Messy, gorgeous and dramatic: The berry Pavlova is a spring-into-summer stunner

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My friend Jenni has an incredible flair for entertaining. Talk about making things look effortless: You can arrive for a dinner invitation at Jenni's at 7, and she'll just be walking in after a day at the office, bags of groceries in tow. You think: Did I get the day wrong? 

You didn't. She just doesn't fret about doing everything (or anything!) in advance. It'll be 10 p.m. before we eat, you think. And then whooosh!!! – Jenni goes into action, chopping onions, tearing lettuce, tossing things in a pan. Here, you slice the zucchini; I'll do the garlic. Out on the counter goes a fat, oozy burrata, a slick of olive oil, some pesto and prosciutto, crusty bread. Wine corks pop. Flowers land in a vase. Everyone's nibbling, and sipping, and laughing. Somehow before you know it, you're at the table – and wowed by what's before you. A butterflied leg of lamb strewn with rosemary branches. A spectacular salad, grilled asparagus, roasted potatoes. How did she do this? (She shares her delicious secrets at her blog, Jenni's Table.) 

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Jenni and her husband Philip are from South Africa; we met through our kids when we all lived in L.A. (Wylie and their son, Max, were playing on opposing baseball teams, and we moms got to talking in the bleachers.) Now they live in London, which is where her family's originally from. Every couple of years we have a reunion in Southwest France, where Jenni's mom has a house, not far from Thierry's family. There we cook out of the garden, bake the orchard into pies. Sisters show up, and their husbands. Everyone's happy in the kitchen. Joy camps out in the garden. We always eat outside.

One of those crazy marvelous evenings at Jenni and Philip's house in the hills of L.A., Jenni whipped up a gorgeous, dramatic dessert: a magnificent Pavlova piled with whipped cream, smothered in berries from the farmer's market and strewn with pistachios. She must have made the Pavlova shell – a giant cushion of French meringue – that morning. Or maybe she'd snuck home at lunchtime, who knows. 

Anyway, impressive as it looks – the thing makes a pretty incredible statement! – it's actually very easy to put together, more time (unattended in a slow oven) than effort. And once you know how to make a Pavlova shell – the base of it – you have the perfect vehicle on which to show off all kinds of summer fruit: ripe peaches, plums and nectaries; macerated apricots with toasted sliced almonds; peaches tossed with blackberries – even something like mango and roasted pineapple showered with grated toasted coconut. Curiously, the Pavlova isn't South African or British; it's Australian, named for the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, as the story goes, after one of her tours through Australia. (It may possibly have been invented in the U.S., however.) 

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Egg whites and sugar whipped to stiff peaks

But let's get to the important part: how to make one. To create the shell, whip room-temp egg whites till they hold soft peaks, then gradually add sugar, and continue whipping till they hold stiff peaks; whip in vanilla. 

The Pavlova, ready to go into the oven

Spoon the meringue into a thick circle on a parchment-lined baking sheet, and make a slight depression in the center with a spoon (just so the edges are slightly higher than the center). Put it in a 350-degree oven and immediately turn down the temp to 300. Let it bake for an hour and a half, then open the oven door and let it cool like that. Nothing to it! It'll look all craggy and rough. 

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The Pavlova shell: ready to dress up!

But those cracks and crags are just the thing for catching the whipped cream and berries and juices you'll pile on top. 

Jenni tossed berries in sugar and added a spoonful of Banyuls vinegar – very French (and hard to argue with). Lately I've tossed them in Grand Marnier. Whip up a pint of cream and mound it on top. Spoon on those juicy berries and scatter toasted chopped pistachios over them. Or leave out the nuts and fold some chopped fresh mint in the berries. Riffing is encouraged! The Pavlova itself is easy and forgiving, crisp on the outside, like a cloud inside. When you eat it, you swim through a whirl of textures and tastes, cool and creamy and pillowy-crunchy, all bright and sweet and juicy.

Ready for the recipe? Here you go . . .

It's a summer fruit game-changer, for sure.

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How to be French: First get your hands on some duck legs

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Have you ever wanted to be French? It's not that hard. Here's how to do it without breaking a sweat.

First get your hands on some duck legs, maybe six of them, or eight. Finding them is not as challenging as it used to be. 

Open a jar of Dijon mustard. Salt and pepper the duck legs and rub them with herbes de Provence. Now slather some of the mustard all over them. Sprinkle them liberally with panko, then drizzle a little melted butter over them. Slide the duck legs into a slow oven and forget about them for an hour and a half. Take them out.

Et voilà. Now you are French. I don't even need to tell you to grab a glass of red wine, as you are already French. 

If you're feeling contrary (hey – you must be French!) you can leave out the herbes de Provence. 

It was my friend Regina Schrambling who created this dish. Regina credits the great cookbook author Madeleine Kamman, citing a Kamman recipe for Dijon-rubbed duck legs sans herbes de Provence, and with standard bread crumbs instead of panko. But I love Regina's Reginafication of it; the herbes de Provence definitely add that certain je ne sais quoi. 

It's a great dish for entertaining, as it requires minimal effort yet delivers fabulous flavor and marvelous crunch. Plus you shove it in the oven and forget it, so it's absolutely stress-free. 

Because you're French, if it's a proper dinner you're scheming, you'll start with asparagus vinaigrette or leeks vinaigrette or an artichoke vinaigrette.

Or begin with céleri remoulade or a little frisée salad with walnuts and Roquefort, and serve some butter-braised asparagus avec. Just use this recipe and substitute frisée for the escarole. You could roast some potatoes in duck fat, if you had it – which you will after you make the duck legs, so next time. Haricots verts blanched then finished in butter are very French too, and here's a bonus: You could serve any old green beans and call them haricots verts. 

If you want to blow your friends' minds and be super-French, serve a salad after the duck legs, then some cheese, then some fruit. 

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Or make a lemon-raspberry tart, and call it a day.

Bonne nuit.

Ten-minute dazzler: This ginger vinaigrette turns simple fish into a modern Asian show-stopper

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Red snapper with ginger vinaigrette

I wish I could remember exactly what inspired this dish. I'm pretty sure New York chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten published a recipe for salmon with ginger vinaigrette somewhere, at some point, maybe in the 1990s – was it in a cookbook? A cooking magazine? I can't find any trace of it, no matter how much I Google. Did I dream it?

In any case, what I loved about the sauce was that it starred lots of julienned ginger – more ginger than you usually see on one plate. I made it once, Thierry and I both fell in love with it, and I made it many times after that, tweaking and changing it over the years. Lime juice, fish sauce and scallions (not in the original) now come into play. It didn't take too long to realize it's spectacular on just about any kind of fish: Not just salmon, but tuna, halibut, snapper, scallops, shrimp – even fish with serious personality, like mackerel. 

