No-Cook

This ice cream is for those who are nostalgic for those orange-and-cream-flavored popsicles. If you miss that taste, you’ll discover it again here.

I really like frozen yogurt, but only if it’s homemade. So don’t expect this to taste like the frozen yogurt that squirts out of the machine at the mall. That kind is loaded with so much other stuff that any similarity to real yogurt is purely coincidental. Homemade frozen yogurt has a delightful tanginess and is a bit lighter than traditional ice cream. I choose to keep mine pure, relying on good whole-milk yogurt to provide much of the flavor. If you do want to make a dense, richer frozen yogurt, see the variation below.

When my father was in the army, he and his bunkmates would eagerly anticipate the care packages that would arrive from home, filled with cookies and cakes. But in lieu of homemade goodies, their Brazilian bunkmate would get sacks of aromatic coffee beans. He’d carefully prepare single, tiny cups of coffee by crushing a few of the highly prized beans between two metal spoons and then drizzling boiling water over them, creating perhaps the most labor-intensive cup of coffee ever. But I’m sure the effort was well worth it. Make sure the espresso you use for this recipe is excellent; your effort will be appreciated as well.

Vietnamese food is perhaps my favorite of all the cuisines in the world, and I would eat it every single night if I could. At the start of every Vietnamese meal, I order a Vietnamese coffee. A glass with a sweet dose of condensed milk is brought to the table with a well-worn stainless-steel filter balanced on top, dripping steaming hot coffee into the thick, sweet milk. Once brewed, it all gets stirred up and ice is added. I thought the flavors would make an excellent ice cream, and I was right.

While this relish boldly says, “I am mint!,” it also has a bite from chile, ginger, and raw onion. Lime juice and sugar tame and unite the ingredients. This, along with the Tamarind and Date Chutney (page 220), provides just the right bright accents to Indian Samosas (page 115).

A simple, everyday relish from India, this condiment adds a wallop of fresh spiciness to food. Each cook has a different take on green chutney, and many add chopped onion and grated coconut. The straightforward approach here keeps the flavors bright. Green chutney is purposely hot, but feel free to seed the chiles or use a less-alarming chile, such as jalapeño, for less dramatic results.

There are many ways to tweak a dipping sauce for Korean mandu (pages 44 and 46). The base is on the light side and great on its own, but you can add a variety of extras for more complexity and body.

Great on their own, Chinese jiaozi get a fantastic flavor boost when dipped in a zippy sauce like this one. The tart-salty-spicy combination adds a complex edge to the dumplings. There’s no such thing as a definitive dipping sauce, since cooks and diners mix up their own according to personal taste. At the least, your sauce should be tangy and savory. But add some nutty, hot chile oil, and your eating experience will enter a different orbit. Chinese dumplings are wonderful with an extra kick of ginger or garlic in the sauce, too. I prepare the sauce in advance, but you can set out the ingredients and invite guests to do it themselves.

Literally translated as “crisp skin for cakes,” this northern Chinese flaky pastry employs techniques similar to those for French puff pastry to create tender, layered pastry. What’s unusually clever about the Chinese approach is that aside from the usual letter-type folds and turns, the dough is rolled into a cylinder as part of forming the wrappers. The cylinder can then be cut in ways that allow you to form pastries with layers that fall in a spiral or linear pattern. When deep-fried, this pastry becomes super-rich, but surprisingly not greasy. It may also be baked, though the result is not as spectacular. Some cooks don’t add sugar and salt, but I find seasoning the dough sparks the flavor. For the best results, use lard rather than vegetable shortening. If you have ever found making puff pastry difficult because of the firmness of the butter, this dough is a godsend. It comes together quickly and is amazingly easy to work by comparison.

Many rich, filled Asian pastries, such as Indian samosas (page 115) and Vietnamese bánh quai vac chiên (page 118), employ straightforward dough made of wheat flour, fat, and water. Some cooks use oil for richness, but vegetable shortening creates a wonderful crispness. Pastries made with this dough are not blistery, but rather smooth and undulating with delicate puffy bubbles. Though you can make the dough by machine, the quantity of ingredients involved doesn’t justify the cleanup. I actually prefer the simplicity of preparing dough by hand because it is quick and fun. Rather than cutting the shortening into the flour, you rub the ingredients together to evenly coat the flour—a method referred to as moyan dena by Indian cooks. Despite this being a flaky pastry, the dough is kneaded to develop gluten so that it can hold up well during frying. A bit of leaven ensures a light texture. The resulting dough is strong, yet flaky and crisp.

