Poach

Here’s all you need to know about poached eggs: Ira Gershwin said his songwriting career wouldn’t be complete until he got his beloved poached eggs into one of his songs, which he eventually did (“I’m a poached egg … without a piece of toast; Yorkshire pudding … without a beef to roast.”). I guess Ira felt like so many of us do: sometimes the best little meal is the simplest. In this case, I’ve enhanced the yum factor by topping this comfort food with Basil Lemon Drizzle. The result is a very light sauce, which the fat from the yolk takes on a trip all around your mouth. Hmm … yummmm.

As they simmer, the pears send enticing wafts of fruit and vanilla through the air, a fitting invitation to a supremely elegant dessert. I’ve also served these at Thanksgiving with the main course in place of traditional cranberry sauce. The tea bag adds undertones that complement or highlight the fruit in the simmering liquid—fruity or floral, depending on what you use. Choose a fruit tea that you like—I use tropical green tea or passion fruit.

This might be just the ticket when you’re looking for something tasty and really fast.

We devised this sandwich partly to challenge ourselves. Usually prepared in advance of its use in a sandwich, chicken loses moisture by the time it arrives there. So we looked for a way to keep the chicken moist . . . and we found it. By slowly and gently poaching the chicken, and then storing it in the poaching liquid until it’s used, we lock in the moisture. (Use this trick whenever you’re preparing chicken for a picnic or for use in a salad—the chicken will be moist and delicious, and without oil, to boot. Further, you can use the poaching broth for soup simply by adding more water, some vegetables, and some of the chicken.) We serve this as a pressed sandwich, but it also works well served cold.

Do you know anyone who does not make chicken salad with leftover chicken? We don’t. And folks tend to want mayonnaise, some fruity sweetness and/or nuts, crunch, and texture. We’re happy to oblige. We start with our homemade Mayonnaise (page 176). And if you have not yet tried the Pickled Mustard Seeds (page 187), this chicken salad gives you the perfect excuse. We’re not sure “pickled” is the perfect term for them—they’re flavored with sugar, vinegar, and water and puff up, caviar-like. This gives the chicken salad little bubbles that pop as you eat it, as caviar does, releasing a lightly mustardy flavor. The Pickled Red Onions (page 190) lend sweet, sour, and oniony flavors, as well as texture and crunch. Frisée adds texture as well. And using Roasted Tomatoes (page 195)—a staple in our own home kitchens—makes this sandwich a year-round choice.

While I serve these pears with Semolina Pancakes (page 97), you could spoon them over any pancake and replace the traditional maple syrup accompaniment with this poaching liquid instead. Poached pears are also great in a simple trifle, with layers of ice cream and crisp cookies. Poaching is a long, gentle cooking process, so firm fruit is what you want. Choose pears of equal ripeness for poaching, and they will all be equally tender.

The trick to cooking quinces is to maintain their fragrance and delicate flavor while you coax them into tenderness. Gentle poaching is an ideal way to achieve this goal. Use poached quinces interchangeably with poached pears. They’re great with chocolate, with cheese, or with walnuts and arugula as a salad. If you’ve saved vanilla pods from other recipes, use them here in place of fresh beans.

I first had oil-poached fish in Napa Valley and loved the way this cooking method kept the fish so moist; you can’t really dry it out. You could prepare halibut or just about any other mild white fish this way. Be sure to use a mix of olive and vegetable oils to poach the fish; if you use 100 percent olive oil it will become too bitter. This is another really good-looking dish, with lots of pretty colors.

A healthy amount of celery gives this traditionally rich seafood salad a good bit of crunch. The lightened-up lemony mayonnaise dressing would be delicious with any cold, steamed, or poached seafood, including crab, scallops, and lobster.

This dish is so simple, yet it could be served at any elegant dinner party. It is equally good warm or cold and makes a great addition to a Sunday brunch.

Octopus is an acquired taste. People who enjoy it really love the meaty texture and slightly sweet taste. Here we’ve cooked it in oil flavored with garlic and smoked ham hocks. We like the gentle nutty flavor of rice bran oil, but you can substitute the vegetable oil or fat of your choice. The slow, gentle cooking leaves you with incredibly tender and flavorful meat.