Did I mention it's super-easy to make, and fabulously healthy? It's ideal for a light and festive dinner for two, or as the centerpiece of an elegant dinner party. 

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The genius of it is the ginger vinaigrette, which comes together in no time flat, but you can even make in advance, which is especially handy if you're entertaining. Just whisk together lime juice, rice vinegar, fish sauce, soy sauce, olive oil and toasted sesame oil, then add sliced scallions, chopped cilantro and julienned ginger. If you're making it more than a few minutes ahead of time, wait till the last minute to add the cilantro.

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Seared halibut in ginger vinaigrette

Last weekend I found some gorgeous halibut fillets on sale (it's usually so expensive!). After a couple days of seriously exaggerated eating, I wanted to make something light, lovely and easy for a relaxed dinner at home with Thierry. Halibut sounded luxurious, to boot.

It's really easy to overcook halibut, making it kind of dense and hard. But if you salt and pepper it, sear it in an oven-proof skillet in a little hot olive oil (four minutes skin-side up, two and a half minutes skin-side down), then finish it for three minutes in a 400-degree oven, it comes out absolutely perfect: lightly seared on the outside, silky and wonderful on the inside. Its delicate flavor is gorgeous with the ginger vinaigrette, which you just spoon onto a couple plates while the fish finishes in the oven. Set the fillets on top of the sauce when it comes out. 

We had it with roasted asparagus and radishes, which took on a whole new dimension as it crashed happily into the vinaigrette on the plate. Loved it!

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But it doesn't have to be halibut, and it doesn't have to be seared. Grilling season is starting, and just about any kind of grilled fish sings with this, from tuna to snapper to mackerel – or skewered shrimp! Ditto fish done in a pan (scallops, salmon) or roasted in the oven (branzino!). 

Intrigued? Here's the halibut recipe:

Or maybe you want to try it with a different kind of fish. And you know what? I'm thinking it would also be great on grilled or seared chicken breasts. Here's the recipe for just the vinaigrette:

Please let us know you you like it!

A million delicious ways to put asparagus on your springtime table (including some new ones!)

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Goodbye, Brussels sprouts. Hello, asparagus – springtime's A-list vegetable.

Of course fava beans, English peas and artichokes rock the season as well, but asparagus stands apart, as it's so abundant and easy to get along with. If asparagus were as expensive as it was once upon a time, we'd likely celebrate it as a luxury, up there with morels and ramps and fiddlehead ferns. But it's not – which is why it finds a starring role on my table several times a week when it's in season.

There are a million delicious things you can do with it, from steaming to roasting to grilling to braising, sautéeing or stir-frying – even shaving the stalks with a peeler and adding them raw to a salad.

Most traditional is steaming it – in one of those upright baskets. I've never owned one; instead I trim the ends, use a vegetable peeler to peel the stalks halfway up or more, lay them flat in a wide pan and simmer them in salted water. After draining the stalks well, you can dress them in butter and serve them warm or send them to the table with a fluffy, lemony hollandaise. Or dress them in vinaigrette (that's lovely served warm, at room temp or chilled). Or keep them naked, chill 'em and serve with mayo. 

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Easiest is roasting asparagus. A turn in the oven gives it a completely different character, no less delicious. Just snap off the tough bottoms or trim them with a knife, lay them on a baking sheet with a teaspoon or so of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt, roll the stalks around to coat them, and roast for 17 minutes (for stalks of medium thickness) at 400 degrees F.

Grilling is nearly as easy: Brush the stalks or roll them around in a little olive oil, sprinkle with salt, toss them on the grill or a hot grill pan and cook until they're just tender.

One mistake people (including home cooks and many a restaurant) often make: undercooking them. They shouldn't be crunchy; they need to be tender. How to know when they're done? Use tongs to lift them up by the middle of the stalk. When they're done, they'll droop a bit on either side. 

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Roasted asparagus and radishes from Steven Satterfield's Root to Leaf cookbook

Last spring I fell in love with Steven Satterfield's recipe for roasted asparagus with green garlic and radishes, from his then-just-published cookbook Root to Leaf: A Southern Chef Cooks Through the Seasons. I haven't been able to find green garlic where I live in North Texas, so used regular garlic, Satterfield's suggested substitution. Simple and fabulous, the dish instantly became a regular player in my spring repertoire. Best of all, it's so easy to put together you don't even really need the recipe: Just cut the asparagus into 1 1/2-inch lengths, cut the radishes into quarters and toss both in a bowl with a little olive oil, finely chopped garlic, salt and pepper. Spread them on a baking sheet, baking dish or roasting pan and roast in a 400 degree oven till they're just tender, about 15 minutes. Want more specifics? Here's the adapted recipe:

Last weekend I fell in love again: With a technique for braising asparagus in butter I gleaned from a recent story and recipe in the New York Times by David Tanis. 

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Butter-braised asparagus with herbs

The technique is brilliant: Place asparagus spears flat in a pan with a good deal of butter and a little water, salt and pepper; cover the pan and cook till the asparagus is just tender. Remove the asparagus and reduce the cooking liquid to nice sauce. Tanis adds lemon zest, lemon juice and chopped herbs, then garnishes the dish with herb leaves. It was super, though I had to tweak the recipe a bit (mine needed more liquid and longer in the pan; I added more water and a little more butter. I'll add an adapted recipe here once have time to retest it (watch this space!). In any case, butter-braising gives the asparagus a rich and luxurious silkiness and this too will become a go-to treatment chez moi. I love the lemon and herb flavors with it, but it should be great without them, too.

Meanwhile, in case you're wondering about the photo that leads off this post, that's a salad of shaved raw asparagus, sautéed asparagus and black lentils from Michael Anthony's V is for Vegetables, which just won a James Beard Foundation Book Award in the category of Vegetable Focused and Vegetarian. Again, this recipe needed some adjustments (more acid in the dressing, for one thing), but it's pretty swell, so I'll tweak and provide an adaptation soon! (I was wowed last fall by Anthony's cooking at Untitled at the Whitney Museum in New York City, so was excited to cook from his book). 

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Asparagus with new-wave gribiche

Are you still with me? I want you to have all these asparagus ideas and recipes in one place. Another great way to serve asparagus is with sauce gribiche, whether the new-wave version shown in the photo above, or a slightly more traditional one. Just simmer the stalks in salted water, roast or grill them (as explained earlier in this post), and dress with the gribiche of your choice. Here's the new-wave gribiche recipe:

And here's an adaptation of Judy Rodger's four-minute egg gribiche from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook: 

Just one more direction, and it's a good one: Stir-fry asparagus Chinese-style. I wrote about this version adapted from Lucky Peach 101 Easy Asian Recipes in mid-February, when springtime was still a dream away.

