Red Wine

You need not use your best olive oil for these cookies, but extra virgin olive oil will make them more interesting than “pure” or “light” olive oil.

In this dish, the pasta takes on a fruity acidity from the reduced wine—smoothed by the last-minute addition of butter—and a beautiful mahogany glaze that’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. The kind of wine you use is of some importance, although it need not be expensive. Try a decent Chianti Classico, a light wine from the Côtesdu-Rhône, or a good-quality (red) Zinfandel. This is a true starter, not a main course; follow it with something gutsy, like grilled meat or fish, or something grand like Crisp Roasted Rack of Lamb (page 187).

Miso is a superb thickener, adding a rich, creamy consistency when whisked into a small amount of liquid. With that in mind, it’s the work of a moment to turn the pan juices remaining after searing a piece of meat into a great sauce. My choice here is pork for meat and red wine for liquid; the combination resulting from these three ingredients completely belies the amount of energy put into the dish. Red miso (which is in fact brown) adds terrific color to the sauce and has the strongest flavor of all the misos; it’s also the easiest to find. Miso must be handled gently, because high heat practically destroys its flavor; so be sure to keep the heat low when you stir it in. For the pork, I prefer a bone-in chop, preferably from the rib end of the loin; it’s a little bit fattier than other chops, and these days pork is so lean that the extra fat is a benefit rather than a detriment.

Another great, simple sauce based on anchovies (there are two in the pasta chapter; see pages 263 and 271). You get acidity, astringency, and fruitiness from the wine, piquancy from the garlic and anchovy, complexity from the thyme, and a smooth finish from the butter—all in about the time it takes to preheat a grill for the steaks. You don’t need great red wine for this sauce, but it should be one with a fair amount of fruit and at least a little structure.

Chicken with dried apricots is hardly a new idea, but it’s almost always too sweet, and the routine addition of cinnamon and cloves makes the whole thing taste more like dessert than dinner. Take them away, add a little vinegar to counter the fruit’s sweetness, improve and simplify the cooking technique, and you have a beautiful dish for a winter meal.

The chicken must be well browned before the rest of the dish is cooked, and in this instance there is no hurrying the process. Take your time and brown each piece of chicken well; especially if you’re cooking for eight or more, this will take a while, as you’ll have to brown in batches.

This mysterious, dark extraordinarily delicious sauce is a kind of gastrique, a relatively simple sauce based on caramelized sugar. Note that if the sugar turns black and begins to smoke, you have burned rather than caramelized it. Throw it out and start again, with lower heat and more patience this time. And if the caramel sticks to your pan and utensils when you’re done, boil some water in the pan, with the utensils in there if necessary. The caramel will loosen right away.

This is among my favorite dishes using this plentiful but still under-appreciated cephalopod. (The term, which is also used for octopus and cuttlefish, describes sea creatures whose “feet” grow from their heads.) Like many people, I’m a fan of fried “calamari,” but that dish is best suited to restaurants because of squid’s tendency to spatter when deep-fried. Although sautéing and stir-frying are good, fast techniques for squid, they, too, tend to be messy. A gentle braise in flavorful liquid and seasonings is the perfect alternative, and this one, with its Provençal spirit, is delicious and warming.

Traditionally served at Christmas parties in Sweden and elsewhere, this is powerful stuff, as you can see by its ingredients. Nevertheless, it goes down easily, so be careful. The wine and port should be decent but obviously need not be fantastic; most of their flavors will be overwhelmed.

The original sangria is this: good red wine, spiced with lemon juice, served with a piece of lemon over ice, with a splash of soda. That sangria has become more complicated, and a cliché of America’s Spanish restaurants, does not detract from its basic appeal; it’s as good a way as exists to spice up insipid red wine. Of course, the better the wine you start with, the better the sangria; decent but inexpensive (red) Zinfandel, wine from the south of France, and Rioja are all good.

