One-Pot Meals

Eat in the light, clean, Mediterranean tradition for meals that are low in fat but high in flavor. Vary this recipe by using other vegetables such as eggplant, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and mushrooms or by replacing the fish with chicken, strip steak, or even seitan (a wheat product found near the tofu in the refrigerated section of the health food store). This recipe has an elegance that will impress your guests. I like to use an oval Dutch oven with fish fillets simply because they tend to fit better. However, to make a long fillet fit into a round pot, simply cut the fillet into two or three pieces and lay them side by side. You can easily skip the wine in this recipe and still have a great-tasting meal, but if you do use wine, try a Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc that you would happily drink rather than a “cooking wine.”

The first time I presented this recipe to my children, then four and two, my older son threw a fit, said it looked “disgusting,” and refused to eat it. I calmly reminded him of our rule for new (or forgotten!) foods: You must eat three bites of each item and then if you still don’t like anything on the plate you can have something else. Within minutes they both had polished off full plates and asked for seconds! Garlic is a favorite flavor for my kids, and when the whole garlic cloves come into contact with the spray of oil, they take on a mellow, sautéed taste. Try a less “fishy” fish for unenthusiastic fish eaters; consider sole, flounder, or tilapia.

When my husband and I were in Hong Kong on what would turn out to be our engagement trip, we became devotees of a local diner that served this ketchup-based sauce over almost anything. We Americans tend to recoil at the thought of serving the lowly condiment ketchup with anything besides hamburgers and French fries. In this recipe, ketchup is used as a subtle accent, so for the best and freshest flavor, choose a high-quality organic ketchup. This Glorious One-Pot Meal is fabulous with a fillet of salmon or tuna, but you can use chicken or beef instead. It’s hard to resist this mouthwatering sauce. Substitute any vegetables you wish; just try to provide a rainbow of green, red, and yellow vegetables to maximize nutritional value.

Almost all of the ingredients in this dish are native to North America, including the chili powder, making it a truly American dish with a hint of the Southwest. The amount of chili powder used is only enough to give the fish a little bite of heat. Add more or less according to your preference. Or use fresh, diced chiles instead. Try this recipe with salmon, halibut, or other kinds of fish. Or substitute chicken breasts, turkey, or pork tenderloin for the fish.

Not quite a soup, New England fish chowder is known for its succulent large chunks of seafood and vegetables coated in a thin, milky broth. Traditionally this is made with cod; however, tilapia, flounder, or any other white fish will work fine. You can even use fillets directly from the freezer without defrosting them first. The fish will break into pieces as it cooks, or you can break it up while serving. Add any type of fresh or frozen seafood, such as crab or shrimp, or eight ounces of corn kernels for an even heartier meal. The type of milk used will affect how thick the broth is. Choose skim, 2 percent, whole, soy, rice, almond, or even heavy cream to suit your preference. To quickly remove the stems of chard (and other leafy greens like kale), hold the sides of the leaves together in one hand and use the other to rip the stem from the bottom of the leaf. Chard stems can be bitter. By chopping the stems finely and placing them on the bottom of the pot, they will have the opportunity to brown slightly and lose most of their bitterness.

Legend has it that when Catherine de Medici of Florence was wed to Henry of Aragon, she brought a Florentine chef with her to prepare the foods she adored. The Florentine style of cooking leans toward simple preparations of fresh foods to make consistently appealing meals. Traditionally, this dish uses a flaky white fish such as sole, cod, or halibut, but it does wonders for a salmon fillet or even orange roughy. Pack as much spinach as possible into the pot as it will cook down significantly Don’t be afraid to push down the leaves with the heel of your hand. Just be sure that the seal around the lid is tight when the pot goes in the oven.

This is a great light summer meal! Adding a thin coating of olive oil on top of the fish will result in a less-dense fillet. For an even richer flavor, place several pats of butter on the fish.

Vary this meal and go Italian instead with sun-dried tomato and garlic in olive oil instead of the peanut oil mixture. Or use any other type of flavored oil in this recipe.

The term herbes de Provence refers to the mix of herbs commonly used in southern French cooking. These include basil, thyme, chives, oregano, sage, rosemary, lavender, and dill, and can be used in almost any combination. You can purchase a premixed jar of herbes de Provence and use that in place of the herbs designated in this recipe. Any white fish tastes great in this dish. Try this with cod, sole, roughy, or snapper.

In America, we’re accustomed to eating sweet potatoes candied with maple syrup and brown sugar, or even topped with marshmallows, for a supersweet Thanksgiving side dish. But savory sweet potatoes are another experience entirely. Sweet potatoes with Creole seasoning are fabulous, and with this recipe they’re very easy to make. Any Cajun or Creole seasoning mix from the grocery will do, or make your own by mixing equal parts paprika, salt, and a dash of cayenne. Be careful with the cayenne, as a little goes a long way. Beets make a delicious red substitute for tomatoes if you can’t find good fresh ones for this dish. If you prefer white potatoes, feel free to substitute a large baking potato for the sweet potato. Frozen green beans are a quick solution when you want something green to toss into a pot meal. Simply shake some beans into the pot, reseal the bag, and keep it in the freezer. A single bag can often last for quite a few meals.