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I know you want the recipe. Here you go:

Now let's get cooking!

Artichoke vinaigrette: an easy, elegant, French (and vegan! and healthy! and make-ahead!) appetizer

Growing up in California, I took fresh artichokes for granted. After all, Castroville – the town that bills itself as "the artichoke capital of the world" – is right there in the central coastal part of the state, not far from Monterey. I used to love stopping there on road trips and seeing the giant concrete artichoke sculpture that greets you at the edge of town.

In the spring and summertime, my mom always steamed artichokes and served them as an appetizer with melted butter to dip the leaves in. I love them even more dipped in mayo, or a mustardy red wine vinaigrette. Wylie loves it with balsamic vinaigrette.

A classic French way to serve artichokes is  à la vinaigrette – that is, actually dressed in the vinaigrette; shallot vinaigrette suits them particularly well. Pouring the sauce over them while they're still warm lets the vinaigrette penetrate the leaves – no additional dipping sauce required. An artichoke vinaigrette is also pretty beautiful. It's great as a sit-down starter at a dinner party or as a sharable treat before the dinner gets started. 

A few years ago, I served boiled artichokes as an appetizer to new friends in Texas, and was surprised that they found them exotic. "How do you eat them?" they asked. We showed them how to pull off a leaf, dip it in sauce, scrape off the meaty part (closest to the crown) with your teeth and discard the rest of the leaf. When all the leaves are gone and only the thin, prickly ones at the heart remain, you pull those off, scrape the fuzz off the crown with a spoon, and eat the heart  – the prize! – which is also delicious dipped in mayo or vinaigrette.

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Many cooks boil artichokes rather than steaming them. I've prepared them both ways, and find that boiling them in plenty of salted water gives them the best texture. Acidulating the water with lemon juice (as some cooks do to prevent discoloration) is unnecessary; I find the results to be the same with unacidulated water. Instead, after I trim them, I simply rub the cut surfaces with half a lemon.

For a party of four to eight, I often make two artichokes and serve it with another app or two. For a dinner party, you can serve one per person, or for a more casual dinner, one for every two to share.

So, how to trim them? You can get all fancy, and remove the chokes if you want to, but I usually don't. 

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Once you do it once or twice, it's easy. Using a sharp serrated knife, slice off the stem, creating a flat surface for the artichoke to rest on. Then slice off the top straight across – removing the tops of the inner few rows of leaves. Next use your fingers to break off the tough row or two of small leaves around the bottom.

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Finally, use kitchen scissors to snip off any remaining leaf tips (be careful – there's a prickle at the top of each). Rub the cut surfaces with half a lemon and they're ready to cook.

Boil them in lots of salted water in a covered pot. Don't worry if they bob up to the top; flip them over with a spoon once or twice so they cook evenly. While they're cooking, whisk together the vinaigrette. 

Drain the artichokes upside down, then dress them with the vinaigrette. Voilá. Easy, chic, delicious and healthy. And there are a couple of bonuses: You can serve them warm, or make them ahead, serving them chilled or at room temperature. And . . . they're vegan!

Ready to try? Here you go!

Taco party! Quick and snazzy ways to dress up freshly made corn tortillas

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Now that you know how to make wonderful hand-made corn tortillas (just mix masa harina with water, and you're nearly there!), you'll want to wrap them around everything in sight. 

If you feel like really stretching out and cooking, you might prepare a special taco centerpiece, like lamb barbacoa or carnitas.

But maybe you want to go super-easy. Have a stress-free taco party! Here are some ideas for fillings:

•Pick up a rotisserie chicken at the supermarket 

•Stop by your favorite barbecue joint and buy some sliced brisket or pulled pork 

•Use that leftover steak in the fridge: Toss it in a hot skillet or grill pan, then slice it in medium-rare strips, for bifstek tacos. They're great dressed with chopped onion, cilantro and any kind of salsa.

•Boil up some pinto beans for vegetarian tacos. Just soak beans overnight, drain, cover with water, toss in half a peeled onion (or a whole one), a couple cloves of unpeeled garlic, fresh thyme or oregano (optional), dried or fresh bay leaves (optional). Bring to a boil, lower heat then simmer till they're tender. Add salt to taste when they're done.

•Pick up some shelled and deveined shrimp from the supermarket and toss them on the grill or grill-pan. Or grill fish fillets.

•Have some leftover confit duck legs burning a hole in your fridge? (Ha!) They make great tacos. I haven't tried them with salsa verde, but I'm thinking it would be great. Or you could go sweet and add a dab of chutney and some chopped cilantro.

•When Thanksgiving rolls around, consider leftover turkey tacos

•Leftover braised short ribs make great tacos,, too. So do leftover stews (beef, pork, lamb, veal, chicken), pot roast, chops, leg of lamb

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Really, your imagination is the limit. In their book Tacos: Recipes and Provocations, Alex Stupak and Jordana Rothman have recipes for smoked salmon tacos (with cucumbers, cream cheese and lime) and pastrami tacos (with pickled mustard seeds and pickled cabbage).

More tips:

•Have a couple of good salsas on hand, like a roasted salsa verde (easy to make), a store-bought salsa roja or homemade pico de gallo (diced onion and tomato, chopped cilantro, minced serrano or jalapeño chile, a little salt, a big squeeze or three of lime). If you're feeling more ambitious, try Stupak's amazing salsa borracha. 

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•Set out bowls of any or all of the following: lime wedges, guacamole, crumbled queso fresco, sliced avocado, cilantro leaves, sliced radishes, chopped olives, chopped white onion, sliced scallions, sliced or diced cucumber

Oh, one more thing: Do yourself a favor and hand your hands on one of these inexpensive ($8 to $12) insulated fabric taco warmers. Stupak and Rothman tested every type out there, and concluded these work the best. I have to agree: Mine kept our tortillas warm for at least an hour. Maybe they would have stayed warm longer; I don't know – we ate them all too fast. They're easy to find online; I lucked out when my generous friends Keven and Georges gave me one as a gift last weekend.

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OK, then – let's invite some friends and get that tortilla press going! 

Bring on the eggs, hold the carbs: Introducing the best Caesar salad ever

I make a lot of Caesar salads, always have. I love them for their crunch, for their garlicky-anchovy-Parmesan wonderfulness. 

