30 Minutes or Less

I’ve had variations of this spring creation in a number of places. In Holland, they use ham; in Italy, they use Parmesan; in Germany, they use both. The key ingredients, however, are good asparagus and fried eggs, and the results are as delicious as they are easy. The combination of melted butter and runny egg yolk mimics Hollandaise sauce, though I think browning the butter yields a more flavorful result. The most difficult decision may be when to serve this. I like it as a light supper, but it’s also great at brunch. Other vegetables you can prepare this way: cauliflower would be equally nice.

Marginally different from the preceding dish, but enough so that I thought its inclusion worthwhile, Gobi Taktakin is a dish made on the streets of India, where they use knives to mince the cauliflower as it sautés on huge flat griddles. (The dish’s onomatopoeic name alludes to the tak-tak-tak sound of two knives simultaneously mincing and tossing the cauliflower as it sautés. To spare your pans the extra wear, it’s better to chop the cauliflower in advance.) Best with homemade curry powder or garam masala. Cumin seeds add a nice crunch, and cilantro adds a fresh note at the end, but neither is essential. Other vegetables you can prepare this way: broccoli, potatoes, carrots, turnips, radishes.

This is broccoli as it’s done in Rome: garlic, olive oil, and lemon (almost everything—from mussels to beans to veal—can be cooked with these flavorings and called Roman-style). The first method is more familiar and perhaps a tad more reliable for beginning cooks; the second requires a bit more judgment, but it’s better. If you like, add a few anchovy fillets along with the garlic. Other vegetables you can prepare this way: almost anything—dark leafy greens like collards and kale, cauliflower, green beans, carrots, and beets, for example.

A fine recipe for fish steaks, from halibut to Spanish mackerel, even swordfish (it’s also good with shrimp or scallops). The lemongrass is essential if you want authentic flavor, though the dish will be good without it, because the real keys are the quickly made caramel and an abundance of black pepper, which is used more in Vietnam than any place I’ve ever been. See page 500 for information on Thai fish sauce (nam pla). Serve with plain white rice.

People cook food in packages all over the world—the tamale counts as one, too—but leave it to the Italians to do it simply. In Rome, you would have this with bass or turbot, but really it can be made with any fillet you like. Cooking in packages requires a small leap of faith to determine that the food is done, because once you open the packages you want to serve them. This method has always worked well for me.

A small and perfectly easy dish. The finishing touch of hot sesame oil is a common garnish in Hong Kong and a nice one.

Black cod, a Pacific fish also known as sable, is treasured in Japan (and at elite Japanese restaurants here) for its richness and slightly smoky flavor. With miso it is astonishingly delicious. (Mackerel is not the same but still very good.) Use white (it’s actually beige) miso if you can find it. As is common before cooking many types of fish in Japan, this is salted to firm up the flesh; you can skip this step if you prefer. This is not a super-saucy dish, but well-made short-grain rice (page 507) is still a good accompaniment, as would be any salad.

Many Japanese cooks treasure dark, oily, full-flavored fish and treat it with a simple dose of powerful seasonings and a simple cooking technique that might be called “pan-steaming.” If you think you don’t like mackerel, try it this way; it may change your mind. Serve this with short-grain white rice (page 507).

This is an ultraquick recipe, lightly sweet, and one that will work for any white fillet—even thick ones if you extend the cooking time slightly. I prefer very thin ones, though, because the sauce almost permeates them and the cooking time is so short. The soy glaze makes this a natural over white rice.

There were two things I couldn’t get enough of in Vietnam: crunchy lemongrass dishes and caramel sauce dishes. Here’s one of the latter, in which the caramel sauce—essentially melted sugar, which becomes oddly bitter while retaining its sticky sweetness as it browns—is used to poach the fish. Make sure you use lots of black pepper, which is one of the characteristic seasonings of Vietnam, and serve this unusual, delicious dish with Basic Long-Grain Rice (page 506). Information on Thai fish sauce (nam pla) is on page 500.

A very, very fast dish, because the squid must be cooked only briefly to prevent toughness. So make your side dishes first; rice is the natural choice, and it will keep perfectly well over low heat while you stir-fry. Thai basil is so unlike Italian basil that they might as well be different herbs; not only does the Thai variety look different, but it is infinitely mintier. If you’re using Italian basil, therefore, you might consider adding a small handful of mint leaves. See page 500 for information on Thai fish sauce (nam pla). If your squid hasn’t already been cleaned, see page 98.

You can make this with sea scallops or true bay scallops (which are rare and quite expensive); don’t bother to try it with the tiny calicos, which are guaranteed to overcook and become rubbery. If you look at a sea scallop, you’ll see a little stark-white hinge on one side; remove that if you have the time; it’s much chewier than the rest of the meat. And if you’re lucky enough to find scallops with their roe (it’s red or beige; you’ll know it when you see it), by all means use them here.