This dish comes from Susie Morgenstern, the Judy Blume of France. When she is not writing novels for teenagers or lecturing around France, she is cooking in her marvelous nineteenth-century house, high up in the hills above Nice, overlooking the Mediterranean. When I visited her, she told me I’d need to climb a hundred steps to reach her home. I did, only to find that they were the wrong hundred stairs! So down I went, and up again. But the two climbs were worth it, and I was rewarded with a spectacular view from the house. Although Susie, who greeted me warmly, does not consider herself a good cook, she is known for her Passover Seders, always welcoming people from Nice’s diverse cultures. She learned this Turkish Jewish dish, which marries sautéed parsley with mackerel, from her motherin-law, who came to France from Constantinople. Susie calls it “Red Sea” mackerel because of the red color of the dish. Served at Passover, it evokes the story of the Jews crossing the Red Sea during their exodus from Egypt. When I suggested adding garlic to the dish, Susie paused. “My mother-in-law was no garlic miser, but she didn’t put it in this; there must have been a reason.” This confirms my belief that traditional foods, handed down from generation to generation, are the last to change within a culture.

I used to make this dish with fillets of halibut until the cost, at least in New York, made me look at other fish. Now I use cod or hake. They both flake a bit more but still manage to hold their shape. Salting them ahead of time helps hold them together. I like to use fresh tomatoes even if they are out of season, as they are gentler in flavor. I grate the tomatoes on the coarsest part of a four-sided grater (see method on page 289), which removes the skin but keeps the seeds. Four medium tomatoes will yield roughly 1 3/4 cups of fresh puree, about what you need here. Light and lovely, this dish is best served with rice. I like to add a dal and perhaps a green, leafy vegetable.

A famous North African specialty with an exciting bittersweet flavor.

This Armenian specialty makes a hearty main dish. It has a pure and fresh quality and is an entirely different experience from eating an Italian or Asian pasta dish.

This is served as an appetizer in Greece. The wine gives it a special flavor.

For this delightful and simple Moroccan dish, use fish fillets—monkfish or any firm-fleshed fish such as bream, turbot, haddock, cod—and have them skinned.

This Turkish way of embellishing poached eggs is also good with fried eggs.

This dish can be made with lamb shanks, knuckle of veal (osso buco), or with cubed meat such as shoulder of lamb. Butchers sell fresh lamb shanks from the foreleg weighing about 10 ounces and frozen ones from New Zealand from the back leg weighing from 14 to 16 ounces. Lamb shanks cooked for a long time have a wonderful tenderness and texture without being stringy, and they produce a rich stock. Although they take a long time to cook, they don’t need any attention. The sauce is the classic Turkish egg and lemon terbiyeli sauce.

Quince is an ancient Roman fruit that looks like a cross between a pear and an apple. It has an amazing aroma when poached.

Giardiniera—mixed pickled vegetables—is a ubiquitous and versatile pantry staple in Umbria, as in other parts of Italy. Originally a means of preserving the summer vegetable bounty for the lean winter months, it is now a popular vegetable preparation all year round. Sometimes homemade but more frequently bought in jars from the grocery, giardiniera usually combines crisp chunks and slices of carrot, cauliflower, celery, and sweet or hot peppers; olives, onion, cucumbers, and turnips are in some brands of giardiniera, too. The pickling medium might be vinegar, brine, oil, and spices in a variety of combinations and proportions. Giardiniera right from the jar can be served as an antipasto, a salad, or a side dish. Embellished with freshly poached chicken, as in this recipe, giardiniera becomes a delicious and colorful dish, suitable as an appetizer at dinner, a main course for lunch, or a practical and appealing picnic or buffet salad. When I have time, I make my own giardiniera, which I shared with you in Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen (you can find it on page 47). But with many fine imported varieties of giardiniera available in most markets, I almost always have a jar of the store-bought kind in the fridge or cupboard, for immediate enjoyment. And with convenience in mind, you don’t always have to poach a chicken to enjoy giardiniera di pollo. Pick up a roast chicken from the market, or use leftover roast chicken or turkey, to make this terrific dinner salad in no time at all.