Wylie has loved them since he was a wee toddler, and I converted many of his childhood friends to salad eaters by persuading them to taste my Caesar. Not that it was so special – it was really a minimalist one. I never felt croutons were worth the effort or calories (unless my brother Johnny makes them; then they're totally and one hundred percent worth it!). So I do without croutons. And for eons, I've done without the traditional coddled egg – just because Caesar was my quick go-to starter, and who wanted to coddle an egg? 

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But lately I've been thinking my Caesar could use an upgrade. No, not grilled chicken. (Horrors!) And I've never met a Caesar made with white anchovies I'd loved, so I'd stick with the salt-cured ones. In fact, very few futzed-with Caesars I've tasted have bettered a traditional one. 

Still, I kept thinking I could improve it. 

Got it! I'd bring back the egg, but instead of having one coddled egg that got so thoroughly mixed in no one would notice it, I'd use two gorgeously coddled eggs that you would very much notice, sort of broken into pieces so you could see and taste a just-starting to set golden gelatinous yolk here, a bit of white there. And I though a bit of lemon zest – an interloper, as it wasn't in the original Caesar recipe – would sing with the freshly grated Parmesan. 

I tossed it up, breaking up the egg but not completely. Garnished it with extra parm and lemon zest, a few extra grindings of fresh black pepper. Oh, baby – it turned out pretty great.

You might say it's not legit, as it does without the croutons. You can add some if you like. But in my world, the less white bread, the better, and I don't miss it. OK, here goes. I'm saying it officially here: This is my new Caesar. Try it! And tell us how you like it.

Celebrate spring with a sugar-snap pea salad with lemon and parmesan

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Spring is here – officially, anyway. In my hometown, Los Angeles, that means asparagus and fabulous strawberries and English peas, favas, nettles and morels. Where I live now, in North Texas, it means tornados and thunderstorms and hail. English peas? Not so much. 

I do find nice asparagus in the market, and good sugar snap peas – which I love to blanch lightly, slice up and toss in a lemony vinaigrette with snipped chives and grated parm. It was inspired by a salad I fell in love with a couple years ago over lunch with my girlfriend An-My at ABC Kitchen in New York. 

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There's really not much to it. It takes a little while to slice up all the sugar snaps; after that, it comes together in a flash. I'm thinking it would be really nice served with frico, those lacy Italian parmesan crisps. (Remind me to scare up a recipe for them sometime soon!) 

Anyway, it's a lovely starter on its own.  Even if it's stormy outside, at your table it will feel like spring. Here's the recipe:

A new cookbook, 'Soup for Syria,' aims to help food relief efforts for Syrian refugees

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Yesterday I was thrilled to find a review copy of a new cookbook, one that will appeal to just about every border-free cook I know, in my mailbox.  Soup for Syria: Recipes to Celebrate our Shared Humanity collects recipes by Alice Waters, Yotam Ottlenghi and Sami Tamini, Paula Wolfert, Claudia Roden, Mark Bittman, Greg Malouf, Anthony Bourdain and many more. All of them are for soup, and proceeds of the book go to the Soup for Syria project, a humanitarian campaign that aims to ease the suffering of 3.8 million refugees by delivering food and foodstuffs to refugee camps. 

A photograph of a girl in a refugee camp faces a recipe for gondi by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

Barbara Abdeni Massaad, a Beirut-based food writer and photographer, collected the recipes for the collection and photographed the people who are living in the camps. The project started when she was visiting a camp just 45 minutes from her home in the Bekaa Valley "where Syrian families crowd into plastic tents and children die of cold and hunger," as she writes in her introduction. "I try to sleep and ignore this reality, but it's impossible. I am not immune to the suffering of others."

The photos are beautiful; the people in them – particularly the children – are gorgeous. 

And the recipes, many of them simple, look wonderful. I've already put Post-its on a bunch I want to make (of course I'll share them with you once I do!). I have my eye on a recipe from Ottolenghi and Tamimi for Gondi, a Persian chicken soup with dumplings made from ground chicken and chickpea flour. Greg Malouf's recipe for fennel soup with lemon and cinnamon looks great, too. As does Paula Wolfert's recipe for lentil and Swiss chard soup (it's vegan!). Soup seems just the thing to cook for such a cause, as it's nourishing and nurturing.

Of course I'll share the soups with you once I make them, but thought you'd want to know about the project right away so you can help. The $30 book can be ordered through the Soup for Syria website.  The site also offers other ways to get involved in the cause, such as hosting a soup party where you can sell the book or take orders for it.

Hummus fans rejoice: Introducing an amazing, easy cheater version

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I lied: I told you this post would be more about gribiche. But we need to interrupt our gribiche coverage to bring you breaking news on the hummus front: Cooks Without Borders has figured out how to make pretty amazing hummus from canned chick peas. 

No joke! 

If you're among those who caught hummus fever as chef Michael Solomonov's recipe for Israeli hummus tore up the internets last fall, or fell in love with Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's recipe in their brilliant cookbook Jerusalem (the excellent cooking blog Food 52 featured it a few years ago), you know how earth-shattering this is.

For those who are just catching up with it, here is the hummus situation in a garbanzo shell: Since time immemorial, creating hummus as smooth and fluffy as what you get in a great Lebanese, Israeli or other middle-Eastern restaurant involved soaking chick peas (aka garbanzo beans) overnight, simmering them for an hour and a half or two hours and removing their skins (can you imagine?!) before puréeing them. Sheesh! The brilliance of Ottolenghi's technique (which he apparently didn't invent, and which Solomonov also uses) is that it uses baking soda during the cooking process to soften the chick peas' skins so they don't need to be removed. 

Home cooks, meanwhile, who want to make a quick, easy hummus that's always at least as good as what you buy in a plastic tub at the supermarket, could simply purée chick peas in the food processor or blender with some garlic, lemon juice, tahini and salt, maybe a little olive oil. A hummus like that is fine, but never killer. It never has that amazing texture and deep flavor that a great one has.

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I've been playing for the last few weeks with hummus made the Ottolenghi/Solomonov way, and I'll post about it when I'm ready to draw some conclusions. (There's more hummus to be made and tasted first!) But as I play, I can't help but wonder: Can we use this baking soda trick to radically improve the super-quick and easy version from canned garbanzos?

Yes, we can!

All you do is rinse the canned beans, simmer them for just five minutes in water and a little baking soda, and toss 'em in the food processor with some tahini sauce you've made while the garbanzos simmered. I found it pretty incredible that the skins could be softened enough to make a difference in just five minutes, but there you go. 

