Chile

Every time I make this easy dipping sauce, I am amazed at how good it is, especially when paired with such simple dishes as grilled chicken, fish, squid, shrimp, or summer squash or with Poached Chicken with Lime Leaves (page 84). Depending on how you tilt its balance, the sauce may hit your palate with pungency, saltiness, tartness, and/or heat. Kosher salt is the best type to use for this recipe. It is coarse, less assertive than iodized salt, and a little sweet. Assembling this sauce is fun, fast, and up to each individual. As the cook, all you have to do is set out individual dishes filled with the ingredients.

Every Vietnamese cook makes this dipping sauce, with the differences among them reflecting personal preferences and regional variations. In general, as you move south the sauce gets sweeter, hotter, and more garlicky. Yet no matter exactly how it is made, its role is always the same: to enhance and unify all the elements of a dish. As with much of Viet cooking, parameters apply more than rules. This recipe will help you develop your own version. Sensing subtle distinctions between sour, sweet, salty, and spicy requires practice. Plus, fish sauces differ, and even lime juice can be inconsistent. To deal with these variables, I don’t mix everything together at once, but rather break up the process to simplify matters for the taste buds. This allows for adjustments along the way. While you may omit the rice vinegar, it actually brightens the flavors and softens any harsh or bitter edges contributed by the lime juice. The garlic is optional; some recipes will suggest including or excluding it.

There is one sandwich in the Vietnamese repertoire and it is a tour de force. Garlicky meats, marinated daikon and carrot, chiles, cucumber, and cilantro tucked into a baguette moistened with mayonnaise and Maggi Seasoning sauce, bánh mì merges European and Asian food traditions. Each mouthful reflects how Vietnamese cooks co-opted French ideas to create new foods. All bánh mì use the same basic framework of ingredients, though a minority of makers use margarine or butter instead of mayonnaise. At Vietnamese delis, you make the call on the main protein element. The dac biet (special) is basically “the works,” a smear of liver pâté and slices of various cold cuts that show off the art of Vietnamese charcuterie (pages 156 to 171). Follow the custom of Viet deli owners and use your imagination to fill the sandwich. Just make sure it is boldly flavored. Pieces of grilled lemongrass beef (page 28), oven-roasted chicken (page 80), five-spice pork steaks (page 143), or char siu pork (page 142; pictured here) are excellent. Seared or grilled firm tofu or left over roasted lamb or beef will work, too. The bread doesn’t have to be one of the airy Vietnamese baguettes made with wheat and rice flours. (In the past, the best baguettes in Vietnam were made from wheat flour only and displayed an amazing crumb and crust.) You can use a regular baguette (though neither sourdough nor too crusty) or a Mexican bolillo (torpedo-shaped roll).

The counterpart to Green Chile Sauce (opposite) and a darn good sauce on its own served with meat and fish. Brick red New Mexico chiles give this sauce great color and a deep roasted earthy flavor.

This sauce is wonderful served on its own, but paired with Red Chile Sauce (opposite) and served with eggs (Blue Corn Fried Eggs, page 219) or fish or pork or chicken, it becomes known as Christmas. Why? Christmas is known for its red and green colors! In New Mexico restaurant lingo (Sante Fe to be exact), Christmas means a plate of half-red and half-green chile sauces. The New Mexico terminology has spread to some other states in the Southwest, such as Arizona and Texas.

I sometimes use this full-flavored hot sauce to spice up my Crab-Coconut Cocktail (page 79). It is also wonderful drizzled over raw oysters and clams and is one of the sauces served with the raw bar selections at Bar Americain. You must use really ripe mangoes for the best possible flavor. Also, it is extremely important to be very careful when handling the habanero. We use plastic gloves when working with these super-hot chiles, but whatever you do, make sure to keep your hands away from your face (especially your eyes!) until they are absolutely clean.

This Southwest-inspired house barbecue sauce is used on its own or as the base of many sauces at Bar Americain. It is slightly sweet from the molasses, honey, and brown sugar and slightly earthy from the dried red chiles. It is the perfect sauce slathered on smoked ribs (page 149), or spiced up and spooned onto grilled oysters on the half shell (page 72). Adding bourbon transports this sauce from Sante Fe to Kentucky in a matter of minutes.

This rich, buttery bread, spiked with a bit of smoky heat, is the perfect complement to the sweet lobster salad in the Lobster Club (page 50) and the sharp cheeses and green tomatoes in the Grilled Cheese (page 49). It’s also great just sliced and served as part of your dinner bread basket.

