Weeknight Meals

The key to this dish is the texture of the eggs—they should be airy and light. For fluffy eggs, take them out of the pan when they are just barely cooked. For a richer dish, use milk instead of water, or add a cup of Cheddar or other mild cheese just before the eggs leave the stove. Serve with Cilantro-Jalapeño Sauce (page 184), Tamarind Ketchup (page 178), or Citrus Chutney (page 182).

I love the smoky flavor of eggplants charred on the stovetop. A “quick and dirty” technique used in restaurants, cooking eggplants on an open flame gets a little messy, but it’s fast. This savory pie is made with traditional Italian ingredients and brightened with fresh herbs. Slice it into wedges and serve as a main course, or cut it into small squares for an appetizer. Serve with a simple green salad and fresh bread.

Fresh local grapes are an uncelebrated fall fruit, mostly because of their chewy skin and intrusive seeds. But grapes that aren’t ideal for snacking can be more fragrant and sweet than table grapes, and their acidity balances pleasingly with rich roasted chicken. Choose from any white, green, or red variety that’s native to your region. Depending on their sweetness, adjust the amount of honey in the recipe. You may use bottled, unsweetened white grape juice instead of fresh grapes. For a comforting cold-weather meal, serve with Watercress Mashed Potatoes (page 185) and Sweet Potato and Cranberry Cornmeal Biscuits (page 189).

In this recipe, pungent tomatoes are balanced by goat cheese for a rich fall soup. Goat cheese can seem pricey because, unlike cows, goats roam instead of graze in one spot. Due to their independent nature, goats can’t be put into factory farms, which are cheap for farmers but hard on the environment. Most goat farms are small, family-run, and often highly sustainable operations. Find out about your local goat farm’s practices and use their cheese in recipes like this, where a little goes a long way.

This savory mushroom dish is the vegetarian equivalent of a steak dinner. The rich taste and dense texture of the portobellos are complemented by creamy parsnips and lightly cooked greens.

Red lentils are quick-cooking beans, making them an obvious choice for last-minute meals. Their texture is starchier than regular lentils, and they have a light, sweet taste reminiscent of potatoes. For a creamier soup, add a dollop of Cucumber Yogurt (page 184). For a hint of spice, serve it with the Cilantro-Jalapeño Sauce (page 184).

This brothy, colorful soup is a potent tonic that will cure what ails you. Miso paste, made from fermented soybeans, is an essential component of Japanese cuisine. As with yogurt and other fermented products, miso is most beneficial uncooked, so stir it into the soup only after turning off the heat. Wakame is a mild-tasting green sea vegetable most commonly used in the traditional miso soup that accompanies sushi. Burdock root (shown below) has a texture reminiscent of water chestnuts. It grows wild throughout the United States and can also be found in Japanese markets. After slicing burdock root, soak it in cold water to prevent it from turning brown. If burdock root isn’t available, simply use more of the other vegetables.

Ginkgos are infamous for the acrid smell of their fruit, but the nuts hidden inside are a treasured ingredient in Asian cuisine. In and around the Chinatown neighborhoods of many cities, you can find people under trees collecting the nuts in autumn. Go out and join them, but be sure to wear protective gloves when touching the fruit and extracting the nuts; otherwise, the smell will remain on your hands. Remove the flesh outdoors—the less you bring into your home the better. You can find canned or dried ginkgos in Asian grocery stores.

Tortilla Española is an indispensable dish: It makes a great breakfast, goes well in a sandwich, and makes a hearty hors d’oeuvre when cut into small squares. The only challenge is removing the tortilla from the pan intact, but you can cheat by waiting until it’s cold. Embellish the tortilla with Stinging Nettle Pesto (page 115), Cilantro-Jalapeño Sauce (page 184), or plain ketchup. For a light meal, serve the tortilla alongside the Puntarelles with Anchovy Dressing (page 156) and fresh bread.

This is a very comforting, home-style dish, perfect for a blustery autumn day. Be sure to use only firm tofu for this recipe; softer varieties will fall apart during cooking. The trio of cultivated shiitake, enoki, and shimeji mushrooms is a classic combination in Japanese cooking, and it adds a nice woodsy and earthy flavor to this dish. You can use other kinds of mushrooms, too, if you’d like, everything from the humble button mushroom to fancier porcinis or chanterelles—whatever your budget allows.

