Fruit

“Chiles in Adobo” are chipotles (wood-smoked jalapeños) in tomato sauce, sold in cans. They’re available at any market with a good selection of Mexican foods. If you can’t find one, substitute hot chile powder or even cayenne. This is lovely with any grilled meat.

This is what most Americans are talking about when they say salsa. You can make it hot or not, as you like; it’s a good use for less-than-perfect tomatoes and an excellent sauce–side dish accompaniment for anything grilled, particularly seafood.

The ease with which this dish can be thrown together and the range of meals it happily accompanies (menus with European, Middle Eastern, or Northern African accents are game, as are good old American cookouts) guarantee that it makes regular and frequent appearances on my dinner table. An assortment of olives is far preferable to just one kind. Try, for example, some oil cured, some big fat green Sicilians, and some Kalamatas just that simple combination will look bright and pretty. If you can lay your hands on more varieties, so much the better.

Fall is the time for fresh figs, which people who live in Mediterranean climates (including many Californians) take for granted but which are a real treat for the rest of us. Fresh figs may be green or dark purple; color does not affect flavor (ripeness and variety do), but most people perceive purple figs as more attractive. This is obviously a fruit dish, but the fruit functions like a vegetable in this preparation.

You’ll find strongly seasoned, crunchy pork everywhere in Latin America, and it’s always irresistible.

This preparation favors thick spears of asparagus, which become tender and remain moist inside while their exteriors char. Those that weigh an ounce or two each—that is, eight to sixteen per pound are the best. The only difference between thick and pencil asparagus is that thick asparagus must be peeled before cooking to remove the relatively tough skin; use a vegetable peeler or paring knife.

Although I was told this dish—beautifully browned sausages nestled on a bed of grapes in varying stages of doneness, some lightly browned, some collapsed, some whole and nearly raw—is Umbrian in origin, it seems as if many workers of the land who produced sausages and picked grapes would have created this, even if by accident, no matter where they lived. It is an often overlooked recipe in cookbooks, perhaps because there’s almost nothing to it. In any case, the wonderful marriage is incredibly easy to produce and easily worked into anyone’s repertoire. With good bread and a salad, you’ve got a great weeknight meal in about half an hour.

It isn’t often you can combine a few winter staples and create a novel, fresh-tasting dish that is easily varied, stands on its own, or forms the base for a variety of other foods. Yet a simple mélange of fennel and orange does all of these things and without a lot of effort. Take some slices of boneless pork, for example, marinate them briefly in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper, pan-roast them, then serve them on a bed of the compote: the mingled juices are sheer delight. (I’ve presented the recipe that way here, but it is easy to cook the fennel-orange combination on its own.) Similarly, the compote works nicely as a bed for simple roasted cod, sautéed duck breast, and grilled chicken. There isn’t much technique to speak of here; you’ll know the dish is done when the orange juice bubbles become scarce. Just be sure not to cook the compote entirely dry; the orange juice sauce is a nice touch.

Lamb chops are among the best meats to grill; although they tend to catch fire, they cook so quickly—three minutes per side is usually more than enough—that there is no time for them to char, and the fire makes the exterior even crisper than it might be otherwise. The cucumbers are best if they’re salted, which removes some of their bitterness and makes them extra-crisp. Start with one or two Kirby (small) cucumbers per person—or half of a medium cucumber or about a third of a long (“English”) cucumber.

A logical combination and glorious once you taste it, with the sweet juice of the peaches deftly cutting through the richness of the lamb without being piercing. A hint of cinnamon (or an even smaller one of allspice—maybe an eighth of a teaspoon) gives the dish a great aroma as it cooks and a slightly mysterious flavor at the table. A pinch of cayenne or other red pepper makes a nice addition. Whereas most braises begin with browning, this one ends with it, like the Braised and Grilled Lamb Shanks on page 188. This method reduces both spattering and time—since the lamb’s liquid is mostly gone by the end of cooking, it doesn’t go flying from the hot fat, and the meat browns faster. And the peaches, browning lightly in the same cooking liquid, contribute some of their juices to the pan while becoming meltingly tender.

There is no more celebratory food than goose, but when it is roasted it is difficult to carve and can be disappointing. Braising it, especially with fruit, is a different approach that works brilliantly. Any dried fruit can be used in this preparation, but dried pears hold their shape better and are a little less sweet than prunes and apricots; there’s no reason you can’t substitute, however, or combine.

