"Flavor Comfort" is Good, But Not Every Night
"Flavor Comfort" is Good, But Not Every Night
Some successful attempts at getting out of my comfort zone
For the longest time, I’ve relied on garlic, olive oil, and chili flakes to anchor everything I cook on weeknights—tomato sauce, mushrooms, spinach, garbanzos, shrimp, pasta, and chicken cutlets. It is still my sacred trinity. By expanding on that base with a few trusted spices like cumin, paprika, and saffron, I can quickly cook a hundred dishes. Still, I get bored. But I don’t have enough time during the week to fool around with flavors I haven’t mastered. If I make a bad dish for my family, we’ll have to force it down or eat boxed mac and cheese—a pizza wouldn’t arrive until after the kids are in bed. I don’t usually turn to cookbooks, because then I’d have to spend twenty precious minutes hunting for ingredients and devising substitutions for those I don’t have.
Once again, How to Cook Everything Fast has come to my rescue. Cooking the stripped-down versions of global standards in this book has coaxed ingredients like ginger, soy sauce, peanut butter, garam masala, lemongrass, and coconut out from the dark corners of the crisper drawer and the pantry and onto the countertop. Becoming familiar with these ingredients has trained me to be comfortable with building flavors I might not previously have attempted on a weeknight.
The four recipes here are among those that have helped me cook intuitively with a broader range of ingredients. They all happen to be soups/stews—it was well below freezing here in upstate New York on several occasions recently—and the results, though quick and simple, are anything but basic.
To note: We’re just gonna call this Soup Week here on the Bittman Project. We promised you a Deep Dive, and today is the start of it, with Thursday as our grand finale: Mark and Kerri’s debunking, really stellar tricks and tips, and, of course, recipes.
For today:
Potato and Spinach Saag
Chicken Soup with Ramen Noodles
Peanut Soup with Chicken and Collards
Coconut-Beef Soup with Carrots
Potato and Spinach Saag
Makes: 4 servings
Time: 30 minutes
Saag, an Indian stew of spinach and aromatics, develops a luxurious flavor and texture from simmering with ghee (a kind of toasted clarified butter) and sometimes cream. To quicken the pace while retaining as much of that silkiness as possible, I go with straight butter and more cream. The potatoes lend their starch to the sauce, which thickens it even further. You’ll want some kind of rice or bread to sop it up.
Ingredients:
Salt
1 ½ pounds russet or Yukon Gold potatoes
1 ½ pounds spinach
2 tablespoons butter
1 inch fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic
1 fresh hot green chile(like serrano)
1 tablespoon garam masala or curry powder
Pepper
1 ¼ cups cream
Instructions (Prep | Cook):
1. Put a large pot filled halfway with water over high heat; salt it.
Peel the potatoes and cut them into 1/2-inch cubes, adding them to the pot as you work.
2. Cover the pot, bring to a boil, and cook, stirring once or twice, until the potatoes are tender enough to pierce with a fork but not mushy, 5 to 15 minutes.
Trim and chop the spinach, including the stems.
3. Put 2 tablespoons butter in a large skillet over medium-low heat.
Peel 1 inch ginger and 2 cloves garlic; trim the chile. Chop them all together.
4. Add the ginger, garlic, and chile to the skillet and turn the heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring frequently, until the aromatics soften, about 2 minutes. Add 1 tablespoon garam masala or curry powder and a sprinkle of salt; stir until fragrant, less than a minute. Add the spinach a handful at a time if necessary so there’s room as it cooks, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the spinach is soft and most of the water boils off, about 5 minutes.
5. When the potatoes are ready, drain them in a colander, reserving about 1 cup cooking liquid. Return the potatoes to the pot, add the spinach mixture, and turn the heat to medium. Add 1 ¼ cups cream. Stir to combine and heat until steaming without coming to a boil, just a minute or two; add some of the reserved potato cooking water if the saag looks dry. Taste and adjust the seasoning, and serve.
Chicken Soup with Ramen Noodles
Makes: 4 servings
Time: 30 minutes
Whether you use some kind of dried noodles or take the quick-cooking noodles from packaged ramen soup, well-seasoned water is the key to a fast bowl of chicken soup whenever homemade broth isn't an option. The results here are way better than depending on the seasoning blend that comes in the package of ramen but still a fast and convenient dinner.
Ingredients:
3 or 4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (about 12 ounces)
1 inch fresh ginger
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
Salt
1/4 teaspoon red chile flakes
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 cloves garlic
6 scallions
8 ounces ramen or somen noodles or 4 packages ramen soup
4 eggs
1 teaspoon sesame oil
Instructions (Prep | Cook):
Thinly slice the chicken thighs.
Peel and mince 1 inch ginger.
1. Put 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, add the chicken and ginger and cook undisturbed until the chicken pieces brown and release easily from the pot, about 3 minutes. Sprinkle with a little salt and 1/4 teaspoon red chile flakes.
2. Add 8 cups water and 3 tablespoons soy sauce and stir to scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot.
Peel and thinly slice 3 cloves garlic.
Trim and chop the scallions, keeping the white and green parts separate.
3. When the soup comes to a boil, add the garlic and the white parts of the scallions. Adjust the heat so the broth bubbles steadily and cook, stirring once or twice until the chicken is cooked through, 1 or 2 minutes.
4. Put a large skillet over medium-high heat for 1 minute. Add the noodles to the soup pot (discard the seasoning packets if there are any); break them apart with a fork if necessary and adjust the heat so the broth keeps bubbling gently. Cook, stirring occasionally, until just tender, 2 to 5 minutes, depending on the noodle.
5. Add 1 tablespoon vegetable oil to the skillet and swirl it to coat the bottom. Crack the eggs into the pan and turn the heat to low. Cover the pan and cook undisturbed until the whites are just set and the yolks are still runny, 3 or 4 minutes. Turn off the heat.
6. When the noodles and chicken are done, taste the broth and adjust the seasoning. Top each serving with a fried egg, a few drops of sesame oil, and some scallion greens.
Peanut Soup with Chicken and Collards
Makes: 4 servings
Time: 30 minutes
This West African-inspired soup demonstrates how easy it is to make peanuts and collards taste fantastic. And even though many traditional collard recipes call for long cooking, the greens are also delicious when cooked quickly, as they are here.