Potato

Rainbow trout is a delicious option for fish-loving home cooks. It’s available year-round and won’t break the bank even when you want to feed a crowd. Have your fishmonger bone and butterfly the trout for you, leaving the tail intact and keeping the two fillets attached on the fin side. This preparation is a study in contrasts, a three-way complement to the flaky flesh of the trout. The blushing sweet-tart sauce is made with both crushed grapes and verjus, the juice of unripe wine grapes. (The French used verjus in medieval and Renaissance times in much the same way we use vinegar or lemon juice today.) Less acidic and more complex than most vinegar, the verjus’s refreshing fruitiness plays counterpoint to the salty cured Italian bacon wrapped around the trout. And finally, hidden within this lively package: rich, herbaceous sorrel cream, bringing us back to earth.

This is not your mild-mannered pork chop! The pork porterhouse is two cuts of meat in one—just like its better-known cousin the beef porterhouse. From the short loin of the pig, the pork porterhouse (porkerhouse?) consists of the soft, luscious tenderloin on one side of the bone and the meatier loin on the other. The classic American accompaniment to pork is, of course, apples. But in place of the traditional applesauce, I like to serve these hefty chops with the time-honored duo of apples and potatoes. Called deux pommes, or two apples—one from a tree and one from the earth—the two are sautéed together until crispy and golden brown. To show off more of fall’s cornucopia, I’ve added quince, “Eve’s apple,” to the mix. Slathering the chops with quince jam (membrillo in Spanish cuisine, cotognata in Italian) is a sophisticated nod back to that applesauce. Be sure to cut the quince, apples, and potatoes into similar-sized pieces, so when they’re cooked they all look the same. The mystery is part of the fun; there’s no telling which bite will be which pomme.

This dish takes me back to Pantelleria, a tiny volcanic island in the Mediterranean, situated between North Africa and Sicily. Undeveloped and relatively untouched by the modern world, the island is famous for two things: the caper bushes that dominate the dry, brush-covered hillsides of the rocky coast, and resident Giorgio Armani. My husband and I spent a magical week in that salt-drenched haven, eating grilled, freshly caught tuna; bowls of couscous; and salads of tomatoes, potatoes, and capers. The grilled tuna and the combination of tomatoes and potatoes in this dish are a tribute to those leisurely days on Pantelleria. And though rouille isn’t part of their Moorish-meets-Italian culinary lexicon, I’m sure the Pantellerians would love this saffron-tinted, spicy pepper mayonnaise.

At Lucques, we search out the heirloom varieties of corn, available all summer long from our local farmers’ markets. This soup is spiced with jalapeño and cilantro and topped with avocado cream and lime. The key to its silky texture is blending it long enough at high speed and adding enough liquid to achieve the consistency of heavy cream. Although customers swear this rich soup must have cream in it, the only cream you’ll find is in the topping that garnishes the soup: a delicious purée of avocado, crème fraîche, and lime juice.

This warm salad is pure southern France: tomatoes, olives, anchovies, basil, green beans, and soft-cooked eggs. It’s easy to make, but it helps to do some of the steps beforehand. As long as your spinach is cleaned and your haricots verts, potatoes, and eggs are cooked, you won’t have to do much until the last minute, when you’re pulling it all together. While your potatoes are roasting in the oven, light the grill, have a glass of rosé, and look calm, cool, and collected as you wait to finish the last-minute tasks. Recruit an unsuspecting guest or your significant other to grill the halibut while you brown the anchovy butter and finish the warm salad.

Skirt steak is among those cuts of beef that a novice cook sometimes avoids, despite their excellent flavor and reasonable price. But few steaks will be more delicious when properly cooked, and I assure you it’s not hard to get right. With skirt steak, remember a few key points. Start by caramelizing it well on the hottest part of the grill. Then move it over to a cooler spot to finish cooking just to medium-rare. Any less cooked, and it’s chewy; any more than medium, and it becomes leathery, livery, and tough. Be sure to let the skirt steak rest a few minutes before slicing it. The most crucial thing of all is to slice the meat against the grain to ensure that it’s tender and not rubbery. Though mayonnaise might sound strange as an accompaniment for steak, the aïoli melts into a creamy sauce, leaving behind a trail of olives.

