One-Pot Meals

Cooking and cleaning pigs’ heads all day gave me a powerful hunger for chicken. This is an especially aromatic roasted chicken with an all-in-one sauce and side dish.

Choucroute garnie traditionally combines sausages and thick chunks of bacon with larger cuts of meat like smoked pork chops and even hunks of pork shoulder. This faster version includes only sausages and bacon. The grated potato adds body and silkiness to the sauerkraut, which, if not homemade (see page 143), should be purchased refrigerated (not canned).

Marie called most any dish that she added wine to “French,” and her French pot roast was a star of the genre. The paprika and bell pepper are additions from the late writer Laurie Colwin, who along with Marie would top my list of people to eat pot roast with.

Quick-cooking red lentils have a sweet, mild flavor that pairs well with rich paprika.

The simplest way to enjoy wild shrimp is to cook them fast and serve them warm, still in their shells, with melted butter. This recipe takes the opposite but equally flavorful tack: the shrimp are slow-cooked, infusing the entire soup with sweet shrimpiness.