Simmered Shrimp Sauté with Shiitake Mushrooms and Scallions
Olive-Oil-Poached Red Snapper with Tomato and Scallions
Baked Sea Bass, Papillote Style, with Lemon and Olives
Cod with Tomato, Saffron Broth, Leeks, and Couscous
Baked Chicken with Bacon, Mushrooms, and Pearl Onions
Chicken Braised with Mushrooms
Steamed Whole Chicken with Three Variations
Moroccan-Spice-Braised Lamb Shanks
Beef on a String Soup and Sandwich
Florentine Pot Roast with Red Wine, Mushrooms, and Tomatoes
Braised Oxtail with Cipolline Onions
Portuguese-Style Pork Roast with Steamed Clams
Braised Pork Loin with Artichokes
Pork Medallions with Barbecue Sauce
Braised Pork Belly in White Wine Sauce
Many of the recipes in the previous chapters are versatile; suitable for a first-course, a main-course, or even a side-dish. But the ones that follow are nonnegotiable: They’re the stars of the show, the main event. They’re also some of my favorites, the ones that hark back to those dishes I grew up on and that satisfy me when I’m feeling the most unabashedly hungry and carnivorous.
In these pages you’ll find such familiar dishes as Slow-Cooked Chicken in a Pot; Baked Chicken with Bacon, Mushrooms, and Pearl Onions; and Moroccan-Spice-Braised Lamb Shank. These are the kinds of dishes you can tell will be delicious just by looking at them.
Many of these dishes follow a similar cooking progression: Where meats and poultry are concerned, browning or searing is often a crucial first step—a sort of culinary cauterization that leaves behind tasty caramelized bits that contribute essential flavor to the sauce. Which leads us to the second similarity: As a lot of these dishes cook, the juices from the meats combine with the flavors of the other ingredients (wine, vegetables, broth) to yield a rich sauce perfectly suited to the meat.
You’ll also notice that many of the recipes feature a similar group of ingredients. If I ever find myself accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award, I’ll be thanking red wine, distilled white vinegar, and canned Italian tomatoes. And I’ll save my biggest nod for bacon and other pork products, which I use compulsively to add salty, smoky flavor to all sorts of dishes. (There are notes on these and other ingredients I love.) In fact, if I can’t make it to the ceremony, I might just send a pig to accept the award in my place.
Because these ingredients are used over and over, the liquids they produce might seem like an almost incidental by-product, but they’re not. You’ll notice significant differences in the amount of distilled white vinegar called for in, say, the Classic Braised Beef Brisket and the Braised Pork Shank. Each and every braising liquid and sauce in this chapter has been carefully tested. You might be just as surprised by the variety of flavors these ingredients can produce as you are by how many dishes you can cook up in one pot. For a good comparison, think about how many Italian recipes call for olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, and Parmesan cheese; it might be easier to name the ones that don’t.
I also love many less-familiar foods, and one of my goals in this chapter is to introduce you to meats and cuts you might not know—or know how to cook—such as squab, oxtail, beef cheeks, pork shank, and veal breast. I firmly believe that they are all worth discovering and, because they’re all cooked in one pot, the following recipes make it easy for you to succeed magnificently with them. Aside from browning, and some careful monitoring for doneness, all of the work involved, all of the tasting and judgement, has to do with the sauce or braising liquid rather than the actual meat.
In other words, my philosophy is this: If you can follow the technique provided by these recipes, you can cook almost any large cut of meat.
Another great convenience of these recipes is that almost all can be prepared at least a day in advance. Even for the fish dishes, cooking liquids can be prepared and refrigerated overnight.
When making the dishes in this chapter, the proper equipment is critical. Almost all of the poultry and meats call for an initial browning, and a heavy-bottomed pot enables you to do this without leaving half of the meat seared onto the pot itself.
Finally, I encourage you to use the most important and inexpensive kitchen tool of all, your own taste buds. Because virtually all these dishes are made in cooking liquid, you have the opportunity to correct, improve, and perfect the dish at every stage of the process. So taste often and season mercilessly until what reaches your tongue puts a smile on your face.