Was our cheater version as smooth as hummus made using dried-and-soaked garbanzos you simmer for an hour with baking soda? Well, if not, it was certainly close. It had been a week since I made a more involved one, but Thierry couldn't tell the difference: The cheater hummus was light, fluffy and soft, maybe more velvety than satiny. The flavor was very good, if not as extraordinary as the more involved way. It was terrific enough so that I'll certainly do it again if I'm pressed for time and want hummus. 

Want to try?

OK, toss whole garlic cloves (you can leave their skins on) in the food processor with salt and lemon juice. Purée briefly to chop the garlic, and let the mixture steep 10 minutes while you boil the garbanzos. Strain the solids from the lemon-garlic-salt juice, then put the juice back in the processor. Add tahini, pulse, then slowly pour in ice water through the tube as the motor runs. 

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That gives you very light, lovely tahini sauce. Now add the garbanzos plus a little cumin (if you like that flavor), purée a couple minutes till very smooth, plate and garnish with olive oil and paprika – and more, if you like. I usually keep it simple, but you can get creative with parsley, whole garbanzo beans and such. 

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Yippeee! Who says cheaters never prosper?

I think I can improve it still further flavor-wise (I'm going to play with adding more tahini, for instance). Once I have the very best version possible of the cheater hummus and the more involved hummus, we'll do a side-by-side taste-test. 

Meanwhile, I wanted to give you this recipe right away as it is very acceptable – way better than the stuff you'd buy in a tub.

Very good indeed with pita toasted or heated in the oven, and crudités. Who says cheaters never prosper?

Sauce gribiche makes every simple thing you cook instantly delicious

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Seared barramundi with gribiche

How about an easy-to-make sauce that can turn the simplest grilled fish into a dazzling dinner party dish? Or that can dress up boiled or roasted asparagus? Or that you can add to sliced boiled potatoes to turn them into the snazziest potato salad ever?

That's the beauty of sauce gribiche: It can make every simple old thing deliciously new again. 

Poached leeks. Poached chicken. Boiled shrimp. Cold cracked crab. Fried or pan-fried soft shell crabs. Steamed mussels. Thick roasted slices of cauliflower. Sliced rare roast beef or lamb or ham. The possibilities are, you know, endless.

Traditional sauce gribiche is a mayonnaise made with hard-boiled egg yolks instead of raw ones, dressed up with herbs, capers and cornichons. (It's French, which is why it's called "sauce gribiche" instead of "gribiche sauce.") That old-style version is just as tedious to make as mayo, too, as you have to dribble in the oil while you constantly whisk, being careful not to let it "break." (Don't worry, though: Our new-wave version is super easy!)

The traditional style of gribiche bears little resemblance visually to the new-wave versions turning up in restaurants these days, though the ingredients are the same. The reason? Instead of whisking the ingredients into an emulsion, you quickly stir everything together. Using soft-boiled eggs instead of hard-boiled ones, and lots of herbs, brings it irresistibly into the 21st century in terms of looks and taste. 

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Grilled jumbo asparagus with gribiche and bottarga from Gjelina: Cooking from Venice, California

I stumbled on one as I flipped through Gjelina: Cooking from Venice, California – the new book from chef Travis Lett. Lett uses it to sauce jumbo asparagus that he first parboils, then grills; the dish is finished with lots of grated bottarga, dried cured mullet roe. I love bottarga, and I happened to have some in my fridge, so I made it – and loved it. (Note: in case you happen to make it, boil the asparagus longer than he tells you, or it will be crunchy-hard. Also, I substituted panko for the garlic crouton crumbs that added a bunch of extra steps to his recipe, and the panko worked great.) But bottarga is hard to come by, and it's expensive, so before I added it to the dish, I tasted it without. Good, but not great. It wanted a little more zing. I decided to develop a recipe that would be zingy enough to jazz up simple, plain food without the help of bottarga. 

I pretty quickly hit upon the answer: cornichons. Traditional gribiches include them, yet Gjelina's did without them (probably they would taste weird with the bottarga). Adding them did the trick: It was much more vibrant. I made a batch and tried that on asparagus I cooked simmered in salted water till tender:

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Asparagus with new-wave gribiche

Bingo! This was perfect! I also used it to sauce barramundi, a delicately flavored fish with nice body. I did nothing fancier than put salt and freshly ground black pepper on the fish, and seared it gently in a little olive oil. Wow – it was really good, something I'd happily serve at a dinner party. 

Want to try it? Here's the recipe:

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Seared barramundi with new-wave sauce gribiche

I didn't stop there. I also found a version in one of my all-time favorite cookbooks, Judy Rodgers' The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. I'll tell you about that – and more about gribiche – in my next post!

The Chinese lacquered roast chicken that changed my life

Now and then, a recipe comes along that feels truly life-changing. The short crust pastry for the lemon-raspberry tart I wrote about earlier this week was one for me. It wasn't a new recipe when I discovered it a few years ago – it had been right under my nose in the Chez Panisse Desserts cookbook forever, but it was new to me when my friend Michalene pointed me to it. Today it's my go-to recipe for tart crust.

Now a Chinese lacquered roast chicken has changed my life.

There's nothing more delicious than roast chicken, and every cook should have a favorite recipe for it (at least one!) in his or her repertoire. For years, my go-to roast chicken has been the Judy bird – that is the Zuni Roast Chicken from Judy Rodger's The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. It's the spectacularly flavorful, crisp-skinned chicken you have swooned over if you've ever gone to San Francisco's Zuni Cafe and ordered roast chicken for two. I will write about the Zuni chicken soon here on the blog and give the recipe, but the technique is basically this: Tuck fresh herbs under the chicken's skin, rub it all over with a lot of kosher salt, and let it sit in the fridge like that for one or two days. When you're ready to roast, wipe the chicken dry, heat a skillet on the stove, plop in the chicken, transfer it immediately to a very hot oven, and let it roast. No basting, but you  have to flip the chicken a couple times and fiddle with temperature. It always results in a fabulous bird.

When I don't plan ahead, I've used the Judy technique without the advance salting, and sometimes even without tucking herbs under the skin. It's still always excellent. I thought my abbreviated version was the simplest great roast chicken possible without a rotisserie.

So when I read about author Peter Meehan's roast chicken approach in the new cookbook Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes, I sat up and took note. "We are advocates of a hot-and-lazy approach: one high temperature, one pan, one position, one great result." He talked about how seasoning a bird ahead of time and letting it sit uncovered in the fridge lets him have an easy dinner to pop in the oven anytime in the next three days, and now I was really sitting up straight. This man is sensible! When he wrote, "I started doing this after I fell under the spell of Judy Rodger's Zuni Cafe Cookbook," I dropped the book and ran out to buy a chicken. Invoking Judy's name confers instant credibility.

