Canned Tomato

Don’t let the lengthy ingredient list scare you away. It’s really not as bad as it looks. Even my brother, Bubba, can make it. On a cold winter’s day it will make your tongue want to slap your brains out! This recipe serves two or three dozen people, but can easily be cut in half. It keeps for up to five days in the refrigerator or two months in the freezer.

Peppers, the red, collapsed horns in particular, are heavily linked with Hungary and its rust-colored stews. The Hungarians make ground paprika from them too, which has become their most famous culinary export. Despite their South American origins, Hungary is where I have found the most dazzling displays of peppers in the markets. Two minutes, even less, from the river and the Szabadsag Bridge, Budapest’s market stalls glow deep rust and gold with tins of paprika and strings of dried mahogany chiles. I love the crumbling wooden stalls of scarlet-capped mushrooms with their stray pieces of iridescent moss, wicker baskets of black sloes, and small sacks of red berries, and the apparently precarious piles of peppers, Christmas red, clean white, and burnt orange turning scarlet. The long peppers that curl back on themselves have the intrigue of Aladdin’s lamp but are awkward in the kitchen, tending to tip their stuffing out into the baking pan. You can roast them, though, with olive oil and lots of salt, and eat them with sesame bread torn into chunks. The most useful, called Gypsy and the size of a fat rodent, are perfect for stuffing: with spinach and cream; translucent onions, capers, parsley, and garlic; cracked wheat, green olives, and toasted pine nuts; ground lamb and cumin. But mostly they are baked with a shake of the olive oil bottle and a grinding of salt until they collapse, wrinkle, and melt into silken strips. You’ll need bread then, in fat, rough chunks, and maybe a glass of bright beer. From August to the close of the year is when the market has the most from which to choose. After that the peppers come dried, in long strings of tobacco, madder, and soot. They shouldn’t be despised. By then the stalls are mostly piled with roots and cabbages, endless sausages, and wholesomely fatty pork. The paprika stalls, stacked with red and gold tins, are kitsch in a Hansel and Gretel way, their shelves covered in fastidiously ironed lace, like the old women who run them. Gulyas, or goulash, means “cowboy” and was traditionally cooked over an open fire. My paprika-scented pork stew—you could use beef-departs not too radically from the classical dish. I include dried mushrooms and cook it in a low oven, giving it a particularly deep, smoky flavor.

Early January 2008 and I am having my annual tidy up of the pantry. The “lentil shuffle” as I call it, as that is basically what the job entails. Sorting out the pantry always results in my making something bean or lentil oriented. I think it must remind me of just how many I have. What follows is a rather hot bean curry. You could cool its ardor by skipping a chile or two. The greens offer a hit of cool freshness on top of the substantial and deeply spiced beans. A speedier version, suitable for a midweek supper, can be made with canned beans. There is no real reason why you shouldn’t use any dried or canned beans you wish here. Chickpeas will work well too. If I do decide to open a can instead, then I use three 14-ounce (400g) cans.

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.

This recipe uses sourdough starter primarily as a flavor enhancer rather than for leavening. It adds a subtle complexity without drawing attention to itself. However, if you prefer a more tart flavor you can omit the instant yeast and give the dough four hours of fermentation at room temperature before dividing it into dough balls and refrigerating.

Like many recipes of humble country origins, there is no carved-in-stone recipe for minestrone, the iconic Italian vegetable soup. Mamas from both sides of the Atlantic have used fresh seasonal vegetables with a bit of hambone or cheese rind to prepare soulful, satisfying soups. We’ve long known that this combination tastes good. Now we have a name for why it does: umami. The Japanese term umami is now familiar to culinary professionals, chefs, and informed foodies, yet Asian cooks have appreciated the taste for centuries. It is the fifth taste after sour, salty, bitter, and sweet. Scientifically, umami is the distinctive flavor of amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein. Think about classic Caesar salad dressing, a combination of egg protein and salted anchovies. Or old-fashioned greens simmered with ham. Or this soup, in which the rind of the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese complements the vegetables in the tomato broth.

My grandfather used lots and lots of black pepper, especially to season Meme’s vegetable soup. It tasted wonderful, so it wasn’t like he was trying to hide the taste. He just loved pepper. We always had vegetable soup in the winter, using the vegetables we had canned or frozen that summer. This recipe easily doubles or triples. I like to make a large batch and enjoy it a few days in a row. You can prepare this with the traditional ham bone or opt for a vegetarian version. Serve with piping hot biscuits.

