Stevens - All about Dinner: Expert Advice for Everyday Meals

ALSO BY MOLLY STEVENS

All About Roasting: A New Approach to a Classic Art

All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking

All About

Dinner

SIMPLE MEALS, EXPERT ADVICE

MOLLY STEVENS

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JENNIFER MAY

Dedicated to the memory of my mother, who taught me that making dinner can be the ultimate expression of love.

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Contents

What do you cook at home? is a question I hear repeatedly from students in my cooking classes. For the longest time, the question gave me pausenot because I didnt have a reply, but because it felt too personal, too intimate. As a professional teacher, I thought it was my job to share general knowledge and develop skills. I didnt believe that people signed up to learn about the grilled cheese that I cook when Im home alone or the skillet pastas that I toss together while my husband and I hang out in the kitchen at the end of a busy day. But over time, I began to recognize my reluctance to answer my students recurring question as wrongheadedand even a bit disingenuous. Yes, I value culinary skill development and technique-based learning, but becoming a good cook is about so much more than mastering a fixed canon of recipes and skills. Its about figuring out how cooking fits into your daily life and learning to approach it with joy and confidence. Its about finding dishes that you love to eat and developing the ability to make them for yourself and those around you. My students are right to ask about what I cook at home, because home cooking is what matters most to me. What we choose to cook at home can tell us more about who we are and how we relate to the world than just about anything else. Yes, home cooking is both personal and intimate, and that is precisely why it deserves attention. And so, after some forty years of standing in front of one kind of stove or another, I decided that perhaps my students deserved an answer after all. This book is that answer.

My entire working life has been spent cooking, or teaching cooking, or writing about cooking, and that makes me a professional cook in many respects. And yet I think of myself first and foremost as a home cook, and rarely does a day go by that I dont prepare at least one meal in my kitchen at home. I almost always cook from scratch, but Im also open to shortcuts that dont compromise quality. I have no vast pantry, no team of prep cooks, no one paid to clean up after me, and so I mostly cook simple dishes using ordinary ingredients and tools. I enjoy visiting specialty markets to pick up fresh fish or an exotic spice, but I tend to avoid ingredients that I cant work into my everyday cooking. I do sometimes like to pull out the stops and throw a lavish dinner party or a big open house, but I mainly cook for myself, my husband, and/or one or two others, making small-batch recipes.

Like most busy people, my focus is usually on getting dinner on the table after a day of work, but I also enjoy making desserts, Sunday stews, or something to bring when were invited out. I dont have any strict rules about what constitutes dinner, and there are times when a plate of spicy wings on a rainy evening might be just what the doctor ordered, or maybe supper is a bowl of soup while I binge-watch some series on TV. Or I might make a meal of a few side dishes or repurposed leftovers. Although Ive written cookbooks on the meaty topics of braising and roasting, I dont have a big meat-and-potatoes dinner every night of the week. Ive embraced Meatless Mondays and other encouragements to eat more plant-based foods. Some nights the meal may be full-on vegetarian, other nights I may add just a bit of meat or fish as flavoring or garnish.

Avoiding trends and fads, I believe that the key to a healthy diet is cooking from scratch whenever possible. I rely on the season, the markets, my friends, restaurant meals, magazines, newspapers, and my own cravings for new ideas and techniques. I make plenty of mistakes, and I can fall into ruts. And while sometimes lifes challenges make cooking seem like the last thing I want to do, I always keep cooking. Its what I do, its who I am.

ABOUT THE RECIPES

This collection of recipes includes the dishes that I most relish, the ones I make again and again, and the ones that are most beloved when I teach them in my classes. The dishes range from soups to salads, from grain-based suppers to meat and poultry dinners, from snacks to sweets, because variety fuels my culinary curiosity and my appetite, and I hope it will do the same for you. But this book is more than a mere collection of recipes; it is intended to bolster your cooking skills and rev up your kitchen savvy. I wrote the recipes as if I were teaching in a kitchen classroom, and that meant anticipating any questions and including additional information that will lead to both success and improvisation. Ive aimed to steer you clear of the common mistakes and problems that my students have encountered over the years, and I have filled each chapter with techniques and instructions intended to carry over into the rest of your cooking. When you make one of these recipes for the first time, you should come away with more than just a great-tasting dish; you should also have gleaned some basic cooking knowledge. I include indicators based on sights, sounds, taste, and touch to encourage you to use all your senses (including common sense). I suggest substitutions and provide warnings about common pitfalls, and, when appropriate, I explain the reason behind any given step, because I believe that knowing why we do something helps us remember how to do it. For instance, in describing how to cook the sausage for a pasta sauce, I may write, Add the sausage and use a spoon to flatten into large chunks (you get better browning on large flat chunks than on crumbles). This makes the directions longer, but because Ive laid out all the steps using boldface headings referring to the basic techniques and skills, experienced cooks can just glance at these headings (e.g., Brown the sausage or Cook the pasta) and move right along without needing to read the descriptive paragraph that follows; novices, on the other hand, will want to read the text to know exactly how to proceed. Once youve followed a recipe faithfully a few times, you will begin to develop the competence to make it without having to read through each step. That is how you make the leap from simply re-creating a specific dish to knowing how to make something yourself.

My hope is that youll find inspiration and information in these pages to use as a jumping-off point to enlarge your own personal repertoire. The 100 or so time-tested recipes that are the backbone of this book encompass a broad range of techniques and a variety of culinary influences, and cooking your way through them will certainly develop your skill set (and provide you with many happy mealtimes). But good cooking is about more than following a series of paint-by-number instructions, so I invite you to go beyond the main recipes and delve into the 50-plus variations, as well as the dozens of boxes on topics ranging from caramelizing onions to handling eggplant. This supplemental information is intended to deepen your basic knowledge and ignite your curiosity, and also is designed to give you the confidence that comes with knowing the ins and outs of a host of techniques and ingredients. That is how you become a better cook.