Vegetables

Serve this red pepper spread with sliced halloumi cheese, grilled or toasted in a hot oven.

You don't have to use lard here, but it's traditional and really delicious. (It's also not even bad for you, but I won't tackle that argument here.) What's not traditional—but is good—is butter. If you're going to cook these in advance and reheat them, do so with a little more fat.

Other beans you can use: any red or pink beans. 

Swiss chard, a member of the beet family, is cultivated for its extremely nutritious leaves rather than its bulbous root. The many varieties of chard are often distinguished by the color of the stem. All are delicious and especially nice when a mix of colors are represented in a pan of sauteed chard. You’ll find names such as “bright lights” or “rainbow” on bunches of chard in the market. Once home, soak them in a bowl of water; the leaves can be quite sandy and need more than a simple dunk.

Just about every fast‐food joint now sells breakfast burritos, but few will be as good as yours. Fill them as you would tacos, with ingredients like chopped fresh tomatoes, cilantro, black olives, or scallions; minced fresh chiles; avocado slices or chunks; or small cubes of Crisp Panfried Potatoes (Home Fries). If you're really addicted to a hot and hearty meal on the run, double or triple the recipe, wrap the burritos well in plastic or foil, and tuck them away in your freezer.

For our best grilled vegetables recipe, we found that most vegetables are best cooked over a medium-hot fire. Lower heat is needed to cook through vegetables with a low moisture content, like potatoes. As for wood chips, we found that vegetables do not cook long enough to pick up any wood flavor. A better way to add flavor to a grilled vegetable recipe is to brush the vegetables with a flavored oil just before grilling. (Marinating makes vegetables soggy.) 

There are a few versions of spinach gratin in Provence (there it is called a tian). This one is all about spinach – no eggs or cheese, just spinach and lots of garlic, a bit of flour to absorb moisture and hold everything together, and bread crumbs to make the top nice and crisp.

The license to call this nourishing one-dish meal a bouillabaisse comes with the generous pinch of saffron that is added to the broth. It is one of many humble, filling and comforting vegetable soups from Provence that are given that lofty title.

This is a classic combination for a quiche, but it’s lighter, with a whole-wheat and olive oil crust.

My curry guru, Raghavan Iyer, author of “660 Curries,” describes paneer, the firm Indian cheese, as “fresh, firm and chewy” and “not unlike a block of extra-firm tofu,” and says you can substitute tofu for it in a pinch. I’ve taken him at his word and used tofu instead of cheese in this classic Indian dish.

The classic Chinese way to clean shrimp and ensure a succulent flavor and crisp texture, says Grace Young, author of “Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge,” is to use a combination of salt and water, either dousing the shrimp in two rinses of heavily salted water or rubbing the shrimp with salt, then rinsing with water. If you don’t eat salt, then just rinse the shrimp with plain water. I recommend bunch spinach for this; you don’t have to stem it, just cut away the base of the leaves and rinse well.