An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace

by Tamar Adler

All ingredients need salt. The noodle or tender spring pea would be narcissistic to imagine it already contained within its cell walls all the perfection it would ever need. We seem, too, to fear that we are failures at being tender and springy if we need to be seasoned. It’s not so: it doesn’t reflect badly on pea or person that either needs help to be most itself.

As long as you move from less starchy ingredients to more starchy ingredients, one pot of water can get you pretty far.

I salt chicken for boiling or any cooking a day ahead, if I’ve planned that far. It gives the seasoning time to take and ensures you don’t end up with underseasoned meat and salty broth. If you forget, salt the chicken more heavily and three hours ahead, and leave it sitting at room temperature, which will help the meat absorb the salt.

This might be blasphemy, but I usually add a whole or half piece of star anise to my cooking water. Star anise is a ubiquitous spice in Asian and Middle Eastern poultry dishes, and the two ingredients have an affinity for each other. I occasionally also add a stick of cinnamon for about five minutes. The combination adds a little extra richness to the broth that’s quite magical.

Eggs should be laid by chickens that have as much of a say in it as any of us about our egg laying does.

I boil eggs by putting them in a pot of cold water, bringing the pot to a boil, then, as soon as I see the first bubble, turning the burner off. I let the eggs sit in the water for about four minutes, meanwhile setting up a bowl of water with ice in it nearby.

If it is autumn or winter, buy one butternut squash, or any combination of carrots, parsnips, celery root, and turnips. Simply roasted, these are one of the great pleasures in life. I grew up eating them hot at dinner, turned into salads at lunch, and cold as an after-school snack. There’s nothing wrong with a snack of granola, but there is something unarguably right with one of roasted vegetables.

A vibrant vegetable salad 2 cups cooked vegetables 1/4 cup chopped almonds or walnuts 1/4 onion of any color or a shallot, thinly sliced into half-moons red wine vinegar a pinch of salt 1/2 teaspoon mustard olive oil 1/4 cup roughly chopped parsley or mint 1/4 cup roughly chopped turnip greens or radish tops or another peppery-tasting leaf a squeeze of lemon Let the vegetables come to room temperature. Remove them from the refrigerator when you get home from work so they can warm up slowly, or speed them up by putting a bowl of them near a lit burner or on a warm oven. If you didn’t toast nuts during the week’s cooking, toast them now in a 400-degree oven, checking them after 5 minutes, then periodically until they are lightly colored. Shake them off their tray. In a bowl big enough to hold all the vegetables, soak the onion in vinegar with a pinch of salt for 10 minutes. Add the mustard to the bowl and mix it in. Let it sit for another 2. Add the vegetables, toasted nuts, and a long drizzle of olive oil, then the herbs, greens, and squeeze of lemon. It should all taste refreshed.

For roasted cauliflower or broccoli, plump a small spoonful of golden raisins in warm wine vinegar. When they’re soft and fat lift them out of the vinegar and mix them into a cup of toasted croutons, add a long pour of olive oil, and mix the heady croutons with the vegetables. Add a spoonful of roughly chopped capers, a small handful of pitted olives, freshly chopped mint, and a drizzle of olive oil.

If you want a warm sandwich, heat a cast-iron pan and press your sandwich between it and another heavy pan, or toast it on an indoor grill.

The best soups are a day old. Soup mustn’t be fresh, but mature. They needn’t taste of their ingredients, but only give their ingredients somewhere to be left off and picked up again.

Or chop cooked vegetables up, add a little good fat, and bake it all. If you were worried, this keeps the future from seeming too fibrous.

Or remove citrus peels with a vegetable peeler, finely slice them, and simmer them in sugar syrup made from one cup water and one cup sugar. Let it cook for fifteen minutes, with a small plate holding the peels down, until the liquid has thickened. Keep the citrus syrup in your refrigerator, and let it warm up before mixing it into tall glasses of cold seltzer and ice to make homemade sodas. Garnish them with fresh mint.

Turn a shack over to a lover; for all its poverty, its lights and shadows warm a little and its humbled surfaces prickle with feeling. — Robert Capon, The Supper of the Lamb

Little flourishes, like parsley, make food seem cared for. They are as practical as lighting candles to change the atmosphere of a room.

I make parsley oil whenever I have parsley. I do it while I’m waiting for water to boil or an oven to heat. It’s inexpensive and everything it’s drizzled on is cheered up by it. To make dark green, lovely parsley oil, chop the leaves off a bunch of parsley, smash a clove of garlic to a paste with a little salt, and douse both in olive oil.

