Meal Prep

Clear the decks. Salt brittle brings salt and sugar together as an edible mosaic. Eat it on its own, or serve a shard of salt brittle alongside paprika pork chops. Serve with fruit salad or endive salad with walnuts and Roquefort cheese. Crumble over unsweetened yogurt, oatmeal, or chili con carne. Himalayan salt is hard to use because—well, because it’s hard—but its rocky texture and gemstone beauty contribute brilliantly to brittle.

Pour this dressing over mixed greens such as Romaine, Boston, and one or two types of bitter greens.

This is a real deli-lovers sandwich, topped with Emmenthaler, which is a good sharp Swiss cheese. You’ll have enough Russian dressing for six sandwiches; you can keep the extra for a week in the refrigerator.

The sour crispness of red cabbage makes it a good ingredient for a relish. Something stirring—hot, sharp, sour, bright—to introduce to a gamey pâté or a wedge of pork pie with softly collapsing pastry. Not normally given to making pickles and chutneys, I find this startling relish manageable without feeling I am going too far down the preserving route.

Remember that pizza or focaccia is simply dough with something on it, so feel free to experiment with flavorful toppings. Because focaccia is thicker than pizza it often takes longer to bake, so some toppings are better left off until the final few minutes of baking, especially dry cheeses such as parmesan (focaccia baked in round cake pans perform more like pizzas, so they can be fully topped prior to going into the oven). Some ingredients, like fresh pesto or aioli, are even better when added after the pizza or focaccia has finished baking. Most commercial pizza sauces work fine, but if you enjoy making your own, which is quite easy and highly recommended, remember that canned tomato products do not need to be heated up or cooked since they will be cooked on the pizza or focaccia. Here are my favorite sauce and herb oil recipes.

I’ve developed two ways to make San Francisco–style sourdough bread using the overnight method. The “purist” method of making sourdough breads uses no commercial yeast and produces a flavor that’s tart, acidic, and complex. The mixed method uses instant yeast to produce a finished loaf more quickly; because of the reduced fermentation time, it yields less acidity and sourness. Both versions are excellent. To use the wild yeast starter, build and ripen your starter at least 1 day and not more than 3 days prior to making the final dough. Of course, if you don’t live in San Francisco, this won’t be true San Francisco sourdough bread because it won’t contain a large concentration of the microorganisms associated with the Bay Area, especially the famous Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis (these organisms do exist in sourdoughs everywhere, but not to the same extent as they do in and around San Francisco). However, this style of sourdough, made with all unbleached white bread flour, has become so closely associated with San Francisco that I call it San Francisco sourdough to distinguish it from the French pain au levain, which contains a small amount of whole grain flour. That said, any number of pain au levain variations can be made by simply substituting whole grain or other flours for some of the white flour.

From Greece to India, a variation of this condiment is a standard accompaniment to most meals. It’s a versatile recipe to have in your arsenal, as it lends a light richness to grilled chicken or fish, bean soups, and almost any dish of Mediterranean origin. Try adding a little minced garlic, currants, raisins, fresh dill, or lemon juice. If you can’t find fresh mint, use dried

This is the basic procedure for making any fruit chutney. Non-citrus fruits such as peaches, plums, apricots, and mangoes will need to be peeled. Use any citrus fruit combination for this recipe, although you may need to adjust the sweetness for more tart varieties like grapefruit. I chose kumquats and Meyer lemons because I like their contrasting shapes and colors, and both are naturally quite sweet.

Banh mi sandwiches are a Vietnamese street food. Instead of the typical pork and mayonnaise, this version features baked tofu, an anchovy-miso dressing, and cucumber pickles. A key element of banh mi sandwiches is fresh bread—day-old bread is too dry. The best bread to use is a thin-crust white flour baguette that won’t overwhelm the sandwich fillings. Try making these sandwiches for a July picnic.

If you happen to live near a butcher shop, ask them for scrap meat, the pieces that usually go to make ground beef. Otherwise, pick up stew meat at the supermarket to prepare this broth—no need to cook this recipe with expensive cuts of beef.

Here is my standard dashi recipe. The kelp is loaded with savoriness, a taste we call “umami” in Japan. This recipe is for 2 quarts of dashi, but you can easily double the quantities and freeze leftovers for up to 2 months.

This is the base for Shoyu Ramen (page 24) and other ramen recipes in this section.

This is the basic and versatile chicken stock I use for my ramen recipes, and it is flavored with Japanese ingredients. You can prepare a big batch and store any extra in the freezer.

Roquefort is a blue-veined, smooth, and creamy French sheep’s milk cheese with a strong smell and very pronounced flavor. It is one of the oldest known cheeses, having been produced in the south of France for almost two thousand years. Only cheeses made according to specific standards of production and matured in caves near the village of Roquefort, France, may be called Roquefort. Similar blue cheeses to try in this dressing include American Maytag Blue, a regional cheese from South Carolina known as Clemson Blue, English Stilton, and Italian Gorgonzola. Try this on green salad, with chicken wings, or with raw or blanched vegetables as a great crudité dip.

A little dab of this hotness on fried fish will set you up! Capsaicin, the chemical compound in chiles that makes them hot, is water repellent. Not only does water not stop the fire, but it also spreads the capsaicin around. However, it easily combines with fats. So, if you’ve had a little too much heat, reach for milk or yogurt instead of water, wine, or beer.

Rémoulade is a cold French sauce made with mayonnaise, mustard, pickles, capers, and various herbs, and is very similar to American-style tartar sauce. It’s important the onions and celery are very finely chopped. It’s a dip, not a salad. To cut the celery, first cut the stalk into even, manageable lengths. Then cut into very thin matchsticks, line them up like little soldiers and slice across in thin cuts to make small perfect dice.

The secret to a creamy, emulsified dressing or vinaigrette is mustard. You’ve probably noticed that when you combine oil and vinegar in a bowl they form separate layers. If you whisk the mixture it will combine only for a brief period, then separate out again. Mustard helps thicken liquid sauces by absorbing some of the liquid and allows the suspension of one liquid in another. Try this savory-sweet combination over crisp salad greens or buttercup lettuce or as a dipping sauce for the Oven-fried Chicken Breasts with Pecan Crust (page 102). If Vidalias are unavailable, use another sweet onion, such as Walla Walla or Texas Sweet.

Mayonnaise is a subject of much debate in the South. I’ve even heard rumors about a veritable barroom-type brawl between chefs at the Southern Foodways Symposium in Oxford, Mississippi, that rose out of a discussion of Duke’s versus Hellmann’s. I grew up on Duke’s mayonnaise and strongly believe that if it’s not homemade, it’s got to be Duke’s! This recipe uses raw eggs. Pregnant women, young children, the elderly, or anyone whose health or immune system is compromised should not consume raw eggs. Otherwise, for healthy adults, homemade mayonnaise is fine.

There has seldom been a time in my life when a mason jar of this sauce wasn’t in a corner of my mother or grandmother’s refrigerator. The truth of the matter is, once you have had homemade you will go off the store-bought kind for good.