In the Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes cookbook, Meehan offers three roast chicken recipes. For me, it was a no-brainer: Lacquered Roast Chicken.

Irresistible, right?

Here's the deal. This is the easiest roast chicken recipe in the universe, and the result is magnificent. 

All you do is this: Paint a chicken with a mixture of half-honey, half soy sauce, then sprinkle it with salt. Let it sit uncovered in the fridge for one or two days, then roast it in a 400 degree F. oven for 50 minutes. That's it. No basting, no flipping, no lowering and raising temperatures. Let it rest 15 minutes, then carve it and here's what you get:

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I kid you not. The skin was wonderfully crisp, the meat super-flavorful and both dark meat and white meat were perfectly cooked. The white meat was moist, juicy and delicious as the dark meat. A miracle!  I can't wait to try it again.

Here's the recipe:

Want something smashing this weekend? Pick up a chicken tonight or tomorrow, paint it with lacquer and it'll be ready to pop in the oven Friday or Saturday evening. Or paint a bird with the lacquer on Sunday afternoon and leave it in the fridge so you can roast it for an easy weeknight dinner next week. And please let us know – in a comment here – how you love it!

Meanwhile, I told Michalene about it, and what she said glued me to the ceiling: "Have you tried it on a duck?" Oh, man.

NOTE: I later made the chicken again, and it required ten minutes longer to cook – about an hour total roasting time. When it's done, the skin will be mahogany, and the legs will wiggle freely at the joints "like you could almost tear them off," as Meehan writes. The internal temperature should be 165 degrees F at the thickest part of the breast and where the thigh meets the breast. Also, when you're preparing the bird, don't worry if some of the glaze falls off the bird – it doesn't matter. That's why we have foil lining the pan.

Dreaming of spring, I cook – and eat – an entire bunch of stir-fried asparagus

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My friends will tell you I'm a little bit crazy. 

OK, maybe more than a little. This day and evening are a case in point. At 8 a.m. I was at my home computer, fiddling with a story I was trying to post online for work. I made coffee. I launched into writing a review, fearing I'd be late for my noon deadline. At some point I made a salad (with Thousand Island dressing, which I deserved, as I was on deadline) and then at three thirty or four I filed, apologizing profusely to everyone involved. Caught up with emails. Jumped into another story I'm writing, this one for Palate magazine, which I'm editing and which has to be completely finished a week from today. (Insane!)

After a while, I looked at my watch and was stunned that it was 7:30. I got up from my desk and turned lights on in the other rooms. Thierry was out, and the house was empty. What would I do for dinner? Some people might just make some pasta or something else they had around, but I wanted something green. I've been craving asparagus. And I'd been eyeing a new cookbook I thought would be fun to review: Lucky Peach 101 Easy Asian Recipes. I flipped through to see if there was a recipe involving asparagus. Bingo! Stir-fried asparagus! I got in the car and headed to the market to buy a bunch.

Oh, but wait – as long as I was headed to the store, maybe I should see if there was something else I wanted to make. I went back inside. Flipping through the book again, I landed on something irresistible: lacquered roast chicken. "Lacquered" is like a magic word for me, no way not to succumb. Further, this looks like the easiest roast chicken recipe in maybe all of history. Four ingredients, including salt (a bird, some honey and soy sauce). You paint the bird with half-honey, half-soy, sprinkle with salt. Let it sit, uncovered in the fridge, 12 hours to 2 days. Pop it in the oven, roast 50 minutes, let rest 15, and carve. Had to try! 

Bought the chicken, bought the asparagus. The recipe called for one large bunch. Drove back home.

I brought a large pot of water to a boil, added salt, dropped in cut-up veg, blanched briefly and drained. Heated oil in the wok, added garlic, then asparagus, then chopped Thai chiles, and stir-fried. Then oyster sauce, sugar, white pepper. Stir-fried. Then chicken stock, and cooked till sauce thickened a little.

"Serve on a large platter," it said, and so I did. It should have said a small platter – not a whole lot of asparagus here. The recipe said it made four servings, but I'd say two or three. OK, maybe my bunch of asparagus wasn't that big, but it was the biggest one I saw. 

I took a few picture of it, then sat at the table, poured a glass of white wine, pulled out some chopsticks, and ate the asparagus. All of it. It was very good. Try it. See for yourself.

But wait. There was more: the chicken. Spring chicken! I mixed together two tablespoons of honey and two tablespoons of soy sauce, then painted a thin, even layer on the chicken. Set the time for 15 minutes, during which I did the dishes. Ding! I painted the chicken with the rest of the marinade, then sprinkled it with two teaspoons of kosher salt and put it in the fridge, uncovered. Tomorrow or Saturday (who can think that far ahead!?) I'll zip it into the oven. 

To all a good night.

Celery, endive and crab salad: a delicious way into a winter dinner party or Valentine's dinner for two

You're having friends over. You've planned your main course, and the nibbles over drinks for starters, and the dessert. But what, oh what, should you start with when everyone sits at the table? 

This time of year, it often comes down like this: For a main course, I'm making something rich or hearty – like a stew or braised meat or poultry, or a roast of some kind.  So to start, I want something light, but not inconsequential. It would be lovely if it could involve greens. A winter salad? 

This salad of celery, Belgian endives and radishes – with crab meat for a bit of luxury and lemony dressing to keep it fresh – is elegant, pretty and fresh: just the ticket. 

You can slice the radishes and celery in advance, so the salad comes together in no time flat when you're ready to dine. 

Or maybe you're cooking a Valentine's dinner for your sweetie? Make half a recipe, and serve it – with a glass of crisp Sauvignon Blanc (maybe Sancerre!) – as a prelude to a steak or roast chicken. Sound good? Let's do it!

Super bowl of soup: black bean with roasty veg

There's nothing more warming and comforting on a chilly winter evening – or a kicked-back Super Bowl Sunday – than a soulful black bean soup with a gentle zip of chile.  

I like to roast the soup's aromatic vegetables instead of sautéing them; roasting deepens and intensifies their flavor – so much that if you wanted to leave out the ham hock and go vegetarian/vegan, the roasted veg will carry the day. Grinding toasted spices – coriander and cumin – fills the house with a wonderful scent.

There's hardly any work involved: Just dice the roasted vegetables, toss them in a pot with beans, a can of tomatoes, a ham hock and the spices and let it simmer a couple hours. Debone the ham hock, whirr the soup a bit with an immersion blender, drop in the diced ham and you're in business. Serve the soup in small bowls, garnished with cilantro and sliced scallions. Try it! And tell us how you like it. 

