5 Ingredients or Fewer

Goat cheese may be a good option for those who can’t tolerate cow’s milk, and when combined with tart raspberries on toasted bread, it’s hard for anyone to resist.

Avocado provides folic acid, fiber, and monounsaturated fatty acids; pear adds extra soluble fiber and sweetness.

The Mexican equivalent of crème fraîche, crema is often served with Southwestern dishes as a relief to spicy food, as well as to provide richness—with refried beans or a spicy stew, for example. Crème fraîche and natural sour cream are acceptable substitutes.

These are the fresh fruit drinks of Mexico that you find at markets everywhere served from large ribbed glass jars. Vendors at Mexican markets will offer licuados of all flavors made from local fruit, sugar, and water in a kaleidoscope of colors—hot pinks and greens from melons, yellow from pineapple, purple from hibiscus blossoms, orange from tangerines. No two licuado stands are alike, and this drink represents, for me, the infinite variety and vitality of Mexican cuisine. If you go to Mexico, be sure to try the local licuado, since each region and locality has its own special tropical fruits and ingredients. I prefer to use cane sugar for licuados as it produces a noticeably brighter fruit flavor. For a more natural sugar, substitute a light agave syrup, using about one-fourth less than for cane sugar. If you have a juicer that both squeezes the fruit and strains the pulp, it will produce a fantastic licuado base with the purest fruit flavor. With really ripe, sweet fruit, decrease the amount of sugar in the recipe.

This recipe highlights the wonderful flavor of the fresh green chiles widely abundant at roadside stands throughout New Mexico during the late summer and all through the fall. Often the chiles are roasted on the spot in hand-turned, butane-fired drums. You can smell the roasting chiles long before you can see them. Just follow your nose to find a vendor, as the air is thick with fiery oils that can clear your head. I look forward to fall in Santa Fe every year mainly because of that nostalgic, pungent and spicy aroma I have come to love.

Chorizo was one of the first dishes that I learned to cook at home, prompted by a longing for it after visiting Mexico as a youth, where it was usually served for breakfast with eggs. No more dried, tough, salty bacon for me. I was a chorizo convert, and I was determined to have it for breakfast. While there were good local Mexican markets at the time, I found a simple recipe for chorizo in a Mexican cookbook of my mother’s (which I still have almost fifty years later). That homemade chorizo became our Sunday morning ritual. I measured out all the spices—the chile powders, the canela, the cumin, and other seasonings—and added them to the pan along with fresh ground pork. I stirred the mixture slowly, keeping it moist, until it was ready. Breakfast had become exciting again! For this filling, I prefer chorizo that has not been ground too fine and with plenty of fat. You can add additional spices and seasonings like red chile powder or roasted fresh green jalapeños to it while cooking to enhance or alter flavors.

This is a very simple taco, common throughout Mexico, that I ate at whatever local market was nearby on almost all of my mornings there. It was always accompanied by copious amounts of orange juice freshly squeezed with a portable juicer at a neighboring street cart. They are a great way to start a day and one of my longtime favorites. Consider this recipe a tasty base for ingredients—whatever sounds good to you. Green chile powder is a nice addition, as is chipotle powder.

This is a very rustic, traditional recipe created for its portability. The charros, the nomadic first cowboys of Mexico and the American Southwest, traveled by horseback far from home so their food was limited to simple choices like jerky that stayed fresh on the trail. You’ll find a wide variety of commercially prepared dried beef and buffalo jerky available today, including ones flavored with chiles. Be sure to use an all-natural, preservative-free jerky with consistent color that is fresh and flexible and packaged in an airtight bag. Jerky can be rehydrated directly in boiling water, but most of the flavor will be lost in the water. A tamale steamer or vegetable steamer works well for this process.

Flour tortillas are a mainstay of Tex-Mex cooking. You can see them rolling hot off the tortilla machines into baskets at many of the Tex-Mex restaurant chains (a show that kids love to watch), perfect for fajitas and juicy meats. One of my favorite ways to enjoy a flour tortilla is possible in Santa Fe only in August and September during the chile harvest. I’ll peel and seed a fire-roasted fresh green chile, roll it, still steaming, in a warm fresh flour tortilla, and eat it up. Such a simple treat, yet so memorable. These tortillas are very easy to make and so much fresher and lighter than any you can buy at the store. I’ve used bleached all-purpose flour for this recipe rather than bread flour. All-purpose flour has less gluten, so the dough is easier to roll out into thin tortillas that stay flat without shrinking back. As an alternative to making the dough from scratch, you can try Quaker Harina Preparada para Tortillas, a mix that contains all the ingredients in dry form that you need to make flour tortillas, including the fat. Just add water to prepare the dough. Some Hispanic markets stock it, or look for an online source.