My version of an old-fashioned French recipe, with a little corner cutting. If you ever come across an old, tough chicken, this is the place to use it; increase the cooking time as necessary until the bird becomes tender. If you use one of our typical chickens, it’s actually a pretty quick recipe to prepare. Use a decent but not too expensive red wine. Pearl onions are quite nice here, even frozen ones. If you start with fresh ones, however, which are best, drop them into boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds to make peeling (much) easier. The French would serve crusty bread with this, and you couldn’t do any better.

Escabeche (see also pages 235 and 350) is a great way to flavor food, by marinating it after it’s cooked rather than before. The cooked chicken (in this case) is bathed in an aromatic marinade. The soaking need not be long, but since the dish is best served at room temperature (it makes a good picnic option), you should plan to wait a while between cooking and eating. Use this as part of a picnic or buffet.

A classic Sicilian preparation, with exotic, contrasting flavors. Domesticated rabbit is sold in many supermarkets these days, but since it really does taste like chicken, you can use that if you prefer. Either way, start the meal with a simple pasta dish or serve this with bread and a cooked vegetable.

A dark, fairly intensely flavored stew that is best made with rabbit (or, traditionally, hare), but is quite good with chicken.You can make the entire dish in advance and let it rest at room temperature for a few hours before reheating (or cover and refrigerate overnight). This is lovely just with crusty bread, or with any potato dish.

Slightly more complicated than the French version on page 303, resulting in more tender meat but less crisp skin. I’d make this with leg and thigh pieces rather than including breasts—which almost invariably dry out during braising—but the choice is yours. The sauce will keep things relatively moist in any case. This is great with risotto (page 521) and a vegetable dressed with good olive oil.

Often the most effective marinating happens not before but after cooking. This technique, usually called escabeche, was once used to preserve food. It’s really a form of pickling: hot food was put into hot liquid containing a good deal of vinegar. Treated thus, it would keep for some time (if canned, for a long time). Since we don’t need escabeche for preserving, the postgrilling marinating time can be as little as a few minutes, but it can also be as long as overnight—it doesn’t make much difference; in either case, it produces a highly flavored, prepared-in-advance, room-temperature dish that is good as part of a buffet with a variety of other dishes (none of which should be noticeably acidic). Other cuts of meat you can use here: any cut of chicken, bone in or out (be careful not to overcook), or mackerel or other fish (typically floured and sautéed or fried before marinating).

A delicate and subtle preparation that can also be made with monkfish, striped bass, sea bass, or other firm-fleshed fish. Serve with Braised Leeks (page 465).

This is a more complicated use of miso, useful not only for fish but for meat (just substitute tenderloin for the tuna). I learned it from Japanese-born chef Tadashi Ono, who now lives in New York. His dual lives encouraged Ono to take a few liberties of the type that few would take in Japan, with a classic sauce like this one; but if this is fusion cooking, it’s the good kind. The Japanese chili paste called tohbanjan is strictly traditional here, but you can use Vietnamese or Korean chili paste or simply cayenne. I love this with Basmati Rice with Shiso (page 510).

Like coq au vin, this is a slow recipe that takes careful attention to a couple of ingredients: the bacon must be good slab bacon, nice and smoky and not too lean, and the wine should be fruity and worthy of drinking (there are Burgundies and American Pinot Noirs that meet this requirement and cost around ten bucks a bottle). By all means make this a day or two in advance if you like, then refrigerate and skim the fat if that’s your preference. Reheating will take only about 15 minutes. New potatoes, roasted in olive oil or butter, are terrific alongside this stew, but so is crusty bread. Round things out with a steamed vegetable or salad.

The Provençal version of boeuf bourguignonne, with different vegetables and seasonings. I think the variation, Beef Daube with Olives, is the superior recipe, but you may prefer this simpler version. Serve this with crisp-roasted potatoes or crusty bread. Other cuts of meat you can use here: boneless lamb shoulder, cut into chunks.