No-Cook

Deviled eggs remind me of church picnics and Fourth of July parties and just about every occasion I grew up going to where there was food involved. Of course I make my own deviled eggs, but you know I’m not going to make them like everybody else’s; I put my own stamp on them. And that means barbecue. Deviled eggs stuffed with a little of it makes them better than you’ve ever had them, I promise you that.

Cold fruit salads like this one are an old-fashioned piece of Americana. You can find recipes for stuffed canned peaches and pears and other so-called salads like this one in historic Southern cookbooks and of course in classics like the Joy of Cooking and The Settlement Cookbook. You don’t see them much around anymore, which is a shame because this salad is cool and refreshing—a great thing to serve for a summer lunch or as a first course for a dinner party. It may seem weird nowadays to serve canned pears with mayo, but would I waste my time with something that wasn’t good as hell? I didn’t think so.

There’s no better side dish for a barbecue on a hot summer’s day than this layered salad, which is sweet and salty all at once. If you like Hawaiian pizza, with bacon and pineapple on it, this salad is for you.

Coleslaw is an extremely time-honored side dish that is served with all sorts of things in the South. Cole is actually an old English word for “cabbage,” which is of course what coleslaw is always made out of. This is my very favorite coleslaw recipe. In the South, creamy slaws like this one are traditional with fish dinners, and this is the slaw we always serve at our fish fries. It is served cold and smooth and is just perfect with fried fish and hushpuppies. Vinegar-based slaw is the classic to go with barbecue, but this one happens to taste great with barbecued meats, too.

I learned from Claudia Roden, who brought the secrets of Middle Eastern cooking to this country in the 1960s, how to make this invaluable preserve, which adds zest to so many dishes. I even find that you can use a little of it in place of fresh lemons to perk up a dish.

Another of the treats of summer was making ice cream, cracking up the big block of ice and taking turns with the crank—hard work that was rewarded by getting to lick the dasher when the ice cream was ready. Today we can buy convenient small ice cream makers that allow you to put the freezer bowl into the freezer so there’s no chopping of ice and the churning goes much faster. I particularly like making my own ice cream because I can use pure ripe seasonal fruits and berries and pure cream, without all the additives of candies and cookies that go into the commercial varieties today. Also, it’s a good way to preserve berries if I’ve been tempted to stop at a nearby farm where you can pick your own—and I inevitably pick more than I can eat up.

This is an Indian sauce introduced to me by Madhur Jaffrey years ago, and I have been making it steadily ever since. It is, of course, good with almost any Indian curry dish, and I find that it is also delicious with cold chicken, lamb, salmon, or shrimp—in other words, an excellent way of dressing up leftovers.

This is a good way to make use of those unnecessarily large bouquets of parsley that we get at our supermarkets, as well as fennel fronds that usually go to waste.

You can use almost any kind of leftover fish in this salad.

I have lots of mint in my herb garden in the summer, and I love to make this sauce, which is good on so many things. Ed recommends it for vegetables, poultry, meats (particularly lamb), and fish.

This is a sauce to have on hand at all times. It keeps well in the refrigerator for at least a week if you film the top of it with olive oil (and refilm after you have dipped into it and taken some from the jar), and it keeps its bloom for a couple of months frozen. It’s a good idea to freeze it in an ice tray, and then store the cubes in plastic storage bags. That way, you easily can get at just the amount you need.

I prefer this sauce to any other for cold meats, fish, and poultry, or those innards that I like so much.

Here’s a sparkling salad that makes superb use of that one-third or so of a plump fennel bulb that you couldn’t consume in one sitting.

It’s hard to beat a good chicken salad, and it is open to variations, so you need not get tired of it. I prefer a chicken salad that isn’t smothered in so much mayonnaise that you can’t taste much else, so I tend to go easy on the mayo and temper it with a little yogurt. But play with the dressing to suit your own taste.

It is so easy to make a vinaigrette, the classic French salad dressing, that I can’t fathom why so many people living alone go out and buy bottled dressings. Not only do they pay more, but the dressing never tastes as fresh, and you can’t vary the seasonings as you wish. So I beg you to make your own vinaigrette as part of your cooking life. The amounts I’m giving will be enough to dress two or three small salads, but you can double or triple the quantities if you’re an avid salad consumer and want enough dressing to see you through the week. Just refrigerate the extra in a jar, tightly sealed.

Celery roots are apt to be large, and with their tough skins, they look forbidding—not a good investment for the single cook, one would think. But when I discovered how roasting thick slices transformed their flavor into something wonderfully earthy and complex, it was a revelation. So now, during the winter months, I often bring home a big celery root. I’ll use about half of it for roasting, and the other half I’ll make into céléri rémoulade, that bistro standby of julienned raw celery root swathed in a mustardy mayonnaise.