Weeknight Meals

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 nourishing bulgur-wheat salad provides a satisfying way of using up some of the huge bunch of parsley that the supermarket foisted on you. If it’s wintertime and you don’t have access to fresh mint, use 1/2 teaspoon dried mint and stir it into the still-warm bulgur after you’ve drained it, so the mint will have a chance to expand and release its flavor.

One of my favorite suppers is a good sausage with warm potato salad. I love the way the sausage juices mingle with the tender new potatoes bathed in a mustardy vinaigrette—a very French taste that makes me nostalgic.

Stir-frying a combination of vegetables quickly in a small wok gives them a more intense flavor and a pleasing texture, and they benefit from being cooked together. It’s a good way to use small amounts of vegetables you may have stored away. You can mix and match as you wish, aiming for good color and flavor complements. You can even poach an egg on top of your stir-fry (see page 105).

Once, when I was in Cambridge working all day nonstop with Julia Child, as we often did, it was almost 11 p.m. when she finally swept away the manuscript and announced we’d make dinner. She then turned to me and said: “Judith, you make a nice little potato dish while I fix the meat.” Slightly unnerved, I managed to rise to the occasion and put together what I would call a fast stovetop version of the classic potatoes Anna. As I mashed some garlic and salt together and smeared this between the layers of sliced potatoes, Julia was looking on a bit skeptically, and although I used lots of butter, of which she always approved, it wasn’t clarified butter. But when we sat down and she took her first bite, she pronounced the potatoes delicious, and her husband, Paul, toasted me. I was in cook’s heaven. I probably made my potato dish that night in a standard round 5- or 6-inch skillet for the three of us, but in recent years I’ve made it regularly for myself in a 4 1/2-inch-square cast-iron frying pan, which once belonged to my father. After he retired, he liked cooking for himself, and I remember his acquiring this little pan with pride so that he could make himself one perfect fried egg. It’s unlikely that you’ll have such a pan, particularly one imbued with fond memories, but any very small skillet will do.

The large portobello mushroom makes a natural saucerlike container for tasty fillings. For modest appetites, one amply stuffed big mushroom will make a satisfying lunch or supper dish, but if you’re really hungry, make two.

Here’s a soup to warm your heart even on the bleakest day of winter. Use it as a guideline, and make your own innovations according to what you have on hand. The beans are very nourishing, the meat accent lends heartiness, and the greens are healthy, giving balance and color. It’s interesting how cooks of the past just knew these things instinctively.

Steamed mussels make a lovely dish to eat alone slowly, plucking the plump flesh from the shells as messily as you like and sopping up the heavenly liquor with chunks of French bread.

Here’s a master recipe for a vegetable soup that you can make just for yourself when you have the urge, on a cold day, or when garden greens are in abundance in the summer.

When I spotted this appealing whole fish at Citarella, just about a pound, I thought that it would take well to roasting, and it did. I love to tackle a whole fish by myself because it is such pleasantly messy work. I made sure the fishmonger left the head on when it was gutted and scaled, because I wanted to relish the cheeks, as Irene Kuo’s husband taught me to do when we went out for a Chinese dinner to celebrate the publication of her book, The Key to Chinese Cooking. He carefully plucked out the cheeks with his chopsticks and offered them to me ceremoniously.

We used to get as a Christmas present from James Beard a whole genuine Southern ham, and it sustained us throughout the winter months. But it’s not so easy for the person living alone to cope with that much ham. My solution is to buy about a 1-pound slice of ham and bake it. I can enjoy it in this old family recipe, which gets rid of the usual watery, over salted taste that most of our commercial hams have today and gives the meat a wonderful flavor. You can have a few good slices of it the first night for dinner, and the leftovers are there to be used in all kinds of ways.

For a dinner party, I often serve a roast leg of lamb, studded with garlic cloves and slathered in mustard French-style. I make sure the meat when cooked is always rosy—in fact, saignant at the bone—and therefore good to use in any number of dishes that ordinarily call for raw lamb. And I always find myself with plenty of leftovers—one forgets how hefty a leg of lamb is these days. I wrote about some of my experiments with leftover lamb in my book The Tenth Muse in a section called “The Nine Lives of a Leg of Lamb.” So, if you are confronted with this happy dilemma of too much lamb, you’ll find nine recipes there, which can be cut down to serve one. I don’t want to repeat them here, but I have since experimented with this lamb curry for one, which I find delicious.

This is a very flexible stir-fry, so have fun with what you want to mix and match. The important thing is to get everything prepped ahead of time and lined up on a tray near the stove. Have your sauce ingredients mixed in a little bowl, and be sure to have your cooked rice ready.

You may have one whole cooked chop that you couldn’t eat, or you may have only a few bites. It doesn’t matter—the meat is really just a garnish to the lentils.

Every now and then I get a yearning for this dish, which you’ll readily find in almost any little bistro in Paris. The Dijon mustard is the perfect complement to the earthiness of the kidneys, and it is a particularly comforting dish to savor on a raw winter day. Kidneys seem to be increasingly hard to come by in our markets today, so when you see them, bring them home. Even if you think you don’t like rognons de veau, I beg you to try cooking them this way. I think you’ll be converted. Recently I asked the butcher at Citarella, a first-rate purveyor in New York City, if he had veal kidneys. Sure enough, he found some in the chiller below. But the one he brought up and proudly showed me turned out to weigh just over a pound (most veal kidneys are 7–9 ounces untrimmed). Still, I couldn’t resist, and as I thought of how I might use up what remained, a vision of a little beef and kidney pie, which my mother used to serve occasionally, popped into my mind (recipe follows). I’d quickly decided to make it with some good leftover Boeuf Bourguignon (preceding recipe), so I also purchased a pound of stewing meat and went home planning my dinners for the week ahead.

Fish in paper is a classic preparation that will totally make you feel like a rock star in the kitchen. It’s super-easy and it’s all about the presentation. All you have to do is toss some veggies and white fish in a parchment package along with some wine, and let them steam themselves. When your guests open their packages, they get a big burst of aromatic vapor and a lovely piece of gently cooked fish on perfectly cooked veggies. Just remember that because you seal the packages, you only get one shot to season everything—if you miss your opportunity then this will taste like a diet dish. You have to season well BEFORE you seal the deal.

Crispy fish skin is a treat. When done right, it’s crunchy and salty, and tastes like the ocean. I’ve come up with this method for getting fish skin perfectly crispy because in my career I’ve spent a lot of time being frustrated by sticking fish skin to the pan. My solution is more than a recipe; it’s a technique. And it will work for any fish with skin. This approach is all about having a hot pan, patience, and my secret . . . a second sauté pan. Use my method and you will always make fish with delightfully satisfying and crispy skin.