The truth is, most tomato salads don’t need a recipe. Vinegar, olive oil, plenty of crunchy salt, and call it a day. If you have some herbs on hand, throw those in. What would a tomato salad look like if it deserved a recipe? Something like this. Very savory. Topped with garlic-chile crisp and dressed with its delicious oil. Anchovies and fennel seeds heighten the tomato’s flavor while bringing even more savory undertones. It’s spicy, with the chile flakes. This isn’t a simple caprese that you whipped up on a summer afternoon. It’s still simple but steals the show.
This is a playful twist on a classic recipe that pulls you back to childhood. I like cooking and pairing spicy, hearty dishes with Torpedo Extra IPA because the punch of the spice and sharp cheddar stand up to the hop forward, bitter notes of the beer.
Linguine with clams, white wine, fresh garlic, lemon, and parsley– Francis Lam’s One is a nod to a childhood dish his parents used to make when family or friends came for dinner. It’s a simple and loose recipe that can be adjusted based on desire– add more wine and butter to make it more saucy, use additional clams for extra dinner guests, add herbs, or not depending on what you have on hand.
Ground beef gets a bad rap from snobby foodie types, but since it’s something I grew up eating, I prefer to see the positive—it’s an incredibly affordable and versatile starting point for families looking to save money (aka, all families). It’s all about what you do with it. In this recipe, we’re using it to prepare a version of bulgogi, one of the most popular dishes in Korean cuisine, both in restaurants and in homes. Typically prepared with fancier cuts of beef, bulgogi rests in a mild, balanced marinade for hours (ideally overnight) before getting crispy and caramelized on the grill. This recipe delivers all that flavor on a hamburger budget. Sweet and salty, it’s a flexible base that can be served with lettuce wraps, rice, noodles, or rolled up into homemade Kimbap
This recipe hits all the flavor notes of KFC, Korean Fried Chicken—sweet, salty, spicy, extremely savory. But instead of going through the trouble of setting up a deep fryer or panfrying on the stovetop, which is always a pain and a mess, this is a just-as-delicious recipe for the oven that will impress your family and friends. Please have a lot of napkins handy.
Chicken adobo is one of the most popular recipe searches on the Internet, and for good reason. It’s universally loved, easy to prepare, and after being cooked, it lasts for a week in the refrigerator and reheats perfectly. This recipe comes from Daniel’s sister-in-law Stephanie, a first-generation Filipina American who learned to make the dish from her mom, Susan Aquino (Tita Baby). Dark drumstick and thigh meat will yield the juiciest results, so they’re always the first choice, but if you prefer breast meat, you can follow the same recipe. Make sure to marinate adobo for at least twelve hours before cooking to ensure the flavor penetrates. This recipe also works well with pork belly, but you’ll need to increase the cooking time to an hour.
Red rice is a traditional Southern dish (and a tradition in other cultures as well), and I love the nostalgia of it. This version is an update that makes it into an easy one-pot meal where you don’t have to cook the rice ahead of time. And there are so many variations. You can add cheese. You can serve it as a side instead of a main. You can make a vegetarian version. My children love it. My favorite thing is the way the rice gets crispy on top. It gives the dish that extra bite and texture that makes me happy.
Though I use hot sausages here, you can use any kind of fresh Italian-seasoned sausage you prefer. Chicken or turkey sausages would lighten this dish up a bit, but take care not to overcook them: they dry out faster than pork sausages. Leftovers work well in a frittata or as a sandwich filling.
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.
Any sausage roll is a good thing, but these are a very good thing indeed. Savory is a really old herb that was used in cooking centuries ago. We wanted to recreate a sausage roll that you might have unearthed in an ancient English recipe in some dusty old book somewhere. And we’ve used plenty of savory to bring that nice herby taste to the fore. These are great for picnics or packed lunches, eaten hot or cold.