Potato

A few choice ingredients contribute to this elegant potato salad. If you like goat cheese, you’ll love this one.

Mild and light, this is a good introduction to nearly any kind of meal. Use sweet, fresh carrots that aren’t the least bitter. Organically grown carrots are a good bet for optimal flavor.

Leeks and potatoes are a classic soup duo. It’s a match that’s always mild and soothing. For an easy meal, serve this with veggie burgers on whole grain buns and a tomato salad. For maximum flavor, try this with Yukon gold potatoes.

Nutritious sweet potatoes need little embellishment to make a flavorful soup. This one is made extra easy by microwaving the sweet potatoes ahead of time, sparing the cook from having to scrape and dice them. Just scoop, mash, and heat for a comforting, nearly-instant soup.

Potatoes, barley, and buttermilk are a trio that I find blissfully refreshing in the summer, served cold in a soup.

Slice the potatoes right before you assemble the dish so they don’t turn brown.

Beach clambakes are a blast. They make me think of Annette Funicello, who I still find very attractive. Anyway … Lobsters, clams, and corn all steamed in seaweed: For me, it’s the perfect summer party. Even if you can’t get to the beach, you can still pull off a great clambake in your own backyard. Be sure to ask your fish guy for some seaweed. Lobsters come in crates packed with this stuff, so he should be able to give you some. Parboil the lobsters to kill them first before putting them on the grill. Alternatively, you can just split the bodies down the middle to kill them and skip the boiling step.

For me, commercially produced curry power tastes just that: commercial. You would never find prepared curry powder in an Indian restaurant, and because the spices are combined fresh, the flavors are robust and explosive. If you like a light curry flavor, use half the spice mix. If you like a spicy curry—use it all. I won’t be mad at ya. Serve the lamb curry with Perfect Steamed Jasmine Rice (page 240) or basmati rice. This is Bombay the right way.

Good clam chowder starts with really good, fresh clams. It’s easy to find them if you live on the coast, but even if you’re landlocked in Ohio, you can ask the guy in the seafood department to order them. I use both cherrystones, which are large and meaty, plus smaller littlenecks, which are more delicate and should be cooked only briefly. I don’t care for bottled clam juice because of its high sodium content.

“Grandma-style” means the vegetables are cooked like a stew in a big pot until they’re soft and delicious. The vegetables taste better and better as you cook them down, and the broth tastes nourishing. This is one of the classic recipes I pull out in a pinch, and it’s always welcomed.

Sweet potatoes are pale yellow, yams are deeper orange, and red garnets have a reddish hue. If you have trouble finding all three, just buy three pounds’ worth of what you can find. This colorful salad is perfect with roast pork, or on the Thanksgiving menu as a refreshing change from the traditional sweet potato dishes.

This is my version of the classic French salad I enjoyed time and again in Nice. Roasting concentrates the flavor of fresh green beans.

This is a break from potato salads dressed with mayonnaise, and much tastier!

Try this for your Thanksgiving menu, roasted on the bottom rack of the oven, along with scalloped potatoes or Creamy Garlic Potatoes (page 144), while the turkey roasts on the rack above. If you slice the potatoes ahead, rinse them well in cold water and drain to prevent discoloring.

This is a wonderful Greek-style one-dish meal or a side dish for a party. Roasting brings out the flavors of the vegetables. You can prepare all the vegetables except the potatoes ahead of time.

Cook these irresistibly flavorful (and rich) potatoes along with a turkey or a roast, and though they will be done in about an hour, there’s no harm in letting them bake an extra 15 to 20 minutes. If you are worried about calories, use the low-fat evaporated milk alternative.

These crispy, flavorful potatoes, a tasty accompaniment to any meal, are simple and quick to prepare.

This is truly one of my favorite ways to cook tiny new potatoes. Sometimes when I buy a sack of potatoes, there will be a few larger ones, which I cut in half or in quarters to match the size of smaller 1- to 1 1/2-inch potatoes. No need to peel the potatoes, just scrub them.