Bring a stick of unsalted butter to room temperature. Roughly chop herbs and smash them into the butter with a wooden spoon. Spoon the herb butter onto a piece of plastic wrap, then form it into a tube, twisting each end.

Or chop any herbs finely and add a handful to plain yogurt to make a light, tangy sauce for drizzling over lamb chops, soup, or rice. Or mix herbs into mayonnaise to gussy it up.

I would repeat this in every chapter if I could. To make basic bread soup, heat a half cup olive oil in a soup pot. Cook a cup of any combination garlic, onion, leek, and celery, finely sliced, until tender, salting the vegetables immediately to keep them from browning. Add a half cup roughly chopped fresh parsley and rosemary or the leaves from a bunch of celery, four cups cubed stale bread, crusts removed, and, after stirring well, four cups any combination vegetable cooking liquids, meat broths, and bean broths you have, and the rind of a piece of Parmesan. Let it cook covered for twenty to thirty minutes, adding water if it starts to stick, until the bread has broken down completely.

I like croutons torn, which leaves crags and edges for things to settle in. To make croutons, cut the crust off drying bread, then tear the rest into pieces of similar size, coat them with olive oil, spread them on a baking sheet, and bake them in a 400-degree oven for ten to fifteen minutes.

Or make breadcrumbs. Grind crustless bread roughly in a food processor. Mix them with olive oil until well coated. Bake them in a single layer in a pan in a 400-degree oven. Check them after five minutes, using a spatula or spoon to gather and redistribute them. Cook them until golden brown and crisp. Remove and shake onto a plate immediately to stop their cooking. Once cool, keep breadcrumbs in a ziplock bag at room temperature for a few days, or refrigerate or freeze for up to three months.

I usually wait to do any of that. I leave bread in a paper bag for two days. Then I store it in a plastic bag. Then, depending on how industrious I feel, I quickly tear it into croutons, or make breadcrumbs, or leave it whole and freeze it in whatever form, which means that my freezer has a big hunk of bread in it, but it gets used in good time.

Savory baked ricotta 32 ounces soft ricotta 1/4 cup very good olive oil 2 egg yolks 1/4 cup roughly chopped fresh thyme, rosemary, marjoram, parsley, mint, oregano leaves salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Mix all the ingredients well in a mixing bowl. Add salt judiciously until it tastes a tiny bit less seasoned than you think it should be. A lot of water will evaporate while this bakes. Spread the mixture into a 9-inch pie dish. Bake it in the middle of the oven for 30 to 35 minutes. The top will develop a toasted, brown skin. It will inflate slightly and then deflate when you take it out. This is good at any temperature. Store it in the refrigerator.

Store the leaves in single layers between cloth or paper towels in a well-wrapped roasting pan or plastic container, just as you store herbs. Make sure lettuce is completely dry when you put it away. If it is dry and stored like this, even the most delicate leaves will stay impeccable for two weeks.

Basic vinaigrette 1 shallot 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard juice of 1/2 lemon 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar 1 clove garlic 1/3 to 1/2 cup olive oil Mince the shallot as finely as you can. Put it in a bowl with the salt, mustard, lemon, and vinegar. Smash the garlic once with your hand or the handle of a knife, then add it to the bowl. You’ll remove it before dressing the lettuce. Let it sit for 5 minutes. Mix in the olive oil. It doesn’t need to become uniform in consistency. Taste by spooning a little on a leaf. Remove the garlic clove, and dress the lettuce by drizzling with vinaigrette and mixing with your hands.

Dogged vinaigrette 1 clove garlic 4 anchovies, chopped salt 1/4 teaspoon mustard 1 teaspoon lemon juice 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar 1/3 to 1/2 cup olive oil Pound the garlic and anchovy and a tiny pinch of salt in a mortar with a pestle or on a cutting board. Add it to a bowl with the mustard, lemon juice, and vinegars. Let it sit for 5 minutes. Whisk in the olive oil. Dress tough leaves with this and some vim and vigor. Make sure to massage it through the leaves.

Lettuce is always the most fragile ingredient in a salad. It should always be added last, when everything else is already dressed and ready to go.

Once the sun has set and risen, drain the beans through a colander and cover them by two inches with fresh, cold water. What gets flushed out of the beans on their overnight wallow is what inspires musicality in eaters. Feed their soaking water to your plants, who will digest it more quietly, if you like.