Well made stocks are one of the foundations of classic French cuisine. A good stock is redolent with flavor, clear, not cloudy, and rich with the naturally occurring gelatin in the bones. Have you made roast chicken and refrigerated the leftovers? Then, the next day you look at the chicken and the juices have congealed into a kind of meat Jell-O? That’s the gelatin that gives stocks—and the soups and sauces made from them—their wonderful flavor.

This is one of those dishes that is just perfect for breakfast, Sunday dinner, or a weeknight supper. I usually peel and devein the shrimp, but leave on the tails. My dear friend Gena Berry grew up on St. Simons Island, Georgia, in the heart of the fishing and shrimping community. One day, we were in the kitchen getting ready for a party. She jumped in, helpful as always, and offered to peel the shrimp. When she saw my technique of leaving the tails on, she raised her eyebrows perilously high (as only Gena can do), and informed me that coast folks don’t peel shrimp like that. I still think it looks better. I use wild American shrimp, not pond-raised imports, because I am supporting those very shrimpers Gena grew up with. Save the shrimp shells to make shrimp stock (recipe on page 132).

We moved to Louisiana from Evans, Georgia, when I was three years old. I remember the feeling of the winter’s morning we left; it was cold, and still dark outside. Up to that point I had spent every day of my short life with Meme and Dede, and I think our leaving broke my grandfather’s heart, at least for a little while. One benefit of the big move was that Mama started experimenting with Cajun and Creole cooking. This recipe became a family favorite, and one Dede particularly enjoyed when they came to visit. When buying shrimp, look for firm shrimp with a mild, almost sweet scent. If there is any scent of ammonia, it is a sign that the shrimp is no longer fresh.

To quote the regional cookbook Louisiana Entertains, “Good gumbos are like good sunsets: no two are exactly alike, and their delight lies in their variety.” All gumbos use a roux. However, in addition to a roux, some gumbos flavor and thicken with okra and others call for filé powder. Integral to Creole and Cajun cooking, filé powder is made from the dried leaves of the sassafras tree. It is used not only to thicken gumbo but also to impart its mild, lemon flavor. Filé powder should be stirred into gumbo toward the end of cooking or it will become tough and stringy.

This is not a family recipe, but one I was introduced to while testing recipes as an apprentice for Nathalie Dupree. Country Captain is said to have taken its name from a British army officer who brought the recipe back from India. Curry powder is actually quite common in Southern cooking due to the seaports of Charleston and Savannah. The term describes any of a number of Indian spice blends from mild to fiery that typically contain, among other spices, ground coriander, nutmeg, ginger, cumin, pepper, and chiles. Commercial curry powder comes in two types: standard, which is a golden color and mild, and Madras, which is red and spicy hot.

This country French recipe was one of my final exam dishes in culinary school. Delicious and simple, it has become a real family favorite. It’s very important to use the best quality red wine vinegar. We made our own at school with the leftover dribbles and drabs of wine. Many years later, I was cleaning the kitchen at the television studio where Martha Stewart’s show was produced, and noticed a cloudy substance in one of the bottles that I was about to recycle. I realized that it was a “mother,” a live bacterial culture that turns wine into wine vinegar. I took it home, transferred it to a glass cookie jar, and added red wine. That was over ten years ago. My tasty biology project is still alive and well, producing incredible vinegar. In France, this dish is often made with guinea hen, which has rich, dark meat, and much more complex flavor than chicken. Meme used to raise guinea hens; they would roost in the trees and make a huge fuss if anyone came into the yard.

Although this dish has its origins in the Caribbean, it can be found in Florida and any other area in which there are Jamaican or Caribbean immigrants. It makes a hearty side and a good accompaniment to roasted pork loin.

Preserved cod holds up well to several hours in the slow cooker. Salting and drying fish and packing it in barrels is a time-honored method of preservation brought to California by Portuguese immigrants like my grandmother’s people, who came to this country from their home in the Azores.

This recipe comes from my friend Nick Palumbo, owner of Palumbo Family Vineyards and Winery in Temecula, California. The great red sauce and thick, tender pork is even more scrumptious over a serving of buttery mashed potatoes.