To make tortillas with masa harina, use packaged masa harina. Two of the most widely available brands are Maseca (be sure to buy the type for tortillas) and Quaker Oats. One of my favorites is an all-natural, stone-ground masa harina made by Bob’s Red Mill, a small Oregon company that specializes in whole grain products. You can find it at Whole Foods markets, natural food stores, well-stocked specialty markets, supermarkets, and online. Purchase masa harina from a supermarket with a high turnover, as it will go rancid over time. Always taste masa harina before you use it to be sure it is still fresh. It does not store well and goes off much faster than flour. It’s best to store masa harina in the refrigerator or freezer, where it holds for 2 to 3 months. It will also keep in your pantry if sealed airtight for about 2 months. Making the dough is easiest in a heavy-duty mixer, but you can also mix it by hand in a bowl with a wooden spatula.

This goes remarkably well with steak.

The addition of buttermilk to a basic vinaigrette imparts creaminess and reduces the amount of oil needed for thickening. This dressing has a lighter body than the others, perfect for tender lettuces.

Buttermilk and low-fat yogurt replace some of the mayonnaise and the usual sour cream for a lighter, more refreshing dressing. This is a favorite for spooning over chilled wedges of iceberg lettuce, and it also goes well with hearty Belgian endive spears. The dressing can be made with any crumbly blue cheese, ranging from mild Danish blue to the more pungent Roquefort, Stilton, or Gorgonzola.

When creaming butter for frostings, incorporating air and creating cells is not as important as simply creating a seamless texture. Many traditional buttercream frostings, such as the Swiss Meringue Buttercream on Page 455, incorporate softened butter into a meringue base, but this version is far simpler and quicker. You need only to beat the butter until creamy and then mix in confectioners’ sugar and cocoa powder until smooth. This frosting will be grainier than a shiny, glossy meringue-based buttercream, but it is perfectly acceptable for a birthday cake or batch of cupcakes.

Pesto is one of those once-exotic foodstuffs that has become ubiquitous on the American table. It hails from the Italian city of Genoa, in Liguria. Don’t limit yourself to pairing it with pasta—it’s sensational on sandwiches, pizza, and even as a topping for vegetables such as tomatoes and corn. A mortar and pestle (preferably large) is the best tool to use for crushing the basil, since it produces a sweeter-tasting sauce (a food processor also works, as long as you don’t overmix). It’s the traditional equipment, after all, that gives the sauce its name. In this recipe the garlic is blanched first to mellow its flavor; if you prefer the pungent taste of raw garlic, omit this step and use only one or two cloves. For variety, add a little fresh parsley, spinach, or arugula, or substitute pine nuts with walnuts or almonds (chopped after toasting). Store pesto in an airtight container, covered with 1/4 inch of olive oil (to preserve color) in the refrigerator.

Marinara is the most basic tomato sauce for pasta and pizza, consisting only of tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, and minimal seasonings. With so few ingredients, the quality of the tomatoes and olive oil is critical. The recipe below calls for fresh tomatoes. A combination of very ripe plum and beefsteak is best; plum tomatoes are fleshier with fewer seeds, while beefsteaks have a balanced, delicious flavor. If fresh tomatoes are not in season, by all means substitute canned whole tomatoes, preferably the imported variety from Italy (or other high-quality tomatoes). It is imperative that the garlic doesn’t color at all in the beginning, as this will give the sauce an unpleasant bitterness. That’s why the garlic and the oil are heated together briefly over moderate heat. Then the tomatoes are quickly added (after only 30 to 45 seconds), which will help keep the garlic from browning. This sauce is used in the lasagne on page 386, but it’s also perfect over ricotta-filled ravioli (page 369) or tossed with spaghetti and sprinkled with freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Romano cheese.

With its light taste and texture, this sauce is best paired with slender strands, such as cappellini, spaghetti, or linguine; to serve, toss sauce with freshly boiled and drained pasta, adding a generous handful of fresh basil leaves, torn into pieces. And keep in mind that although the sauce is extremely easy, it does need an hour or two to allow the flavors to meld, so plan accordingly.