April 2010

Most recipes for salmon create either a nicely browned exterior or a silky, moist interior. Why shouldn’t we have our salmon both ways?

The Problem
Roasting a salmon fillet can create a brown exterior, but often at the price of a dry, overcooked interior.

The Goal
The best roasted salmon should have moist, succulent flesh inside, with a contrasting crisp texture on the outside.

This recipe yields crisp-tender beans. If you prefer a slightly more tender texture (or you are using large, tough beans), increase the water by a tablespoon and increase the covered cooking time by 1 minute. To serve 6, increase all of the ingredients by half and increase the covered cooking time by 1 to 2 minutes. Do not attempt to cook more than 11/2 pounds of green beans with this method.

“I didn’t like cilantro to begin with,” he said. “But I love food, and I ate all kinds of things, and I kept encountering it. My brain must have developed new patterns for cilantro flavor from those experiences, which included pleasure from the other flavors and the sharing with friends and family. That’s how people in cilantro-eating countries experience it every day.”

IN the last 20 years or so, pad Thai has gone from being virtually unknown in this country to being a restaurant and takeout staple. It’s easy to see why: the tangy, crunchy, slightly sweet noodles are irresistible. But it’s difficult to understand why more people don’t make it at home, since pad Thai is essentially a stir-fry (in Thailand they refer to it as a Chinese noodle dish). It requires little more than chopping and stirring, and comes together in less than a half-hour.

Cook a meatless meal once a week and you’ll discover the range of satisfying legumes, grains, and vegetables. Here, the supper is a ragout of tomatoes, onions, and chickpeas served over couscous. Into this bowl of rich, warming flavors and textures, stir chopped cooked greens, if you like, for added nutrients.

You can make your own stock from chicken backs and necks, as Peter Davis of Henrietta’s Table does. Or use canned stock. He simmers summer squash, zucchini, carrot, celery, fennel, white beans, and tomatoes in this soup, then finishes it with handfuls of spinach and arugula.

One of restaurateur Jody Adams’s favorite dishes is based on a Spanish specialty in which noodles (angel hair here) are browned first in olive oil. It’s a delicious one-pot dish, which makes cleanup a breeze.

Chef Michael Leviton cooks this simple fish dish with his 7-year-old daughter, Isadora.

At Haley House Cafe in Roxbury, owner Didi Emmons gives cooking classes and this vegetarian lasagna gets positive reviews, she says, even from the most skeptical, picky, nay-saying youth. It’s a good way to introduce tofu to kids (there’s mozzarella too). Emmons layers slices of roasted butternut squash with spinach, mashed tofu, tomato sauce, and uncooked lasagna noodles. The noodles soften in the liquid in the dish.