Red Onion

Who doesn’t love a big thick chunk of iceberg lettuce with bacon and blue cheese dressing alongside a juicy cowboy-cut ribeye? It’s one of my favorite steakhouse meals. Problem is, at 700-plus calories and more than 80 grams of fat—for the salad alone!—it’s a very bad bargain. Thankfully, the availability of reduced-fat blue cheese means you don’t have to choose between the steak and the salad.

This dish is fast and healthy and incorporates a favorite Sicilian combo: oranges, red onions, and oregano.

Eat well, eat more! I cut out the bun so I can have more dogs and veggies with less guilt. Chicago-style dogs are my favorites, with pickles, tomatoes, onions, mustard, and slaw on top. This salad reverses the order and piles the veggies up high underneath the dogs.

This Sri Lankan sambol may best be described as an accompanying salad or relish to be served at curry meals. You can make it as hot as you like.

Here is an everyday dish with a fair number of ingredients. Once you have them all prepared and assembled, the rest is fairly easy. Remember that you can chop the onions in a food processor. I have used two 15-ounce cans of organic chickpeas, draining them to separate the liquid so I can measure it. If you are not using organic canned chickpeas, use water instead of the can liquid. If the can liquid is not enough, add water to get the correct amount. Serve with Indian or Middle Eastern breads (you can even roll up the chickpeas inside them) with Yogurt Sambol with Tomato and Shallot, page 249, on the side. At a dinner, add meat and a vegetable.

In Sri Lanka, an island nation, fish is a staple. It is used in salads, as stuffing for savory pastries, as a flavoring in relishes, as a snack food with drinks, and, of course, in hundreds of curries. This particular curry was served to me for breakfast on a sunny patio at Castlereigh, a tea planter’s home turned boutique hotel, along with fresh rice noodles and good, hot tea. On that cool morning in the mountains nothing could have tasted finer. Almost any fish may be used here, as long as it is firm and holds its shape—swordfish, salmon, pompano, sole, haddock, kingfish, and mackerel. I have used swordfish. Serve with Plain Jasmine Rice and Gujarati-Style Okra.

Known as bhajia, bhaja, pakora, and many other names in different parts of India, fritters are an integral part of every single local cuisine in the nation. The flour that is generally used is the protein-rich chickpea flour (though sometimes rice flour is mixed in for extra crunch). That is the constant. After that, anything can be “frittered”—leaves, roots, fish, roe, vegetables, you take your pick. The batter can be thick or thin, spicy or mild, you take your pick again. Most fritters are served with chutneys. Might I suggest Fresh Green Chutney, page 245, or Peshawari Red Pepper Chutney, page 243, here, but, if you do not have time, bottled tomato ketchup or a last-minute squeeze of lime juice will suffice. In India and Pakistan, fritters are eaten as a snack, with chutneys and tea. In Bangladesh, they can be the first course at a meal, served with rice. In the West, they have acquired another life altogether: they are served as an appetizer in restaurants and with drinks at catered parties. Ideally, these fritters, rather like French fries, are best eaten as soon as they come out of the frying pan. If that is not possible, make them ahead of time and reheat them in a medium oven for 10 minutes.

Tomatoes are banadoura in Arabic and tamatem in Egypt.

Bitter oranges—Seville oranges—are commonly used in Morocco, but this salad is also good with sweet ones. Argan oil (see page 31) gives it a nutty flavor.

I consider spaghetti squash a “fun” vegetable and enjoy serving it to anyone who has never tried it. Everyone seems delighted by this unique squash and its spaghetti-like flesh. This is delicious accompanied by Long-Grain and Wild Rice Salad (page 50).

An appetizing preparation, this will invigorate the winter-worn palate.