Inspired by main-course salads found in the bistros of France, this dish comprises some of my favorite ingredients—beets, mustard, dandelion, and soft boiled egg. The salmon is covered in minced herbs, seasoned with fleur de sel, and then slow-roasted in a humid oven until it’s moist and custardlike at the center.

This gutsy lamb dish pays homage to two camps of Latin cooking: Mexico and Spain. The lamb is stuffed with a mixture of toasted breadcrumbs and a fresh, spicy Mexican sausage called chorizo. Traditionally stirred into scrambled eggs or used as a filling for gorditas, the chorizo infuses the stuffing with its piquant character. The Spanish accents come from the olives and the romesco, a classic Catalan sauce of puréed chiles, garlic, tomatoes, nuts, and fried bread. Just as the lamb absorbs the spiciness of the chorizo stuffing while it roasts in the oven, the robust romesco saturates the potatoes as they sauté.

Since both my parents worked full-time, when I was 2 weeks old they hired a seemingly proper English lady to take care of me. But Ammie was not the mild mannered woman she appeared to be. In fact, she turned out to be the quirkiest third parent you could ever imagine. She fed us forbidden chocolate (despite her belief that chocolate actually “made your blood boil”), and she let us watch TV when my parents were out of town (very illegal). Ammie was nothing if not opinionated. She displayed the nationalist zeal of an expatriate and was completely obsessed with the royal family. She was so pro-British and anti-Irish that every March 17 she would thumb her nose at her enemy by sending my sister and me off to school dressed completely in orange, in honor of the British monarchy. Needless to say, corned beef and cabbage was not a food ritual in our household. I didn’t discover it until I moved back east to college, where I sampled it at the homes of many of my Irish-American friends. The Lucques version is an updated rendition of that classic one-pot Irish meal. Traditionally, the vegetables are cooked alongside the meat for hours, producing dull, mushy carrots and sad, gray turnips. To keep the vegetables bright, I cook them separately in the beef broth. The parsley-mustard sauce (great for sandwiches the next day) cuts the richness of the corned beef and perks up the entire dish.

One year while researching ideas for our St. Patrick’s Sunday supper, I discovered that the Irish obsession with potatoes is not a myth. Page after page of old Irish “cookery books” reveal numerous formulas for the tuber, with whimsical names for each. I fell for champ, an Irish version of mashed potatoes flavored with a handful of finely sliced scallions. Since it was spring, I skipped the scallions and used lots of sliced green garlic instead. But the Irish don’t live on potatoes alone; seafood is actually the backbone of their diet. So I decided to celebrate their patron saint with something from the sea. I found lots of recipes for fish as well as tiny clams known as cockles. Trying to bring these Irish specialties together, I steamed the cockles with white wine and butter and then spooned them over the creamy green garlic champ. And what more Irish way to sop up those briny juices than with a savory brown scone?

I roast my potatoes with garlic and herbs, so why not do the same when boiling them? I discovered that the aromatics really infuse the potatoes when you start them together in cold water and then heat them to boiling.

Enjoy this alsatian specialty with some good beer. I like making this with crunchy, bright, and tart fresh sauerkraut, which my mom brings me from France. It’s also delicious with regular sauerkraut. I love how the meat juices infuse the cabbage and potatoes for a satisfying one-pot meal.

Here I combine woody herbs with the potatoes and tender herbs with the fish. The result is an intensely flavorful and fragrant dish.

Super-savory green olives form the base of an amazing vinaigrette that brings out the sweetness of snapper and late-summer corn and potatoes.