and textures from each vegetable to be layered and surprising.
I’ve heard that when we’re taking good care of ourselves, our bodies crave what they need. Well mine must need whatever is in this salad, because I find myself dreaming about it weekly! I’m also in a phase where I like to combine sweeter, richer foods like sweet potatoes and squash with a tart punch of citrus to balance things. This salad hits all of the right notes, and because it’s served at room temperature, you can make it the morning of and enjoy it all day long!
Miso is great with chicken and the flavours of the apricots take on a syrupy jamminess, mingling with the cider to create a sticky-sweet sensation. It is something a little different but, trust me, it is incredibly flavourful.
This recipe came to me by divine intervention. In a rush to make pork saltimbocca for dinner, I came to learn that my sage plant had been the victim of a terrible storm. Desperate to salvage supper, I had to use what little I had left in my kitchen (we’d just packed to move home) and all I could find was brandy, paprika and a little cream. I’m so grateful.
Who doesn’t love ham and pineapple pizza? Hawaiian is one of my favorite pizza flavors, and I can’t get enough of it, so a bacon and pineapple fried rice is the next best thing. The black pepper helps to add a bit of heat and spice to complement the smokiness of the bacon, and the sweetness of the pineapple. For those who are skeptical about pineapple in fried rice, it’s a staple dish, and hails from the Yunnan region in China.
All the dishes in this chapter are made with chicken thighs, because I unashamedly love them. They’re succulent—so much better than breasts, which can dry out, in fact it’s hard to overcook chicken thighs—they all cook at the same time (and quickly), and there’s no carving. If you like a mixture of thighs and drumsticks, the recipes will will work with those, too, just replace half the thighs in any dish with drumsticks.
These rice balls are inspired by my friends Lawrence and Noi Allen, who used to own one of the only Thai markets in Houston, Asia Market. I started going there to buy green papayas. But I never left with just papayas—each visit would start with me wandering the aisles, checking out all the different ingredients, until Lawrence would come over and strike up a conversation. He probably didn’t realize when he asked me if I needed help that I was going to bombard him with all kinds of questions about ingredients and Thai cooking, but he was always generous with his time and knowledge.
Every Mexican cook has his or her own cherished mole recipe. Usually it’s based on one of the familiar mole types, with their own special tweaks to the ingredients, quantities, or techniques. The idea of making mole can be daunting to many home cooks, but although a mole has a lot of ingredients, it is not particularly difficult. And it’s even better when made ahead of time, so the flavors can blend. Mole will keep at least a week in the refrigerator and freezes well.
If you make salmon on a regular basis, you know how quickly it can come together. But if you make it on a regular basis, like us, you also stop getting excited for salmon night. When I ask my husband what we should make for dinner and he says “salmon,” it almost sounds like a sigh and a shrug. Get excited, my friends, because this is the salmon recipe that will bring back the love. And if you don’t normally make salmon at home, this is a great recipe to get you started. It’s pretty foolproof.
There’s nothing new about marinating chicken with herbs and citrus, but the addition of fish sauce takes this tried-and-true technique to something seriously next level. The fish sauce works its way deep into the chicken to impart its funky, salty flavor all the way through. This recipe also shows off the special relationship between fish sauce and sugar (in this case, honey) and how they work together to create caramelization without tipping the scales of flavor into something too sweet. If you’d rather not mess with a whole chicken, feel free to swap in chicken thighs or breasts.