The chicken must be well browned before the rest of the dish is cooked, and in this instance there is no hurrying the process. Take your time and brown each piece of chicken well; especially if you’re cooking for eight or more, this will take a while, as you’ll have to brown in batches.

Chicken with dried apricots is hardly a new idea, but it’s almost always too sweet, and the routine addition of cinnamon and cloves makes the whole thing taste more like dessert than dinner. Take them away, add a little vinegar to counter the fruit’s sweetness, improve and simplify the cooking technique, and you have a beautiful dish for a winter meal.

I had something like this on a visit to Bangkok, chicken with a creamy but spicy lime sauce. At first I thought the rich texture had come from a pan reduction or even a béchamel-like sauce, but I detected the faint taste of coconut and realized it was little more than coconut milk spiked with lime. With canned coconut milk, it can be made in less than a half hour.

Meuniere once referred to fillets of sole that were floured and quickly sautéed in clarified butter, then finished with parsley, lemon juice, and a little melted butter. Over the years its definition has expanded, to the point where it describes a series of flexible techniques that can be applied to just about any thin cut of meat, poultry, or fish, all of which makes it more useful. You must preheat the skillet before adding the oil (or clarified butter, if you’re feeling extravagant) and you must use a large, flat-bottomed skillet, preferably nonstick, with deep, sloping sides, which makes turning the cutlets easier and keeps the inevitable spattering to a minimum.

Once in martinique I ate at a restaurant that was so simple that almost all of the food—chicken, tuna, quail, pork, and veal kidneys—was grilled. Not only that; it was all served with the same thin, powerful sauce, made of lime, scallion, chile, and garlic, with loads of allspice. It was the allspice that made the sauce unusual, but there was more to it than that: the garlic and scallion looked uncooked but had lost their harshness and become easily digestible. Furthermore, the base of the sauce was not oil, but water. With the help of a friend who was born on Martinique, I was able to duplicate the sauce at home. It’s called sauce au chien, which means “dog sauce” (a fact I chose not to research too aggressively). And it’s great with almost anything grilled.

Because the sauce is so moist, swordfish treated in this way will take a little longer to grill than usual; the interior, after all, has what amounts to a thick liquid cooling it off. So instead of cooking a one-and-a-half-inch-thick steak—about the right size for this procedure—for eight to ten minutes, I’d estimate twelve to fourteen. The actual time will vary depending on the heat of your grill or broiler, but you can assume a little bit longer than what you’re used to. Check by cutting into the fish when you think it’s done; the interior can be pearly but should not look raw.

Although this minimalist but infinitely variable technique of herb-coating salmon is about as straightforward as can be, allowing the fillets to sit for a while after coating will encourage the fragrant seasonings to permeate the flesh of the fish; try fifteen minutes or so at room temperature or up to 24 hours in the refrigerator.

This is a Southeast Asian–style preparation, mildly sweet and mouth-puckeringly sour. It’s also ridiculously fast; if you start some rice before tackling the shrimp, they will both be done at about the same time, twenty minutes later. (This assumes your shrimp are already peeled, a task that will take you about ten minutes and one that should be undertaken before cooking the rice.) For best flavor, see if you can find head-on shrimp; they make for a more impressive presentation, and it’s fun to suck the juices out of the heads themselves (which, I realize, is not something that everyone enjoys). But none of these assets is worth making head-on shrimp a sticking point. Note that this technique will work with scallops or cut-up squid; each will take slightly less time to cook than the shrimp.

Sometimes a simple salad features such powerful flavors that by adding a couple of straightforward ingredients a whole meal appears as if by magic. Here the starting place is a Southeast Asian–style cucumber salad, with a dressing made from lime juice, lemongrass, fish sauce (called nam pla in Thailand and nuoc mam in Vietnam), and a few other strong seasonings. This dressing commingles perfectly with the natural juices of the cucumbers to moisten the greens. Top all with grilled scallops—or other fish or meat—and you create an easy one-dish meal whose flavor really jumps off the plate. It looks lovely, too, especially if your cucumbers are good enough to leave unpeeled. And (although not by design, I assure you), this salad is extremely low in fat.