Poach

A famous North African specialty with an exciting bittersweet flavor.

This popular Lebanese pickle is served as a mezze. Make sure the walnuts have a fresh taste.

This easy pickle makes a ready delicious mezze.

This Armenian specialty makes a hearty main dish. It has a pure and fresh quality and is an entirely different experience from eating an Italian or Asian pasta dish.

This is served as an appetizer in Greece. The wine gives it a special flavor.

For this delightful and simple Moroccan dish, use fish fillets—monkfish or any firm-fleshed fish such as bream, turbot, haddock, cod—and have them skinned.

This Turkish way of embellishing poached eggs is also good with fried eggs.

The dish can be made with small lamb shanks or with knuckle of veal (osso buco) or slightly fatty, cubed meat. I have used lamb shanks, a cut not normally available in supermarkets. But butchers sell fresh ones from the foreleg weighing about 10 ounces and frozen ones from New Zealand from the back leg weighing from 14 to 16 ounces. Serve it with plain or Vermicelli Rice (see page 304). The yogurt makes a wonderful, soupy sauce so provide spoons, too.

This dish can be made with lamb shanks, knuckle of veal (osso buco), or with cubed meat such as shoulder of lamb. Butchers sell fresh lamb shanks from the foreleg weighing about 10 ounces and frozen ones from New Zealand from the back leg weighing from 14 to 16 ounces. Lamb shanks cooked for a long time have a wonderful tenderness and texture without being stringy, and they produce a rich stock. Although they take a long time to cook, they don’t need any attention. The sauce is the classic Turkish egg and lemon terbiyeli sauce.

Quince is an ancient Roman fruit that looks like a cross between a pear and an apple. It has an amazing aroma when poached.

Giardiniera—mixed pickled vegetables—is a ubiquitous and versatile pantry staple in Umbria, as in other parts of Italy. Originally a means of preserving the summer vegetable bounty for the lean winter months, it is now a popular vegetable preparation all year round. Sometimes homemade but more frequently bought in jars from the grocery, giardiniera usually combines crisp chunks and slices of carrot, cauliflower, celery, and sweet or hot peppers; olives, onion, cucumbers, and turnips are in some brands of giardiniera, too. The pickling medium might be vinegar, brine, oil, and spices in a variety of combinations and proportions. Giardiniera right from the jar can be served as an antipasto, a salad, or a side dish. Embellished with freshly poached chicken, as in this recipe, giardiniera becomes a delicious and colorful dish, suitable as an appetizer at dinner, a main course for lunch, or a practical and appealing picnic or buffet salad. When I have time, I make my own giardiniera, which I shared with you in Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen (you can find it on page 47). But with many fine imported varieties of giardiniera available in most markets, I almost always have a jar of the store-bought kind in the fridge or cupboard, for immediate enjoyment. And with convenience in mind, you don’t always have to poach a chicken to enjoy giardiniera di pollo. Pick up a roast chicken from the market, or use leftover roast chicken or turkey, to make this terrific dinner salad in no time at all.

In Umbria, small meatballs are often served simply, floating in a bowl of hot chicken broth. This is a fine custom, in my opinion: it makes the soup more special and substantial, and the broth enhances the carefully homemade meatballs. The diminutive pork-and-veal polpette in this recipe incorporate small amounts of plump raisins, pine nuts, and orange zest—delicate flavors that might be overwhelmed by bold pasta sauce but stand out in a spoonful of light, clear broth. You can either fry or poach the meatballs (the fried have more flavor; the poached are healthier), but either way they are delicious.

Stuffed veal breast can be found in many regions, but the Genovese preparation, cima alla Genovese, is one of the most distinctive and delicious. It is one of my favorite Ligurian dishes, and whenever I am in Genova I seek it out at the local restaurants. Traditionally, it is a specialty of late spring and summer, because in the natural cycle, calves are mostly birthed in early spring, and the veal will be most tender within the next few months. Appropriately for a summer dish, cima alla Genovese is served at room temperature, accompanied by fresh salsa verde. Here, though, I give you my home version of cima, one that I prepare all year around, whenever I want something special (and convenient) to delight lots of people. Because veal breast of appropriate size can be hard to find, I use veal shoulder and sometimes turkey breast, butterflied and flattened. I wrap the meat around a colorful filling: a big frittata with a medley of vegetables and a row of hard-cooked eggs. Poached in a log shape, the cima cools before it is sliced for serving. It is still always exciting for me (and will be for you) as each slice is revealed, the filling ingredients forming a unique mosaic within a frame of moist, tender meat. The convenience of cima I also love. I can assemble the stuffed veal the night before, cook it early in the morning, and let it rest. Uncut, the roll keeps well (even for several days) and can be served whenever needed, without further cooking. In summer, it makes a fine al fresco lunch or dinner, or a picnic centerpiece. At holiday times, nothing is more beautiful on a buffet. And when there are guests in the house, I serve it at dinner and leave the rest as an elegant anytime snack.

Whether you're serving breakfast, brunch, lunch, or dinner, this flavor-packed shakshuka is welcome at the table anytime.

Thick and creamy vanilla bean-infused Greek yogurt replaces the usual dollop of whipped cream for a delicious and low-fat dessert.

Artichokes have more sodium than most vegetables but should nevertheless be enjoyed from time to time. Choose artichokes that squeak when you squeeze them. This recipe, inspired by Martha Rose Shulman, makes butter dunking sauce unnecessary.

"Talk to most chefs and they'll say they'd want a perfectly roasted chicken for their last meal," says Sean Brock. For his definitive version, Brock starts with superflavorful heritage-breed chickens, but the key to the dish is prepoaching the bird in an immersion circulator. Because most home cooks don't have access to this equipment, we adapted the recipe to work in a home kitchen.

I love a good corn muffin, and nobody makes one better than Loic Feillet of Panorama Baking in Alexandria, Virginia. The muffin is so good, in fact—moist and studded with chewy little bits of corn—that as soon as I tasted it, I knew I’d incorporate it into an egg dish. The muffin reminded me of an artisanal English muffin, and I just happened to be working on a Mexican variation of eggs Benedict. How perfect! The corn muffin would replace the traditional corn tortilla in huevos rancheros, and I’d poach instead of fry the eggs. Immediately, I had a dish worthy of the muffin, but best of all, even a lesser muffin tastes great when capped off with these ingredients.

Any shrimp will work in this recipe, but for the best-tasting, most sustainable choice, go for American farmed or wild shrimp.