I need to say a few things up front. First, I’m not going to make you read through long-winded, bullshit prose about how the sun bounced off the fiddlehead ferns that swayed in the summer breeze in those oh-so-beautiful childhood summers in my grandmother’s garden. Seriously, what the fuck is up with these twee descriptions of greenmarket produce? The rambling, hazy memories of the way desserts smelled coming out of a hot oven at a fantastic little bakery in the South of France? C’mon, people, I’m trying to make dinner over here.
Second, I’m not a sexy Italian TV personality or food trend “influencer.” A lot of cookbooks are written by celebrity chefs who spend most of their time dazzling the press and taking fan selfies, or by executive chefs who lead a brigade of cooks in a commercial kitchen. Are these the people you want recipes from? What does any of that have to do with you, some schmuck at home staring into the refrigerator and wondering what the hell you’re going to eat tonight? Nothing, that’s what. I don’t have a cooking show and I don’t work in a restaurant anymore, so what I do every night in my kitchen is more relevant to what you, the home cook, are trying to do. MAKE SOME GODDAMN DINNER.
I’m just a regular guy from Brooklyn. (Though I live in Manhattan now. Look, ma, I made it.) I used to be a cop with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. On 9/11/01, I responded to the World Trade Center at 10 a.m., and worked on-site with the Rescue/Recovery team for the next nine months. I didn’t know it then, but there wouldn’t be any rescues. That meant my job—every day, twelve hours a day—was making recoveries. We called the smoking, unstable pile of rubble we dug through “The Pit,” where we found what was left of the people we lost. Take a moment and imagine that version of reality, night after night. It marked me in ways I never even considered. It wasn’t long—about five years—until I was forced to come to terms with my PTSD and panic disorder and retire my badge. My condition made me afraid to leave the apartment. During my time as an urban hermit, I figured if I was pent up at home all day I might as well make dinners for me and my wife, Meirav. I became obsessed with cooking and watched the Food Network incessantly. In a ploy to get me out of the house, she signed me up for three basic cooking classes at the Natural Gourmet Institute. And I liked them so much that I enrolled in the chef’s training program.
I loved culinary school. I had enthusiastic instructors, passionate classmates, and a Xanax prescription to curb my breakout panic, just in case. My Act Two was somehow going to involve cooking. After graduation, I interned for Amanda Cohen at Dirt Candy, a then-tiny, boundary-pushing vegetable restaurant in the East Village. (Now, it’s a much bigger, award-winning restaurant on the Lower East Side.) Working for my favorite chef at the best vegetarian restaurant in the world was awesome, but I wasn’t about that restaurant life. I did some private chef jobs until I landed a gig doing recipe testing and development for InStyle magazine. Similar gigs came in from HGTV and Women’s Health. It was the perfect job for someone with severe panic attacks—I did all the work from my own kitchen.
Like you, I want to eat “healthy-ish,” save a few bucks, and enjoy my meals. In fact, my book is less about delighting an audience and more about documenting the food I actually make for myself and my wife every day. I don’t want to eat to balance my chi or read a literary essay about a ripe eggplant. I’m honestly confused about how vegetables have been fetishized by food writers. They’re vegetables. They’re for putting in your mouth. And sometimes they need a little help—the right tools, spices, and techniques—to make things more exciting. This I can help you with.
Third, I don’t have a weird agenda. I’m not trying to sell you branded vitamins or convince you to join a vegan militia. (By the way, let’s not get all hung up on the whole vegetarian versus vegan thing. That drives me nuts.) I happen to eat a vegetable- focused diet. Most of the time. More accurately, I’m as loyal to vegetarianism as a French Prime Minister is to his spouse. Most of the time I’m good, but when something tempting falls into your lap … what can you do? You can count on this, though: There are no recipes in this book for boeuf bourguignon or fried chicken. All these recipes are meatless because that’s how I eat at home. If I’m out to eat, it might be a whole different story.
And let’s not start hating the carnivores just because they’re out there eating Bambi. Vegetarian recipes are what meat-eaters ask me about the most. Either they’re trying to reduce their meat consumption for a variety of reasons, or they want to eat more vegetables but aren’t sure how to make them more palatable. Look, if you can’t live without putting meat in your mouth, make it on the side—that’s what vegetarians have to deal with their whole lives. I don’t care if you’re vegan, vegetarian, or your guru has requested that you eat only raw, sprouted foods. Want to live like a CrossFit caveman? Go ahead. I’m not about gimmicks or unsubstantiated health claims, and I’m not going to try to scare you or guilt you into giving up meat. My intention is to share some of my favorite recipes that are cheap, healthy, hopefully clever, and most importantly, taste awesome.