If you didn’t put two cups of beans in a pot of cold water last night, get on the bandwagon today by putting them in a pot, covering them with five inches of water, bringing it to a boil, turning off the heat, and leaving them sitting in hot water, covered, for an hour. Then drain them and cover them with new water. This has the same effect as overnight soaking and is a good alternative.

Your pot also wants parsley stems, whole sprigs of thyme, and a bay leaf. It can all be tied into a neat bundle in cheesecloth or with kitchen twine, or it can be left bobbing around, as everything in my bean pot always is.

Pots of beans have an admirable, long-term perspective on eating. It’s the same to them whether you eat them tonight or in three days. Beans get better over a few days’ sitting, gorged and swelled, like happy fat boy. Any longer and you should freeze them, but they’ll thaw ungrudgingly when you want them back.

The Neapolitan street food arancini are a spectacular use of leftover risotto, which after sitting for a night becomes claylike and can be shaped around little pieces of cheese, rolled into balls, dipped in breadcrumbs, then deep fried. You can also simply shape cold risotto into little cakes and panfry them in olive oil until golden brown.

Thai fried rice 1 tablespoon peanut oil 2 shallots, sliced into thin rounds 1 Thai bird’s-eye chile, sliced into thin rounds 2 cloves garlic, smashed once or twice 1 cup yesterday’s cooked rice salt 1/2 cup chopped cucumber, radish, or green tomato 2 cups chopped cilantro or a combination of basil, cilantro, and mint a big squeeze of lime, plus lime wedges for serving 1/2 teaspoon sugar 2 teaspoons Thai fish sauce optional: 1 fried egg per person Heat the oil in as wide a pan or wok as possible. You need enough hot surface area for every grain to fry. Once the oil has begun to smoke, add the shallots, chile, and garlic, then immediately add the rice. Spread it out over the whole surface of the pan. Salt it lightly. When it seems like every grain has had time alone with the hot pan, scoop the rice into the middle of the pan, add the rest of the ingredients, and toss it all well. Serve with a lime wedge per bowl. This is most delicious with a fried egg put atop each bowl.

Rice pudding 2 cups yesterday’s cooked rice 2 cups coconut milk 1 cup heavy cream (you could use all coconut milk also, but I like the combination) 1/4 cup plus very scant 1/8 cup raw sugar, or 1/4 cup white sugar 1/2 cup raisins (I like the littlest ones but any are fine) 1 teaspoon vanilla 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon a few grates of nutmeg Combine all the ingredients in a small pot. Let it heat to just under a boil. As soon as you see the first bubbles, lower it to a quiet simmer. Cook it with the intention of the rice absorbing everything. After about 50 minutes, it should be very pudding-y, with a tiny bit of swim left to it. Hot, medium, or cold, this is good. In my constant economy and curiosity, I have made this from rice cooked with peppercorns in it, and rice cooked with cardamom in it, and rice cooked with turmeric in it. All good, good, good.

Warm some garlicky sautéed cooking greens in a pan. Find leftover roasted squash and season it with a little red wine vinegar, dig out some olives and a wedge of Parmesan cheese. Put grits or polenta in a bowl, assemble your leftovers on top, drizzle with balsamic vinegar or olive oil, or both, and grate it all heavily with Parmesan cheese.

If something ever seems too rich or oily or creamy, a caper will negotiate a painless détente.

A good tartar sauce should be piquant and powerful. It is much better made at home—where you can guarantee its potency—than purchased. Here’s one. Tartar sauce 1 cup homemade mayonnaise 1/3 cup chopped cornichons 3 tablespoons chopped capers 3 tablespoons roughly chopped parsley leaves 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar optional: 1 tablespoon olive oil a single drop hot sauce salt Mix everything lightly into the mayonnaise, only whisking in the optional olive oil if the sauce threatens to get thin. Taste for salt.

Onion soup 2 cups caramelized onions 1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for the bread 1 tablespoon butter 1/4 cup water 1 teaspoon flour 1 tablespoon sherry, wine, or Cognac 4 cups beef or chicken stock stale bread 1 clove garlic, halved freshly cracked black pepper optional: chopped fresh parsley Cook the caramelized onions according to the instructions above. Warm them in the oil, butter, and water. Add the flour and stir it through the onions. Add the sherry, wine, or Cognac, and let it cook off for 20 seconds. Add the stock. Simmer for 15 minutes. Grill or toast thick slices of stale bread. Rub each with garlic, then drizzle with olive oil. Ladle the soup, very hot, over each one. Top with chopped fresh parsley if you have it and freshly cracked black pepper.