There are several methods for making Chinese yeast dough, some of which employ starters and leavening, such as lye water and ammonium carbonate. This dough uses ingredients available at regular American supermarkets, and the results match the best I’ve experienced in China. Many Asian cooks employ—to great success—a cakey, snowy-white Cantonese style dough made from low-gluten cake flour or from a quickie flour and baking powder blend. This dough is different; it has more depth, and its loft and resilience comes from combining yeast and baking powder; fast-rising yeast works like a champ. All-purpose flour with a moderate amount of gluten, such as Gold Medal brand widely available at supermarkets, is what I prefer for this dough. Use bleached flour for a slightly lighter and brighter finish.

This dough is the foundation of many excellent dumplings, including Chinese jiâozi, Korean mandu, and Nepali momo. The process of making the dough is easy to master, especially with a little help from modern tools such as a food processor (though you can mix the dough by hand). Asian wheat flour wrappers may be made with cold or hot water—the temperature is traditionally dictated by the cooking method. Boiled dumplings are said to require thicker skins made from cold-water dough in order to withstand the pressures of boiling, whereas pan fried and steamed dumplings require thinner skins made from hot-water dough for their gentler cooking processes. Over the years, I’ve found that homemade wrappers of medium thickness, a scant 1/8 inch thick in the center and about 1/16 inch thick at the rim, work well for all cooking methods. If dumplings are gently boiled as described for shuijiao on page 31, there is no need for thicker rappers. Producing medium-thick wrappers is easier with hot-water dough as it is more yielding than its cold-water counterpart. The resulting wrappers taste superior to store-bought ones, and they need no water to seal. Grocery store all-purpose flour with a moderate amount of gluten, such as Gold Medal brand, works exceptionally well.

My friends who live in the countryside were surprised one morning to wake up and see me climbing their walnut tree in my pajamas, swiping the rock-hard, unripe green orbs off the branches. Once I’d picked enough, I climbed down and confessed that I could barely sleep the night before in anticipation of collecting enough of them to make a batch of nocino, an Italian liqueur made from unripe walnuts. It took a while for them to figure out what I was talking about. When I returned a few months later with a tub of Vanilla Ice Cream (page 143) and drizzled inky-brown nocino over each scoop, no one questioned my early-morning motives. If you know someone with a walnut tree, give this liqueur a try. And be sure to give them a bottle as a thank you, so you’ll get invited back to gather more green walnuts the following year.

A wonderful revolution has taken place in America over the last decade: small local dairies have been sprouting up all across the land and many of them are producing heavy cream with rich, unmistakable, and honest-to-goodness flavor. Once you taste real cream, you’ll never want to use the bland ultrapasteurized stuff that has taken over supermarket dairy cases. For whipped cream, the freshest non-ultrapasteurized cream not only tastes the best, but it whips up much better. I highly recommend tracking some down. Make sure the cream is very cold before whipping, and if the weather is warm, chill the bowl and the whisk ahead of time.

I often serve small glasses of vin d’orange as a warm-weather aperitif. Anyone who enjoys Lillet is likely to enjoy this fruity and slightly bitter fortified wine. But be careful—it’s quite potent. To stay true to its humble Provencal roots, I use very inexpensive vodka and dry white wine. I’ve even made it with wine from a box—with excellent results!

This very glossy, deeply colored sauce is especially good with Vanilla Ice Cream (page 143), but it also shines brightly alongside a fruit tart or a summer fruit galette.

Although fresh raspberries are terrific in this sauce, frozen raspberries also work very well—especially good news when the berries aren’t in season. I can’t think of a lemony dessert that this sauce doesn’t complement.

The best strawberry sauce is made from the ripest strawberries. Look for ones that are red from top to bottom and all the way through to the core. If you take a sniff, they should smell like, well, ripe, sweet, strawberries. I don’t always strain out all the seeds since I sometimes like their texture and appearance in the sauce.

Mangoes, like most tropical fruits, will tip you off to their ripeness with their aroma. A good, ripe mango has a heady, syrupy scent, and when you hold it in your hand, it should feel slightly soft and a bit too heavy for its size. Although the plump, sweeter varieties, such as Hayden and Tommy Atkins, are the most tempting, slender and wrinkly Champagne or Manila mangoes that you might come across will surprise you with their gentle nuances. Depending on which variety you choose to use in this sauce, start with the smaller amount of sugar and add more if necessary. A spoonful of mango sauce is a nice complement to Coconut and Tropical Fruit Trifle (page 70) or scoops of Toasted Coconut Sherbet (page 152) nestled in cookie cups made with Sesame-Orange Almond Tuiles (page 212).

Anyone intimidated by making dough will quickly get over it in the 3 minutes that it takes to make this one. It’s very easy to put together, very forgiving, and almost impossible to botch. Any flaws, cracks, or imperfections are part of its rustic charm, although I’m confident that even the most inexperienced baker will master it with the very first try. It will likely become your favorite dough to use for any number of open-faced fruit tarts. This recipe can be doubled—an extra disk is good to have on hand in the freezer for later use.