The usefulness of miso is nearly unlimited, and it can convert the simplest of ingredients into an exotic dish, a secret of much of Japanese cooking. Here the fermented soybean paste is combined with scallops and a little seasoning, then allowed to sit for a while before being grilled or broiled. It’s a traditional dish, in some parts of Japan the home-cooking equivalent of slathering something with barbecue sauce before cooking. For ease of use and strict authenticity, the miso should be thinned—it’s too thick to use straight—with mirin, the sweet, golden-colored wine made from rice (and Japan’s most important sweetener before the introduction of white sugar). Mirin, too, comes in a naturally brewed form called hon-mirin; it’s preferable to aji-mirin, which may be boosted with corn syrup; check the label. But the amount of mirin is so small, and its flavor in this dish so subtle, that you can use a fruity, sweet white wine in its place or even honey. If you can, try this with Asparagus Salad with Soy-Mustard Dressing (page 190) or a plain salad. And a bit of short-grain rice, of course.

More than anywhere else, cooks in Portugal combine seafood and meat with abandon, and it usually works. This dish cries out for crusty bread. If you want a milder garlic flavor, add it along with the tomatoes so it cooks a little longer.

I’d had mussels in New York, even as a child, but never did they look so appealing as they did my first night in Rome, laced with onion, garlic, tomato, parsley, and lemon. Since then I’ve learned to love and prepare mussels in a variety of ways, but I always come back to these. Serve with lots of bread for sopping up the broth.

Every winemaking culture in the world cooks with its local product, but only Spain has sherry. And while sherry is not quite all-purpose, as simple white wine is, it is manifestly more powerful and incomparably more complex; in fact it rivals stock in the character it adds to many dishes. (When Spanish food comes with a good-tasting but anonymous “brown sauce,” you can bet it contains a hefty dose of sherry.) Sherry combined with seafood, olive oil, and garlic, as in this recipe, produces a magically Spanish dish, one that is not only classic but awesome and one you can consider a template for many others. You can spend a fortune on sherry, but since each bottle is the product of several different vintages it is consistent from year to year, and the fact that it is stabilized by alcohol enhances its shelf life (refrigerated, an opened bottle retains flavor good enough to drink for several days, and sometimes even longer if used for cooking). In short, all real sherry is good, and bottles costing ten bucks are more than acceptable. Fino is probably best for drinking, but the slightly sweeter, nuttier Amontillado and Oloroso are perhaps a little better for cooking. As is almost always the case in cooking, the clams you use here should be as small as you can find. Tiny ones the size of a quarter are fun, but the slightly larger cockles or West Coast “butter” clams are equally tender and easier to eat. Mahogany clams or good littlenecks are also fine; do not use “steamers,” whose sand will spoil the dish. In any case, buy only live clams; their shells should be undamaged and nearly impossible to pry open. Rinse them, scrubbing their shells if necessary, to rid them of all sand. Those that do not open during the cooking are fine; just pry them open at the table with a dull knife. Serve this as an appetizer or a main course, with good bread for sopping up the sauce.

The first time I had this salad—it was in Saigon—I ate so much of it I could barely eat anything else. So, obviously, you can make it as a main course (serve it with rice). Technically, it’s a starter and a great use for leftover steak. For a traditional, unusual, and wonderful Thai version, toss the beef with 1/4 cup Khao Koor powder (page 587) before dressing. For information on nam pla, see page 500.

The ideal herb for seasoning this salad is rau ram, which is not impossible to find if a well-stocked Asian store or supermarket is in your area; you can pick up your Thai fish sauce (page 500) while you’re there. The best alternative is a combination of cilantro and mint, which comes pretty close. If you don’t have precooked chicken, just simmer chicken breasts (bone-in are best) in water to cover for 10 to 15 minutes. When the meat is done, pull it from the bone (continue cooking the bones, perhaps with a few vegetables like carrots and onions, to make stock) and chop or shred.

Tarator, or skordalia (page 600), is one of the most useful dressings I know, a mayonnaiselike sauce that contains neither egg nor oil. Here it transforms ordinary chicken salad.

This is simply a kind of sea-based mesclun with a distinctively sesame-flavored dressing. Wakame, a dark green, leafy seaweed, is sold dried almost everywhere and is the most common seaweed used in salad. Other seaweeds, ranging in color from light green to bright red to black and in texture from leafy to ferny, are all fine (see page 483). At most Japanese markets and some health food stores, you can find a prepackaged assortment of seaweed salad greens; these are a little more expensive than buying individual seaweeds but will give you a good variety without a big investment.You don’t need much: an ounce of dried seaweed, or even less, is enough to make a salad for four.