If you agree, I recommend you put away all cookbooks except Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s and The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon. The

Once you get home, salt your meat five times more heavily than you’re comfortable doing. It’s hard to get enough salt into dense, slow-cooking cuts. Salt needs to sit on all available surfaces for as long as possible and have a chance to journey in on its own.

If you plan to cook the meat today, leave it sitting at room temperature for three hours. If you are cooking it tomorrow, refrigerate it overnight and then bring it back up to room temperature before cooking it. It’s worth cooking the meat you’ve bought even if you aren’t planning on eating it for a few days. Slow-cooked meat improves with time. The best possible dinner of it tonight would contain meat cooked at least a day ago.

Braised meat 3 pounds meat from a tougher part of a happily raised animal 2 tablespoons olive oil salt up to 1 cup clean vegetable scraps: onion, celery, carrot, fennel. If you’ve not got scraps, use pieces from whole vegetables a bundle of parsley stems, sprigs of thyme, and a bay leaf optional: 1/2 teaspoon spices such as fennel seed, cumin, and/or coriander 8 cups stock, heated if you’ve got time 2 cups white or red wine or beer, or a combination of any and the liquid from a can of tomatoes Between a day and three hours before you want to cook the meat, salt it heavily. If the meat has been refrigerated, bring it to room temperature two hours before you start cooking it. Heat the oven to 300 degrees. Heat the oil in a pot big enough to hold the meat plus all the liquid. Add the meat and brown it on at least two sides over medium heat. Let it get quite brown, not mushy tan. Remove it from the pot to a plate. Add the vegetable scraps and herbs to the pot, stirring them against the browned bits. If you’re using spices, add them, too. Once the vegetables have begun to soften, add the meat, stock, and wine-beer combination, and bring almost to a boil. Lower to a simmer, cover tightly, and let cook for 3 to 4 hours in the oven until the meat is tender enough to fall apart when it’s pressed with the side of a wooden spoon. Check the pot more frequently if you’re cooking different cuts of meat. Smaller pieces of meat will get fully cooked before larger or denser ones. When any ...

If everyone has eaten firsts and seconds and you’ve served all the meat you cooked, you will still have braising liquid. If it contains bits of meat, warm it in a pot, add a great handful of parsley or basil, then toss it with hot pasta as you would any pasta sauce.

Season the cutlets with salt. Shake them quickly in flour, dunk them in beaten egg, then dredge them in fresh breadcrumbs. Lay them on wax paper. Heat two inches of olive oil in a sauté or cast-iron pan. Fry the cutlets in batches. These will stay crisp in a 200-degree oven for half an hour. Serve with tartar sauce, or just wedges of lemon.

White Bolognese 1/4 cup finely chopped onion 1/8 cup finely chopped carrot 1 stalk celery, finely chopped olive oil salt 1 pound Italian pork sausage, removed from its casings, or ground pork plus 1 teaspoon chile flakes and 3 leaves fresh sage, finely sliced 1 pound ground beef 11/2 cups white wine 2 cups beef or chicken stock 11/2 ounces dried porcini mushrooms rehydrated in 3 cups warm water 1/3 cup heavy cream 1 pound rigatoni or another short noodle or 1 cup polenta 3/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese Cook the onion, carrot, and celery in olive oil until tender, salting them as soon as you add them to the pan. Add the sausage and beef, break it up, and brown it well. Add the wine and simmer until the pan is almost dry. Add the stock and simmer, uncovered, until the stock is nearly gone, stirring every now and again. Chop the rehydrated porcini into small pieces and strain the liquid through a coffee filter. Add the porcini and strained mushroom broth to the sauce to cover the meat halfway. Simmer until the sauce is loose but not soupy, 10 to 15 minutes. Taste and adjust salt. It should be highly seasoned. Fold the cream in. Remove from the heat. Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook pasta or polenta. Heat sauce before mixing with the pasta or ladling over bowls of warm polenta. Grate each bowl with Parmesan.

Let the stock sit in the refrigerator overnight to give its fat time to rise to the top. The following day, scoop the fat off with a spoon. Save it in a jar. Use it as you would butter or olive oil.