Shumai is a Chinese import that’s a popular dish in casual restaurants, and is also a staple of Japanese homes, where it’s enjoyed as a snack or a dinnertime side dish (but never as the main course). Leftovers hold up well and can be polished off the next day, or packed into a lunchbox or picnic basket and eaten at room temperature. You can also freeze uncooked shumai for up to a month. Follow the instructions below to steam frozen shumai—no need to defrost; simply add a couple of minutes to the cooking time.

What I love about this recipe is how well fresh Italian pasta works combined with these Asian flavors. It’s a true crossover dish, the pasta adding wonderful flavor and texture to the earthy and spicy notes in the sauce. Pork and eggplant is a natural combination that reminds me of Sichuan cuisine. Chinese eggplants, by the way, have a delicate skin, so when you peel them you can leave on some strips of skin for aesthetic purposes. This stir-fried dish is unwieldy to cook for four servings, so prepare it in two batches.

This is the iconic Japanese pasta dish, the dish that popularized the notion of combining Italian pasta with intrinsically Japanese ingredients, in this case, mentaiko, aromatic obha leaves, and crispy nori. This spaghetti is as popular at home as it is in “wafu pasta” restaurants, places specializing in Japanese-style pasta.

Salmon roe, a sushi bar standard here in America, is a very popular ingredient in Japan. I love how these orange-colored pearls explode with a burst of flavor when you bite into them. They add a wonderful zing to this classic fettuccine recipe. Try this dish in the spring when broccoli is at its peak.

This is one of my favorite dishes for a dinner party or family get-together: it’s foolproof, makes a beautiful presentation, and everyone will love the layers and layers of flavor. I use cultivated mushrooms in this recipe, so you can cook it year-round. Orecchiette, which is sometimes referred to as “little ears pasta,” is a famous pasta of the Puglia region of southern Italy, and the ideal shape to hold the creamy sauce.

To tell you the truth, I first created this dish by accident, when I added lamb instead of beef by mistake. But when I tasted it, I realized it was no mistake! Lamb might not be a traditional Japanese ingredient, but it’s delicious when mixed with these Asian flavors and vegetables. If you prefer beef, though, you can always use that instead. Follow the fresh Egg Pasta recipe on page 112, but leave out the optional squid ink.

This rich, delicious dish is my twist on classic pasta carbonara. But instead of raw eggs, I prepare it with onsen tamago, which I think makes it more interesting. What’s onsen tamago? It literally translates to “hot spring eggs,” which means the egg whites are soft and still runny, but the yolks have a creamy consistency, resembling soft-boiled eggs. It is a standard breakfast treat at the countless hot springs that dot Japan. Since I was young I’ve loved eggs cooked this way. The keys to preparing them are timing and temperature—both have to be exact. Also, the raw egg has to be cold, so be sure to keep the eggs in the refrigerator until the moment you’re ready to cook.

The secret to this cool, summertime dish? Steaming the chicken. When you steam chicken, it stays moist and juicy even if you serve it cold. And caramelizing the skin beforehand adds lots of wonderful flavor. These are both techniques I borrow from Chinese cuisine. The angel hair pasta in this dish plays the same role as somen noodles: not too chewy or overwhelming when enjoyed cold.

This is my wife, Kathy, and my “S.O.S.” dish—the one we rely on when we have to whip up something fast and elegant with minimal cooking. You can prepare this recipe in about 20 minutes, but you won’t skimp on taste: with mushrooms, Dijon, tuna, and chives, there are layers of wonderful flavor here, and the richness of the dish complements the cold pasta.

This Southeast Asian–influenced dish is perfect for summer dining: it is light and refreshing, with tangy sweet-and-sour flavors. I love green papaya, an ingredient that has an appealing crunch and natural sweetness. Lemongrass, another one of my favorite Southeast Asian ingredients, adds a wonderful lemony fragrance. I cook with both at my restaurant.