Paprika

A deli side-dish favorite, macaroni salad is a gimme on every table in America come summertime. Everyone has a favorite recipe—some contain ham, some peppers, some bacon, and some peas. But all contain high-fat mayonnaise and white pasta, a fundamentally bad combo. White pasta is replaced here with whole-wheat shells, and the high-fat mayo with low-fat mayo. I added a few bits and pieces, like smoked paprika, to give it some personality.

Goulash is a Hungarian stew made from cuts of beef that contain lots of collagen, which melts during cooking and thickens the liquid in which it’s cooked. That’s why this recipe calls for beef shank: it’s rich and meaty but doesn’t have the fat content of other cuts of beef, such as chuck. Paprika and onions are the other ingredients that give this dish its signature taste. A little yogurt to finish (instead of the traditional sour cream) provides additional richness without driving up the calorie count.

Blush-colored lobster bisque made from flavorful lobster stock has historically suggested the height of elegance. Save this recipe for a leisurely weekend.

Serve as is or with a simple green salad.

Serve with a green salad or vegetable sticks.

We love the indulgence of individual soufflés straight out of the oven. These are the perfect winter dessert; the spicy gingerbread flavors permeate every delicate bite. You can top them with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream and enjoy the play of hot and cold, spicy and sweet. Or you can pour on a little hard sauce or crème anglaise or even eat them plain. If you love gingerbread, you will be very happy with these light, airy soufflés.

While you can certainly buy ranch spice blend in the supermarket, we prefer to make our own. It just tastes fresher and we can fine-tune the seasoning exactly the way we like it.

One summer we worked as private chefs on a ranch in Montana. One of our jobs was to oversee the chefs in the employee kitchen. We watched as they lamented the crew’s love of ranch dressing, culminating one evening when a guy poured it on his lasagna. We were fascinated by how much people loved the flavor of ranch and slowly began to weave it into our repertoire just for fun. These gnocchi were one of our first experiments and are still one of the best.

A Römertopf, a porous clay pot developed in the 1960s by a German company, is often used in Alsace and southern Germany for long- simmering stews. These stews may be akin to Alsatian baeckeoffe, a pot of meat (usually beef, pork, and veal along with calf or pig feet) mixed with potatoes, marinated in white wine, and cooked in the oven all day long, on Mondays, when the women traditionally do the wash. Agar Lippmann (see page 258) remembers her mother in Alsace making the Sabbath stew in a baeckeoffe, using a mix of flour and water to make a kind of glue to really seal the lid. When I was having lunch at Robert and Evelyne Moos’s house in Annecy, they used a Römertopf to make a similar lamb stew for me. Eveline ceremoniously brought the dish to the table, and in front of all of us, took off the top so that we were enveloped in the steam and aromas of the finished dish.

The secret of Hélène’s ratatouille is to cook the vegetables separately in the oven, intensifying their individual flavors. This may seem like using a lot of pans, but it is mostly waiting time. She assured me, “You can just let vegetables cook themselves and gently stir them all together.” The word “ratatouille” is related to the word touiller and the Latin tudiculare, meaning “to stir,” “crush,” or “toss.” After being cooked, the vegetables were originally assembled in a rectangular earthenware tian casserole, then gratinéed, and served hot or cold on the Sabbath. Now the cooked eggplant, pepper, zucchini, and tomato may be served together, or separately as individual salads. Ratatouille is similar to the Middle Eastern and North African dish tchoukchouka (see page 94), meaning “to shake up,” in both Hebrew and Arabic, and to other very old Mediterranean dishes of zucchini and eggplant. Hélène seasons her version with a hot but not fiery Basque pepper called piment d’Espelette, from Espelette, a town near her native Toulouse. If you don’t have piment d’Espelette, you can use hot paprika or New Mexico red chili powder.

This is Sri Lanka’s everyday coconut sambol. Known as pol sambol, it would be called a chutney in India. It may be served with any meal.

When this dish is served in the Rajasthan desert region of India, its color, coming mainly from ground hot chilies, is a fiery red. I have moderated the heat by mixing cayenne pepper with more calming paprika. Use a fresh red paprika if you want the proper color. This is generally served with Indian flatbreads, but rice would be fine too. A calming green, such as spinach or Swiss chard, could be served on the side. For more robust flavors, have one of the eggplant dishes with it.

Vindaloo implies garlic and vinegar, and this dish certainly has plenty of both. Make it as hot as you like. The heat balances the tartness. This dish holds well and, because it does not have too much sauce, is wonderful to take on picnics.

You could use any chicken parts you like for this recipe—dark meat, light meat, or a combination. The bones should stay in but the skin should be pulled off. This chicken needs to be marinated for at least 4 hours. Serve with Plain Basmati Rice, My Everyday Moong Dal, Spinach with Garlic and Cumin, a yogurt relish, and a salad to get the feel of a simple family meal in North India.