The best recipe I’ve read for roasting pork belly is from The River Cottage Meat Book. It instructs that you get a big piece, three to five pounds, skin on. You then score it with a sharp knife, make a dark green paste of chopped thyme and sage and garlic, rub it vigorously into the slits in the skin, over the skin, and into the meat itself, then roast the slab of belly, skin side up, on a pan with sides high enough to catch its copious and quick-running fat. The herbs and garlic seep into the meat; the belly tenderizes as it cooks.

I usually make confit of chicken thighs. For eight chicken thighs, pound together two dried bay leaves and a half teaspoon whole peppercorns in a mortar with a pestle and mix in a lot of salt. Season the meat well with the mixture. Let it sit, salted and lightly covered with wax paper, in the refrigerator overnight. Heat an oven to 225 degrees. In an oven-safe casserole with a lid, heat enough olive oil to cover the thighs until it is just warm to the touch. Add the meat and submerge it. It can be in two layers, but must be completely covered in oil. Carefully put the pot into the oven, and let the meat cook, covered, for three to four hours. Check for doneness by inserting a knife near a bone. The meat should be about to fall off. Remove the pot and carefully remove each piece of meat with a slotted spoon. Let the olive oil cool. Once the meat is cool to the touch, fit it fairly closely into glass jars. Pour the cooled oil over the meat, making sure everything is completely covered, then cover and close. Strain and save any excess oil for the next time you make confit. To serve confit, bring it up to room temperature in its fat. Remove whatever you plan to serve. Add the pieces of confit to a cold pan. A nice thing about anything having been stored in fat is that it is perfectly prepared to get crisp brown surfaces. Once the meat has browned, put the pan in the oven until the meat is warm throughout. I like eating this best with salad. You can follow the same instructions...

Chicken liver pâté 1 pound chicken livers salt and freshly ground black pepper 12 tablespoons (11/2 sticks) butter 2 tablespoons white wine, sherry, bourbon, Scotch, Cognac, or brandy 1 shallot, finely chopped 1/2 leek, finely sliced 1/2 clove garlic, finely chopped 2 tablespoons water a tiny, tiny pinch of ground cloves half that amount ground cinnamon 1/8 bay leaf, finely crumbled 1/4 cup well-picked fresh thyme leaves, chopped Clean any connective membranes from the livers and season them with salt and pepper. Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a nonstick frying pan. When the pan is hot enough to sizzle, add some of the livers. Leave a bit of space around each liver. Let each liver get browned on one side. Flip and brown them on the other side. Take the livers out of the pan and put them on a plate. Add 1 tablespoon wine or liquor to the pan and scrape it with a wooden spoon. Pour the liquid over the livers you’ve cooked. Wipe the pan out with a paper towel. Repeat with the rest of the livers without adding the remaining wine or spirits. Once all the livers are cooked and removed, add the shallot, leek, and garlic to the pan along with the rest of the liquor and 2 tablespoons water. Cook over medium heat until the vegetables are completely tender. When they are, combine them, the dried spices, fresh thyme, the livers, and their liquid to the blender. Add 1 stick butter, cut into pieces. Blend. Taste. If it’s not acting funny, separating, or seeming milk-shaky—add more butter b...

When you buy whole fish, ask for it to be scaled and gutted. It will arrive in your basket with its skin still on, but its hard, silvery scales removed. If it does not come scaled and gutted, take a dull knife and scrape it down the length of the fish in the direction opposite the shingling of the scales. This is a messy but fast ordeal. To remove a fish’s guts is surprisingly ungalling. They’re rather petite, and the only hard part is making the first cut into the fish’s belly. Cut into it sharply, make a long slit, and remove everything inside. Rinse the fish and dry it. To roast fish whole, heat an oven to 400 degrees. Make sure the fish skin is very dry, and then salt it well. Sprinkle salt inside it, a little less well, and fill the rest of the cavity with thinly sliced lemon, thyme, and rosemary. If you have none of those, count on salt and fish to collaborate, which they have done successfully until now. Put the fish in a roasting pan, however it fits. Drizzle olive oil onto the fish skin. Fish is best checked for doneness with your finger. It takes about fifteen minutes per inch of thickness for fish to roast. Fish takes longer to cook when it is on the bone, which makes cooking a whole one more forgiving than cooking fillets. Choose a sacrificial spot at the thickest part of the fish and poke into it as often as you need to to feel that its cooking is still under your control. It will be done when it is opaque and it flakes. If whole fish—or any fish—show signs of...