Condiment

This steak fits right into your schedule—it can marinate for as little as 30 minutes or as long as 8 hours—and it is equally good whether cooked on the stovetop, grilled, or broiled. Rice and Vegetable Pilaf (page 252) goes well with it.

For a refreshing break from the usual vegetable salsa, toss together an aromatic blend of fresh pineapple, grated ginger, mint, and a splash of fresh lemon.

A summery salsa tops these simply prepared trout fillets. If trout isn’t available, serve the salsa with any other sautéed or grilled fish or with shrimp.

Spice up lean grilled hamburgers, chicken breasts, or pork tenderloin with this wonderful salsa, which gets its smoky flavor from the chipotle chile. Regulate the heat from mild to spicy by the amount of chipotle you add.

Sweet and spicy, this fruit salsa is a refreshing accompaniment to grilled chicken, pork, fish, or shrimp. It is also great as a quick, healthy snack when served on apple or pear slices or warm whole-wheat pita triangles.

Even if you’ve never made pickles before, don’t hesitate to try this recipe. It is so easy! Just let the cucumbers simmer in a flavorful liquid, then cool and refrigerate them. The flavor of these pickles really brightens lean grilled burgers or your favorite potato salad or tuna salad recipe.

Apples cooked in orange juice and flavored with fresh ginger and spices—the combination smells as delicious as it tastes! Serve the chutney with roast pork, chicken, or turkey.

These quick-fix pickles have the traditional flavor you expect but only 1 milligram of sodium, a tremendous saving compared to commercial pickles of the same variety.

You will need to make this colorful dessert at least 8 hours in advance. If you want to stretch it to serve 12, spoon a half-cup of fat-free vanilla frozen yogurt into each bowl and top each serving with a half-cup of Spiced Fruit.

In India, chutneys are used as condiments to accompany curries. In our culture, they can be used to brighten up any number of roasted or grilled meats or fish. This version is grilled over a wood fire. Chutney can be made from a variety of fruits combined with raisins, an acid such as vinegar or juice, ginger, and some traditional Indian spices to create a fabulous condiment. Its flavors will continue to develop during storage.

Smoked sea salts add a burst of flavor to raw and cooked foods when used as finishing or condiment salts. The options and flavors you can create are limitless. Anything from the aromatics list (opposite) will impart magical flavor to pure sea salt. Take it a step further and add other flavorings by tossing them into the salt before smoking.

Our good friend and food pal, Anne Byrn, author of the wildly popular Cake Mix Doctor cookbook series and the Dinner Doctor, is a cheater from way back. Long before she earned advanced degrees in cake-mix doctoring, Anne was doctoring pickles by transforming store-bought dills and sours into home-canned-style bread-and-butter pickles. Anne says cheater pickles were especially popular with her mother’s generation as a “homemade” Christmas gift, and a must for serving with the Christmas country ham. Our own sweet-hot version of cheater pickles enjoys a little heat from pickled jalapeños and tastes great with cheater meats. Pickled red jalapeños, if you can find them, are especially colorful for the holiday season. Sour pickles work best because their pungent flavor really hangs in there with all that sugar, but you can resort to regular dills in a pinch. We’ve had the best luck finding sours in big jars at Wal-Mart. The mustard seeds make the cheater pickles look even more homemade.

This completely fat-free side is the perfect counterpoint to rich meat. No matter the barbecue, Q-Cumbers will expand your side dish repertoire beyond the more conventional slaws, potato salads, beans, and corn. Q-Cumbers are best icy cold. Regular cucumbers may need their seeds removed, but the long, plastic-wrapped English/Japanese/seedless kind grown in hothouses are ready-made for thin slicing. Maybe it’s psychological, but the palate-cleansing effect of fresh vinegary sweet cucumbers is extra good in hot weather. Plus, you don’t have to worry about the mayonnaise issue in the heat. The jalapeños, while optional, are encouraged.