Basil

Be careful not to overheat the crostini; the cheese and tomatoes should be just warmed through and softened but not melted or falling apart. It’s perfect if you have slightly underripe tomatoes.

This basic poaching recipe yields salmon that can be served warm, at room temperature, or chilled. Here, salmon and a few hard-cooked eggs provide protein to a colorful salad composed of fresh vegetables and mixed herbs from the farmers’ market.

These open-faced sandwiches are a delicious way to showcase the season’s best tomatoes. Try the tofu spread as a low-fat and nutritious alternative to cream cheese; the recipe makes about three-quarters of a cup, enough for four additional sandwiches.

This version of pasta salad ditches the mayonnaise-based dressing for a lighter and brighter vinaigrette of flaxseed oil, lemon juice, and vinegar. It also incorporates ample fresh herbs, a variety of vegetables, and kamut pasta—a protein-rich whole-wheat pasta that contains healthy amounts of the antioxidants vitamin E and selenium. Other types of whole-wheat pasta can be used instead. The salad makes a great side for a potluck, but it works as a main course, too.

When you start with store-bought dough, homemade pizza comes together in minutes. Look for whole-wheat dough in the refrigerator section of health-food stores and some supermarkets. Frozen artichoke hearts are a convenient alternative to steaming fresh artichokes, and they retain much of their nutrients; if you use canned, rinse them well and let them drain. (Jarred, marinated artichokes are not recommended for this recipe.)

One of the preparations that make Thai cuisine so fresh and refreshing in the tropical heat is its raw vegetable salads that serve as backdrops to fish or meat. The sauce used on these salads is typically a blend of chiles, fish sauce, fresh lime juice, and herbs, with fresh cabbage as one of the side dishes. This Thai slaw is inspired by those classic recipes. Use it as a base for Thai Shrimp tacos (page 59) or for other shrimp or seafood fillings.

After Mexican cuisine, Thai is the one that I consider the most expressive. I find its freshness, sharp chile accents, and cool citrus flavors habit-forming, so much so that I travel to Thailand at least four times a year. One of the most distinctive of Thai flavors is that of kaffir lime. It resembles a large key lime with deep green, warty skin and leaves that have a marvelous, haunting perfume unmatched by those of any other lime or lemon. In this filling, I use the leaf to perfume the coconut sauce that cooks the shrimp. The fruit only grows in tropical climates and the lime itself is very hard to find here, but its fresh or frozen leaves are sold at all Asian markets that stock a lot of Thai ingredients. For this filling, the leaves should be minced very finely (remove the rib) or, preferably, ground to a fine powder in a spice mill, as its flavor is so strong that any large bits of leaf will dominate every mouthful.

Pesto is one of those once-exotic foodstuffs that has become ubiquitous on the American table. It hails from the Italian city of Genoa, in Liguria. Don’t limit yourself to pairing it with pasta—it’s sensational on sandwiches, pizza, and even as a topping for vegetables such as tomatoes and corn. A mortar and pestle (preferably large) is the best tool to use for crushing the basil, since it produces a sweeter-tasting sauce (a food processor also works, as long as you don’t overmix). It’s the traditional equipment, after all, that gives the sauce its name. In this recipe the garlic is blanched first to mellow its flavor; if you prefer the pungent taste of raw garlic, omit this step and use only one or two cloves. For variety, add a little fresh parsley, spinach, or arugula, or substitute pine nuts with walnuts or almonds (chopped after toasting). Store pesto in an airtight container, covered with 1/4 inch of olive oil (to preserve color) in the refrigerator.

The hearty flavor of these dumplings lends itself to a range of preparations. Tossing with basil pesto is perhaps the most common, but gnocchi can also be served with brown butter and sage or doused in a hearty ragù, like Bolognese Sauce (page 383).

The squash filling in the recipe can be replaced with virtually any precooked vegetables you like. You can also omit the goat cheese and sprinkle on more grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Asiago, or use Gruyère cheese instead.

This three-egg omelet is strewn with fresh herbs for the simplest of fillings. See the variations below for other ideas. If you’d like an omelet with a bit more heft, add another egg.

Many cooks prefer to grill larger cuts of fish rather than smaller fillets, since the extra heft helps to trap in moisture and flavor. This recipe calls for a large piece from a side of salmon to be grilled on a bed of citrus and herbs, which helps keeps the fish from sticking to the grate. Instead of a crisp skin, you’ll get plenty of bright flavors from the aromatics. Use this method to grill other types of fish, too, whether whole sides or smaller fillets (even skinless ones). The herbs can vary; dill, marjoram, parsley, and thyme are all particularly lovely with fish.

For true vegetarian soups, stews, and other dishes (such as risotto), vegetable stock is a flavorful alternative to water and meat-based stocks. Some recipes call for the vegetables in the mirepoix to be added to the simmering liquid without first cooking; others call for them to be sweated first, without browning. In this recipe, the vegetables are lightly browned to give the stock intense flavor. The resulting richness and complexity are particularly important when there is no base of flavor provided by chicken, beef, or fish. You can vary the flavor by increasing the amount of garlic, replacing the carrots with parsnips, or changing some of the fresh herbs for others. Or add any of the following: dried mushrooms, such as porcini or shiitake (no more than two or three, since they can be overpowering), a few corncobs, some chopped tomato (seeded, if desired), or thinly sliced leeks. If the stock will be used to make Italian dishes, add a rind of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese once the water has been added. If making a vegetarian dish with other vegetables, use the scraps to flavor the stock, such as beet greens for beet risotto. But be careful to avoid adding anything that is less than fresh or that has too strong a flavor, such as most cruciferous vegetables (including broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage).

Just as you would order a baguette to judge a bakery, Margherita is the pizza to order to judge a pizzeria. Not only is Pizza Margherita the original pizza Napoletana but it has all the elements you want to look at: the sauce, the cheese, and of course, the crust. It’s our biggest seller.

What I like most about this mussels preparation is that they are not simply steamed in white wine, like the vast majority of mussels you see in restaurants. We cook them with a light tomato sauce—and, yes, also white wine—and toss in piles of herbs after the mussels are cooked, so the herbs wilt only slightly. The finished dish manages to be original and familiar at the same time. It also couldn’t be easier to make.

One of the principles of Italian cooking—and maybe this is true of all of European kitchens—is not to be wasteful. Italian cooks find a use for every edible component of each animal or vegetable they cook. In the Italian spirit, I use all parts of the celery in this dish. I slice the celery ribs for the salad, and I use the leaves, so often discarded, both in a salad the cheese is served on and to make a celery-leaf pesto that gets spooned onto the cheese. The result is a bright, flavorful, and textural salad that is equally pretty and unexpected. We peel celery using a vegetable peeler anytime we are serving it raw; it takes only a few seconds and the celery is so much more tender with the fibrous strings removed. The pesto recipe makes 3/4 cup, which is more than you will need for this recipe, but it’s difficult to make pesto in a smaller quantity. Spoon the leftovers over grilled chicken, fish, or vegetables; use in place of basil pesto to make a tomato and mozzarella salad; or simply double the salad and the stracciatella in this recipe to make eight salads. Since stracciatella is hard to find, feel free to substitute burrata in this dish. I normally like to use only the pale green leaves from the celery hearts, but since this dish requires so many celery leaves, I call for you to use the darker green leaves for the pesto, reserving the light green leaves for the salad. If you were inclined to buy even more celery, then use the light green leaves for both parts of this recipe—and use the excess celery ribs as inspiration to make Basic Chicken Stock (page 27), Soffritto (page 28), Lentils Castellucciano (page 264), or any of our other recipes that begin with sautéed diced celery.