The greatest failure when making potato salad is overcooking the spuds—creamy mashed pota-toes is a no-go for any potato salad recipe. You want a waxy variety like fingerlings, Yukon Golds, or red potatoes; these varieties will keep their shape and texture when cooked right. Bobby Seale, cofounder of the Black Panther Party, said it well in his 1988 cookbook Barbeque’n with Bobby, where he wrote under a recipe titled “Hunky Crunchy Potato Salad” that his mother’s potato salad was a “tasty quasi-mashed potato salad.” My pro tip is to season the potatoes while they are warm. Begin your training to be a queen.
Daniel almost always has steaks sitting in the freezer, but he rarely has the forethought to plan on cooking one (and setting it out to defrost) the night before. One evening, after a particularly vigorous jujitsu match (he wrestles competitively), he was famished and had a strong hankering for a steak. Without the time or patience to defrost one, he tossed the seasoned, though still frozen, block of icy beef under the broiler for ten minutes. To his surprise, the steak cooked beautifully this way, with rendered, crispy, golden fat and a deeply browned crust. As with all meat cookery, resting the steak for a few minutes when it comes off the flame is key to redistributing the juices and getting an even medium-rare cook temperature from edge to edge.
THE MAN’OUSHE (SINGULAR for mana’eesh) is the quintessential street food of the Levant. Wherever you go in the streets of Damascus, Beirut, or Jerusalem, you’ll see professionals, students, families, and their children all enjoying piping hot flatbreads, usually slathered with herbaceous za’atar. They’re eaten while walking down the street on the way to work or school, sitting in cafés, or around the breakfast table. Among my favorite memories in Syria and Lebanon is heading to one of the corner bakeries and ordering flatbreads by the dozen. Slid right out of the oven into pizza boxes, my cousins and I would rush back to an aunt or uncle’s home and devour them without a single word exchanged.
Shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, celebrated Italian chef Massimo Bottura launched a fantastic daily cooking show on Instagram. One of his ideas? Cook something today and use the leftovers in another dish tomorrow. This pasta with tomato and tuna sauce serves two, with enough to also make my Pasta al Forno.
It’s an unlikely scenario—early season vegetables cooked at a low simmer to amplify their fresh flavors—but it works.
To create stovetop Brussels sprouts that were deeply browned on the cut sides while still bright green on the uncut sides and crisp-tender within, we started the sprouts in a cold skillet with plenty of oil and cooked them covered. This gently heated the sprouts and created a steamy environment that cooked them through without adding any extra moisture. We then removed the lid and continued to cook the sprouts cut sides down so they had time to develop a substantial, caramelized crust. Using enough oil to completely coat the skillet ensured that all the sprouts made full contact with the fat to brown evenly from edge to edge.
This takes just 15 minutes to make and I cook it very often at home because it’s simple, light and healthy and it’s full of flavour. This is a Spanish version of a Chinese stir-fry.
Using a mix of vegetable oil and extra-virgin olive oil is crucial to the flavor of the aïoli.
Buy fresh organic cherry tomatoes if possible and feel free to use the golden or orange varieties; they taste slightly different (sweeter, less acidic) and add color and excitement. Stay away from the pear or grape versions. These are meant to show off their unusual shapes and are best enjoyed raw.
I love this dish, a rich savory pie made with whatever greens I find at the farmers’ market. I’ve made it with kale, Swiss chard, collard greens, radish tops, beet greens, half a bunch of parsley—if it’s green and leafy, it’s going in the torta! A generous amount of olive oil and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano enriches the greens and prevents the torta from feeling too restrained, too healthful. Serve thin wedges of this as a starter.