Here’s the final thing I have to say: You don’t need the patience of a saint or advanced knife skills or a diploma to be a great cook. Becoming a great cook takes two things: a little knowledge and a lot of practice. You don’t have to go to culinary school just to make dinner. You also don’t have to spend your whole paycheck at a farmers’ market to cook the recipes in this book. If a recipe is simple enough for me to whip up at home, you can do it, too. It’ll be tasty and (relatively) healthy, and it won’t take up your whole night. Just flip to the page of the dish you want to make, grab your ingredients, and go for it. I’ve got your back.
When I was testing, rewriting, and developing recipes for magazines, it was my job to make sure that the recipes turned in by the chef who screamed at people on TV, or the one with the clever catchphrase or the really pretty blonde who always seemed to be in soft focus, actually looked and tasted the way they were supposed to. I spent about half the time scaling down restaurant recipes, simplifying them for a home cook, or telling my editor that the recipe was perfect just the way it was because it was amazing and some chefs are famous for good reason. The other half of the time I was breaking my ass to fix a recipe that was clearly some bullshit made up on the fly in a phone call with the publicist. If I’m paying for a cookbook, I want to be sure that the recipes are going to work. If you want Penne Tikka Masala, you can Google a random recipe and take a chance, or you can see here and make mine, knowing that it’s going to be delicious. I made it for dinner and took OCD notes. My friends have eaten it and bugged out. My editor and publisher made these recipes and loved them, too. How else do you think I got to write this book?
So, you can go to culinary school, pay about $30,000 a year, and spend a wad of cash at the greenmarket or I can tell you what I learned in the classroom and my kitchen. Let me give you a ton of awesome recipes that will blow you away and save you thirty grand in the process. Let me show you how to have a vegetarian kitchen that has burgers, Bolognese, and balls, but none of the gauzy fiddleheads. (OK, there are a few fiddleheads here. So sue me.)
You good with this? Let’s get started.
You don’t need a fancy-ass, expensive set of hand-forged Japanese knives. You just need one decent chef’s knife and a sharpener. I use the same basic Mercer chef’s knife I’ve had since culinary school, and as long as I keep it sharp and clean it’s all I’ll ever need.
Now that you have a nice, sharp knife, go out and procure a big bag of onions, a big bag of celery, and a big bag of carrots. Head over to YouTube and search for a basic knife skills tutorial. (Try typing in your favorite chef’s name—chances are they already have a video posted.) Watch and learn.
Watch the video a second time, this time with your knife. Start chopping, dicing, “matchsticking,” “brunoising,” slicing, julienning, and all that other shit you’re rarely—if ever—going to need as a home cook. Don’t stop until you’ve chopped all the onions, carrots, and celery.
The best way to become a better home cook is to be hands-on. I’ll be your cooking instructor—just do what’s written on the page. Read the whole thing first. (Don’t skim it, read it.) Then do it. Once you’ve got a dish down, maybe you can improve on it. Go ahead and change it up. Substitute out ingredients or add new ones, with a focus on how you and your family like to eat. It’s not going to hurt my feelings; you already bought the book. Now, take all those onions, carrots, and celery you chopped, fill a couple of pots with water, throw the veggies in, simmer for a couple of hours, and strain it. You just learned how to chop and how to make vegetable broth.
Spices are essential to my “outer-boro eclectic” cooking style. I was lucky enough to grow up in a Brooklyn before hipsters, when it was like a more dangerous Epcot Center filled with immigrants from Italy, Ireland, Jamaica, China, Greece, Trinidad, Egypt, Cuba, The Philippines, Israel, Puerto Rico, Russia, and their first-generation rugrats. A kid could bike over to a friend’s house for dinner and—if he didn’t have his bike stolen on the way there—have a culinary adventure.
Variety is the spice of life. Actually, spices are the spice of life. They’re a great way to add calorie-free flavor to starchy basics, and they make lackluster vegetables shine. So try them all, even the weird ones. Discover the ones you like best and use them in unexpected ways. Put ginger, garlic, chili pepper, and cream Makhani sauce on spaghetti. Coat broccoli in cumin-spiced falafel. Spike your tomato sauce with Chinese Five Spice. Why not? Life is too short to eat boring food.