Mama’s chicken and dumplings are sooo good. She simmers her chicken for ages until she has the richest stock—that’s how we do it at The Lady & Sons. All that effort certainly pays off, but we just never have time to cook like that. That’s where the slow cooker comes in. Along with easy-to-make drop dumplings (Mama would roll hers out), you’ll get that hearty chicken flavor and the light, fluffy, comforting dumplings without having to stay by the stove all day.

We got this recipe from our good buddy (and Bobby’s neighbor) Michael Peay. He remembers his mom always used to make more than he and his brothers ever could eat because their house was so popular with their friends, especially around dinnertime. This stew, full of good porky sausage and plenty of tender cabbage, was his favorite childhood meal.

We hadn’t had Mama’s pork chops and rice bake in years when Bobby—who is on a pork chop kick—decided it was worth reviving. We brown the chops like Mama taught us, to give them a really rich flavor and seal in the juices. Then we smother them in cheese, which is our own addition to Mama’s classic recipe, and bake them with cream of chicken soup and rice for one of the most luscious one-pot suppers ever. We make a version of this at The Lady & Sons, where it’s a real crowd-pleaser.

As kids growing up, we always loved Mama’s tasty “hobo” dinners. Super easy to make—she would just throw everything together in an aluminum foil packet—and easy on the wallet, these complete meals in a pouch were on the table each and every week. To dress up these humble-as-a-hobo meals for company, try adding baby carrots, fennel, and other root vegetables, along with some nice ground sirloin. The aluminum foil seals in all the flavor of the ingredients and makes the sacks—fancy or simple—even more delicious than they ought to be. And though they are a whole meal in themselves, we love to serve them with our Moist-and-Easy Corn Bread (page 45).

When I make this stew, an extremely old-fashioned and indigenous example of the “poor people” food that the South was built on, I feel like I’m cooking a piece of my own history. The origins of this piquant, thin stew, which is loaded with meat and vegetables, are hotly disputed between Brunswick, Georgia, and Brunswick County, Virginia (I’m a Georgia product myself, so you know which side I’m on). I always make this for a crowd. A big crowd. Like those at my cooking school, which typically draws more than fifty students. I have my own professional-size meat grinder, and what I often do is grind the onions and potatoes together with the pork and brisket. You don’t need to do that at home; you can just mix them together. And feel free to cut this recipe in half (or quarters, whatever you need), but I suggest you make it for your next snow day, and bake up some cornbread to go with it—feed the whole block and you’ll have friends for life, trust me.

It may seem crazy even to think of making a cassoulet for oneself, although this one may be large enough to share with a friend. But if you have all the different elements, it’s not much more than an assembly job. You just have to think ahead. So, when you have that Small Roast Pork Tenderloin (page 42), set aside three or four little chunks of the flavorful cooked meat (they can be frozen and labeled “for future cassoulet”). Then plan on having Braised Shoulder Lamb Chops (page 48), which is always more than I can eat in one sitting, and use that extra braised chop (it can also be frozen), along with a lot of the good juices, to be the mainstay of your cassoulet. One can usually get a good pork sausage these days; even if you have to mail-order it, it’s a staple item worth keeping in the freezer. So there you are: start your beans the night before, and put this heavenly bean dish together on a wintry day off, letting it fill your kitchen with its tantalizing aromas. You won’t regret it. When I suggested to Julia Child that she include a recipe for this great dish in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, there really weren’t any good fresh garlic sausages available to buy, so Julia agreed that she had better work out a formula for making them at home. Several days later, I went up to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the Childs lived, to work on the book with her, and I found that one wall of the kitchen was covered in notes on the work she had done to develop a formula for the authentic garlic sausage for cassoulet. Her research had taken her back to early French charcuterie books, and she’d made notes on each of her testings, ending up with her own carefully worked-out recipe. I gasped at her meticulous research, and then asked tentatively if maybe this might not be beyond the reach of the American home cook, but she reassured me. “No, not at all,” she said. “It’s really as easy as making hamburgers.”

In her most recent book, Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy, the great Italian cook Lidia Bastianich introduces us to various risottos that don’t require the patient long cooking and stirring as you pour hot liquid into the rice little by little. In this simpler version,you simply stir the rice into hot chicken broth along with the embellishment ingredients, and when it all comes to a boil, slap on the lid, and cook at a brisk simmer for about 17 minutes. And it’s done—a whole delicious and satisfying dinner.

This mock bouillabaisse is so scrumptious that you would never know it had anything “left over” in it. You do have to stop and pick up a dozen or so fresh mussels and a few clams the day you’re making it, but otherwise everything else is at hand, and you can put this together in half an hour. I am assuming, of course, that you have a good fish stock in your freezer; if not, plan to make this after you’ve had a lobster or a supper of steamed mussels and have some of that intense lobster or mussel broth left. Otherwise use clam juice, diluted by Half with water because it is quite strong.

Bluefish and mackerel are both rather fatty fish, and they take well to broiling, particularly when the fillet sits on a bed of flavorful vegetables and they exchange flavors. I also like this preparation because it requires only one pan. If it’s a handsome fireproof baking dish, it can come right to the table. Otherwise, scoop everything up with a spatula and serve on a warm plate.