A superfood salad (and more) for super-wonderful friends

Last night my friends Nicola and Habib came over to help me judge (and eat!) a couple of dishes I was testing for a cookbook review. 

The book I'll be reviewing (I'll try to post it next weekend) is Lidia's Mastering the Art of Italian Cuisine; Lidia would be Lidia Matticchio Bastianch – you may know her from her PBS show Lidia's Kitchen. 

You can't invite just anyone if you're testing a recipe for rabbit, but I had a feeling English-born Nicola and French-Tunisian Habib would be game (pun intended). And they were! The other recipe I tested was spaghetti alla carbonara. 

But hmmm – nothing green there. How to make sure my pals had their veg? Got it! We'd nosh on crudités while I was finishing up the cooking; I'd put them out with a red pepper-harissa dip I've been making and serving to friends for eons. I made the dip about an hour before they arrived and stuck it in the fridge so the flavors would come together. Here's the recipe:

And before we dug into the carbonara and rabbit, I'd give them a salad. I wanted something with some weight, and serious greens. Just the thing: baby kale with roasted sweet potato and pomegranate seeds. Should I put in some goat cheese? Nah – better idea: toasted pecans. I could toast a bunch and use them in both the salad and the dip. 

I'm not usually a huge fan of balsamic vinegar, but it's just right with the kale and sweet potatoes, and its depth balances the bright flavor of the pomegranates. And here's something really cool: All four of the salad's main ingredients are superfoods. A superfood salad for super friends! Please try it – and tell me if you like it as much as we did.

The simplest soup in the universe — split pea — is one of the most delicious

This is the simplest soup in the universe, and one of the most heart-warming when it's cold outside. 

I try to keep its ingredients on hand all the time during the winter, so if a craving strikes, I can put it together without going shopping. If you buy the ham hocks two or three at a time, you can throw the extra(s) in the freezer. Of course if you happen to have a leftover ham bone, you can use that instead. Besides the ham and the split peas (which keep forever), all the ingredients are things a cook usually has on hand anyway: an onion, three or four carrots, a little olive oil. 

And it smells so good while it's cooking. 

Making it couldn't be easier. Just sauté diced onion and carrot in a little olive oil, add water, split peas and the ham hock, and let it simmer till it starts looking like soup. Take out the ham, discard its bone and fat, cut up the meat and toss it into the soup. Correct the seasoning and that's it – very little effort; time (about an hour and a half, maybe a little more) does all the work for you.

Start it in on a weekend morning, and you can eat it for lunch. Or make it in the afternoon and serve it on Monday or Tuesday night – with some good crusty dark rye bread and sweet butter, and maybe a salad – for a zero-effort dinner. 

Our first guest cook: Yasmin Halima whips up her family's wonderful thummi letho – Burmese chicken curry

The table is set for thummi letho, Burmese chicken curry, with all its garnishes.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story about Yasmin Halima, her daughter Seema Yasmin and their family was originally published back in January 2016. We are republishing it now because it has been one of our most popular stories over the years, and it feels particularly relevant at this moment.

Yasmin Halima, the mother of my young and brilliant colleague Dr. Seema Yasmin, was eager to get back into the kitchen. During the holidays, she and her family lost their house in one of the tornados that tore through the Dallas area – so devastating. When they came to dinner on New Year's Eve, I told Yasmin she was welcome to come cook in mine whenever she liked, and Seema emailed me a couple days later: Her mom really missed the kitchen and would love to come — and she’d share a recipe as a guest cook here at Cooks Without Borders.

Yasmin sent me a list of ingredients to pick up. She would be preparing (and teaching me how to make) her family's favorite comfort dish, thummi letho – Burmese chicken curry.

Yasmin and Seema respect Muslim dietary restrictions and only eat halal meat, which poses no problem at all, as there' s a halal butcher in a wonderful Asian grocery, Indo Pak Market, not far from our house. It's super fun doing the shopping there, hunting down chick pea flour (labeled as besan) and coconut milk and tamarind purée, which comes in a plastic-wrapped block. 

Yasmin arrives, and we chat for a while. Though her daughter is my colleague, Yasmin is a year younger than I! Then we head into the kitchen. Once we start chopping peanuts and slicing garlic and stirring and sautéing, she relaxes and tells me her story – a remarkable one. 

Born on India's west coast, near Surat in the state of Gujarat, Yasmin moved with her family to England when she was six. She grew up there, in a tiny industrial town near Coventry, in the Midlands, with a conservative Indian Muslim upbringing. (Her grandparents and father were born in Rangoon, Burma, where they had textile factories.) Yasmin had an arranged marriage, and when she was only 19, gave birth to Seema. 

Yasmin lightly sears cubes of chicken coated with chopped garlic.

The marriage was not a happy one, and when she was 26, she made an unfathomable decision: She would leave not only her husband, but her community. "I wanted an education, and I wanted my daughter to have an education," she tells me, as she stirs a pot of chicken, lightly searing the pieces, which she's tossed with chopped garlic. Such a thing – leaving, or even making any kind of life decision – was unheard of for a young woman of her upbringing. Yasmin did it anyway.

Her family supported her as she left for university and then moved to London as a researcher for the national department of health. She raised Seema on her own, but credits her sister with ensuring her daughter was educated about her faith and culture. None of it was easy.

Yasmin tells me she succeeded in getting her undergraduate degree in educational research and psychology and Seema – a star pupil (who by the way met her husband Emmanuel when they were both 17) – managed to achieve her own dream, gaining admittance to Cambridge University to study medicine. While Seema was at Cambridge, Yasmin – who was working for a non-profit aid organization – realized a dream of her own, to study at an Ivy League university. Admittance to a graduate program at Columbia brought her – and later Seema and Emmanuel – to the United States. Yasmin spent three years in New York, then seven years in Washington, D.C., running an international non-profit organization called Global Campaign for Microbicides followed by a few years working in public relations, before moving with Seema and Emmanuel to Texas. 

Amazing how you can get a know a person when you're cooking together. Before the evening is through, I learn that she'd like to start catering – on a small scale: cooking Indian and Burmese dishes for private dinner parties. 

So. It was Yasmin's sister who taught her how make thummi letho, the dish we're putting together. "Part of what we do to heal is we cook," she says. "And we feed. We make this dish that makes you feel good. We have emotions attached not just to food, but to dishes." Thummi letho, Yasmin tells me, "is such a basic, homely dish. We eat it to make us feel warm and safe." She sees food as a connection back to her family, too, along with observing certain Muslim traditions – praying and eating halal. "It's my umbilical cord back to my family and community." Neither she nor Seema wear the veil.

