Cauliflower

My mom, who was born in Northern Vietnam grew up with this regional pickle. Quan, my brother-in-law, is addicted to it, and when he visits her, he never fails to find the jar that she always keeps in her fridge. While dua góp sometimes contains different ingredients, such as green papaya, this combination of cauliflower, bell pepper, and carrot offers a nice balance of flavor, color, and texture. Traditionally the pickle is served with rich meats and fried fish, but the vegetables are great alone as a quick nibble or as part of a charcuterie platter (Vietnamese or otherwise), antipasto spread, or sandwich plate.

Warm and bubbly with a golden brown crust, this easy-to-prepare side dish is one of my favorite cold-weather indulgences. I am a big fan of cauliflower’s soft, slightly nutty flavor and don’t think it gets the attention it deserves. It has a remarkable ability to absorb the flavors of whatever it is being cooked with, such as the rich creamy sauce of smooth Monterey Jack, salty Parmesan, and tangy goat cheeses in this gratin.

The best thing about kimchi is this: It packs so much flavor and complexity, you can use it to make lightning-quick meals that taste as if they took hours to prepare. This fried rice, for instance, comes together in mere minutes. Cutting up the cauliflower might be the most time-consuming part. And yet this dish is downright addictive. If you don’t have a wok, you can use a large nonstick skillet for this fried rice, but it will take a little longer to cook.

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.

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.

The payoff for having made the Stewed Cauliflower, Butternut Squash, and Tomatoes (page 55), beyond that first bowl of pasta I hope you had with it, is that you can use it for quick treatments such as this one. With its runny yolk enriching the vegetables, it’s a satisfying breakfast dish on its own, or it can morph into a brunch or breakfast-for-dinner dish with the addition of crusty bread and a side salad.

If a cauliflower is happiest under a comfort blanket of cream and cheese, we can run with the idea, dropping the cheese and introducing some of the milder, more fragrant spices such as coriander and cardamom into the cream instead. With its toasted cashews and crisp finish of spiced fried onions, this is a mild dish, so I see no reason to soften the blow with steamed rice, preferring instead to eat it with a crunchy salad of Belgian endive and watercress (or some such crisp, hot leaf ), using it to wipe the sauce from my plate.

You could measure my life in bowls of soup. Each New Year’s Day brings a pot of lentil soup (a good-luck symbol throughout much of Europe); pea and mint soup is to celebrate early summer; cabbage soup for colds and crash diets; parsnip soup for frosty weekends; chicken broth to cleanse my soul. You probably don’t want to know about the parsimonious soup-stew I put together from the weekly fridge cleanup. I do believe in the power of soup to restore our spirits and to strengthen and protect us. Steaming, frugal, yet curiously luxurious, soup replaces many a meal in this house. With a good loaf on the bread board and fresh salad in the bowl, I have no shame in serving soup to visitors (only amusement in watching them looking round in vain for a main course). I first came up with the idea of this soup years ago, and have watched it do the rounds, yet it has never made it into any of my own books until now. It has something of the Welsh rarebit about it.

I enjoy making a bit of a fuss about cheese sauce. The difference between a carelessly put together sauce and one made with care and love is astounding. Taking the trouble to flavor the milk with bay, clove, and onion, allowing the sauce to come together slowly to give its ingredients time to get know one another, and enriching it with a little cream will result in a sauce of twice the standing of one seasoned only with speed and sloppiness. There is much humble satisfaction in a simple dish, carefully made.

This is a simple pickle with bold flavors. For a variation, try adding fresh herbs, a dash of red pepper flakes, or a wedge of orange.

The key to this dish is the texture of the eggs—they should be airy and light. For fluffy eggs, take them out of the pan when they are just barely cooked. For a richer dish, use milk instead of water, or add a cup of Cheddar or other mild cheese just before the eggs leave the stove. Serve with Cilantro-Jalapeño Sauce (page 184), Tamarind Ketchup (page 178), or Citrus Chutney (page 182).

The key to a fluffy mash is to use the right tool: a ricer, a food mill, or an old-fashioned potato masher. A ricer resembles an overgrown garlic press. Cooked vegetables are placed in its hopper and forced through tiny holes with a plunger, producing a texture vaguely like that of rice. A food mill consists of a round metal bowl with a curved blade that turns with a hand crank. Secured to the bottom of the bowl are interchangeable disks with holes from fine to coarse. When you turn the crank, the blade mashes the cooked food through the holes. Both the ricer and the food mill produce exquisite mashes and purees with a smoother texture than the humble old-fashioned potato masher. These simple tools are the precursors to the efficient food processor. However, they do a better job than a processor or electric mixer for any mixture that contains potatoes, as both food processor and mixer produce a gummy mass instead of a silken puree. Meme had a ricer she used for years. Mama and I joke, “The Smithsonian called and wants their exhibit back.” The truth is, sometimes older is better.

En papillote (PAH-peh-loht) is French for “in paper,” which is how this dish is made. This method of cooking steams the food and allows you to cook without fat, but we did add a little butter, thyme, and lemon for flavor. This is a really simple, foolproof way to cook fish and, best of all, it makes for easy cleanup.

Most of us are familiar with “rolled” enchiladas: some kind of savory filling rolled up in a tortilla, then baked. But a stacked enchilada is even easier to make, and the results, especially when done in a slow cooker, are a lot like a casserole. A layer of corn or flour tortillas, a layer of fresh vegetables, another layer of tortillas, another layer of filling, and so on until the slow cooker insert is a bit over half full. Then a nice long, slow cook that allows all the juicy vegetable flavors to meld and blend. You can certainly vary the type of vegetables according to the season and what’s in your garden or farmers’ market at any given time. This is great freshly cooked and is even better as leftovers.

Cauliflower is a wonderful vegetable that’s full of excellent cancer-fighting enzymes, yet it’s sorely in need of a PR campaign. That’s because most people steam cauliflower, which makes the kitchen smell like a stink bomb detonated. Either that or, like my dad, they eat cauliflower raw and tasteless as crudités (in his case, dipped in Russian dressing). The secret is to roast cauliflower. Not only does this avoid the sulfur smell, it also produces an unbelievably sweet flavor.

A one-dish meal, spiced with chili peppers and served over noodles.

This dairy-free “cream” soup, enhanced with any of the garnishes recommended, makes a hearty (but not heavy) introduction for a spring meal.

If you’re looking for a mild, soothing soup for a rainy spring evening, here’s a pleasant choice.

This soup features a slew of compatible ingredients made even more companionable in a mildly curried broth.