Eggs Benedict is the quintessential dish of the New York Sunday brunch. I like to put a southern spin on the classic, starting with a fluffy buttermilk biscuit. A Cajun blend of seasonings gives a kick to the luscious hollandaise sauce, which is right at home with New Orleans’ beloved tasso ham. Tasso is cured and hotsmoked pork shoulder crusted with a spicy blend of flavorings such as garlic and cayenne pepper. (If you can’t find tasso, you can try substituting slices of Italian capicola, which is prepared similarly.) Griddled tomatoes are an addition to, not a substitution in, the original Benedict, but I like the slightly sweet, fresh balance they bring to the richness of the other components.

For those of you who are not from the South, spoonbread is best described as a cross between a soufflé and corn bread. Light and creamy like a soufflé, this elegant side dish delivers the essence of corn bread without any of its density. Parmesan cheese gives the spoonbread a rich, savory note, while sweet roasted garlic and roasted green chiles provide the force of its flavor profile. Chopped chives and oregano fleck each bite with fresh color and flavor. At Bar Americain we serve Green Chile Spoonbread alongside the Smoked Chicken with Black Pepper Vinegar Sauce (page 126), but I would be hard-pressed to think of a meal that wouldn’t be complemented by this dish.

Look no further for your next special-occasion meal, because this is it. Also known as a standing rib roast, this cut—tender, juicy, and loaded with flavor—is the king of beef. And as long as we’re celebrating, this dish is pushed to its over-the-top status by the accompanying béarnaise butter. This deceptively simple compound butter with shallots, tarragon, and a bit of tangy vinegar delivers the delicately herbal, luscious taste of a rich béarnaise sauce without the hassle and heaviness of its hollandaise base. The only thing I find lacking in most prime rib dishes is that crusty exterior I love, but I’ve taken care of that by borrowing a technique from my friends in Louisiana—blackening. It encrusts the luscious meat in an extra layer of flavor and texture.

Collard greens are a point of southern pride. Any barbecue or soul food restaurant worth its salt has a place for these mustardy-flavored greens. In the South, collard greens are typically cooked with a ham hock or smoked turkey wings to give a great smoky flavor to the greens and the broth—or pot liquor as it is referred to in local parlance. You can definitely add either to this recipe, but I like to use chipotle chiles to give not only smokiness but also a little heat to this dish. I prefer my collard greens to retain some bite and cook them until tender, not to melting. The greens have a natural sweetness that is both accentuated and balanced by the finishing splash of apple cider vinegar. Sweet, smoky, and slightly vinegary, these collard greens definitely deliver a touch of soul to the table.

This is barbecue belt cooking all the way. I don’t care if you’re in Austin, Texas, or Manhattan, New York—if ribs are on the menu, you’ve got to roll up your shirt sleeves and have a big stack of napkins ready. This dish has New Yorkers doing just that when it makes its weekly appearance at Bar Americain. Racks of meaty ribs are dressed up with a smoky spice rub for extra flavor. The rich barbecue sauce, spiked with the molasseslike flavor of bourbon, will leave even the most refined diners licking their fingers. It wouldn’t be proper barbecue without some corn bread to mop up every last delicious bit of flavor from the plate, and I like to serve this dish with a savory tomato one.

We serve these chips, an all-American classic, with our Lobster Club (page 50) for lunch at Bar Americain, but you could serve them with any sandwich—or just sit in front of the TV and eat a big bowl of them on their own. Making your own potato chips and seasoning does require a little work, but the end result is definitely worth it. That said, if you don’t want to make homemade potato chips, you can substitute your favorite brand of plain potato chips, spread them in an even layer on a baking sheet, and heat in a 325°F oven for 5 minutes before tossing them in the barbecue seasoning.

Dipping French fries in mayonnaise is a European conceit. The French and Belgians wouldn’t serve their pommes frites with anything else! If you haven’t given it a try, you should—the combination of hot, crisp, salty fries and smooth, rich mayonnaise is dangerously addictive. I dust these fries with a healthy dose of spicy black pepper before sending them out of Bar Americain’s kitchen. The familiar spice has quite a kick, the level of which you can adjust to suit your taste. The smoked red pepper mayonnaise is richly flavored with smoky chipotle in adobo and sweet roasted red pepper. The mayonnaise comes together in an instant in the food processor. Try it on your favorite sandwich, as a dip for veggies, with fish . . . all it takes is one dip and you’ll find yourself whipping it up time and time again.