Seema, Emmanuel and Lily will be here in a bit, along with Yasmin's sister's son, Luqman, who just flew in last night from his home in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to help the family through their crisis. "They're very close," Yasmin says about Luqman and Seema. "Like brother and sister." 

Yasmin Halima

When she makes thummi at home, Yasmin takes her time. "In the morning I might do a couple of things" – preparing some of the garnishes, say, and making the Basmati rice – "and in the afternoon I might do a couple of things." 

The dish has several parts: what she calls the "base dish" – rice, cellophane (mung bean) noodles and linguini, all tossed together and garnished with sliced potatoes and eggs and chopped peanuts; a coconut milk-based chicken curry; and a variety of garnishes, to be passed at the table. 

It's a lot of elements, but the curry itself is very simple, taking less than a half hour to make. If you want to simplify it, you can serve the curry on plain Basmati, or on plain cellophane noodles, and serve it with just a garnish or two – maybe lime wedges and chopped cilantro. 

Yasmin sprinkles a couple teaspoons of chile powder onto the chicken, then thinks again and adds another. "You don't want it bland and boring!" A can and a half of coconut milk goes in, then it simmers till the chicken is just cooked through. While it bubbles, she toasts the chickpea flour in a dry pan till it's fragrant and it changes color slightly to pinky-gold. ("Can you see how it changed?" she says. It's pretty subtle.) That gets stirred into the curry, along with a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter, and voilå. 

Thummi letho

The garnishes have been prepared and put in small bowls: crushed, roasted peanuts; the limes and cilantro; fried garlic chips; fried chile flakes; tamarind paste. 

Seema, Emmanuel and Luqman arrive, followed by Thierry and our friend Habib: thummi letho party! Seema has brought a galette des rois for dessert, given to her by Marina, another colleague. I'm glad Thierry and Habib will be handy to explain that tradition (they're both French). 

Seema's excited about the thummi. "When else can you eat noodles and rice in the same dish?" she says. "It's not fancy food; it's comfort food, and it tastes so good. There are so many ingredients!"

Yasmin puts the plates together for us, as if she hasn't done enough. First the noodles and rice, then she spoons some curry over, topping it with a slice of potato and one of egg. Then the garnishes: limes, cilantro, a drizzle of sweet-sour tamarind paste, some chopped peanuts. It's wonderful: coconutty and tangy and hot and rich with peanuts. I can see why it's a family addiction. 

Naturally we all go for another round.

Later, Thierry and I take the galette to the kitchen to insert the small ceramic king figurine inside, then bring it back to the dining room and explain the game: Whoever gets the piece with the king inside wins the crown – and chooses a queen. I slice it, happy that my knife doesn't hit the ceramic piece. It's much more fun if you don't know where it is. We taste the cake – puff pastry filled with almond frangipane (thank you, Marina!). Bingo – Luqman gets the king! 

He places the glittery paper crown on his head, and we ask, "Who's your queen"?

"Emmanuel!" he cries. How lovely: Burma meets France to bring a little sweetness, a little spice, into the new year. 

RECIPE: Yasmin’s Thummi Letho (Burmese Chicken Curry)

Emmanuel Farrugia (left) and Luqman Vorajee, le roi.

One of my favorite winter lunches: escarole salad with toasted walnuts and Roquefort

With all the feasting between the holidays, it feels like a perfect day for a salad. But I don't want to go all austere – it is the holidays, after all! Here's just the thing: one of my favorite winter salads – escarole with toasted walnuts and Roquefort. If you can't find Roquefort that speaks to you (maybe it's too expensive or over-the-hill, yellowy on the edges), or you prefer another blue such as Maytag, Fourme d'Ambert or Danish blue, go for it. The same goes for the escarole: The salad is just as nice with frisée or sliced Belgian endives (a combination of purply-red and pale green ones is really pretty). 

Cookbook review: A delicious passage with Madhur Jaffrey to Vegetarian India

It has been quite a rich publishing season for cookbooks that appeal to border-busting food-lovers, and when a review copy of Madhur Jaffrey's Vegetarian India: A Journey Through the Best of Indian Home Cooking landed in my mailbox, I could hardly wait to get cooking.  Jaffrey has legions of fans and admirers – seven of her books have won James Beard Awards. As soon as I started cooking from this one, I remembered why I'm such a fan: Her recipes are simple, they're delicious and they work. There wasn't a single problem in the three recipes I tested. The only tweaks I've made is calling for a medium-sized roasting pan or baking dish for the cauliflower, which would have gotten lost in the larger pan the book called for, and adding a note to adjust the seasoning in the recipe for spinach with dill, which wanted a little more salt.

If you buy Vegetarian India, take the time to read Jaffrey's introduction, which takes you on a mini-tour of vegetarian India: She traveled all around the vast country collecting recipes – from Uttar Pradesh and Benghal to Bombay and Hyderabad and back – for vegetarian dishes "that are both delicious and easy to make." So many things to discover here: dishes, regions, styles, ingredients. I'm particularly curious about poha, flattened and dried rice that's pre-cooked. Jaffrey raves about it, providing a number of recipes for it, including one with ginger-flavored green beans that sounds wonderful.

I love the way she wraps things up: "In India's ancient Ayurvedic system of medicine," she writes, "it is believed that the simple acts of cutting and chopping and stirring are graces that can bring you peace and calm. That is what I wish for you."

For me, Jaffrey's wish came true: I spent a glorious afternoon toasting and grinding and grating spices, which filled my kitchen with wonderful exotic aromas – ginger and coriander and cumin. "Whatever you're doing," said my husband, led by his nose to the kitchen, "it's going to be delicious." Thanks to Jaffrey, he was right.

Flipping through the book, which includes more than 200 recipes and beautiful photos by Jonathan Gregson, it wasn't hard to find three dishes I wanted to jump into: Everything looked and sounded so delicious. I chose Roasted Cauliflower with Punjabi Seasonings (Oven Ki Gobi), Peas and Potatoes Cooked in a Bihari Style (Matar Ki Ghugni) and Spinach with Dill (Dakhini Saag). All were terrific, definitely going into my repertoire.

Next time I cook from it, I'll heed Jaffrey's advice about menu planning: "Indian meals are always put together so they are nutritionally balanced: a grain is always served with a vegetable and a dairy product, not only because they taste good together but also because together they are nutritionally complete." This time around I hadn't chosen anything involving dairy. The ingredients were easy to find in my regular supermarket, the instructions were clear and the amounts and times were spot-on.

Vegetarian India: A Journey Through the Best of Indian Home Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey, Alfred A. Knopf, 416 pages, $35.