Chive

Every year we buy a large jar of herbes salées in Kamouraska. It’s a typical Bas Du Fleuve product that lets you enjoy the taste of garden fresh herbs when the temperature is –4°F (–20°C) and your backyard is under a blanket of snow. It is essentially a big spoonful of herbs with carrots and onions that stay fresh because of the brine. You can use this traditional northern condiment with anything: potatoes, soups, seafood, lamb, gravies, terrines, and meat pies.

Inspired by the simplicity and purity of Japanese sashimi, American chefs are exploring the world of seafood crudo (Italian for raw). Typically, crudo is accompanied by Mediterranean garnishes like capers and olive oil rather than the soy-based dipping sauce that is served with sashimi. At the 2005 Workshop, Florida chef James Reaux made a beautiful halibut crudo with chive oil, using the abundant chives in the winery garden. For raw preparations such as this one, the seafood must be impeccably fresh.

Herb butter is softened butter that has been flavored with herbs. It makes a great sauce for meat, fish, or vegetables, providing lots of flavor for next to no effort. I like it to be really green, full of lots and lots of herbs, with just enough butter to bind them together. Poached fish served with an herb butter made with the classic fines herbes of French cuisine (parsley, chives, tarragon, and chervil) is sublime. Either salted or unsalted butter will do for an herb butter. Just remember to season accordingly when you start adding salt. Lemon juice brings out the flavor of the herbs. The cayenne adds a little zing. Almost any fresh herb can be used. The more tender-leafed herbs, such as parsley, basil, chives, or chervil, should be very fresh and chopped at the last minute. More pungent herbs such as sage or rosemary are tastier when they are chopped and gently heated on the stove in a little melted butter. (Allow to cool to room temperature before adding to the softened butter.) Or, with or without herbs, make a butter flavored with one or two salt-packed anchovies (rinsed, filleted, and chopped), lemon zest, and black pepper, or, for an unusual twist and color, with some chopped nasturtium flowers or hot spicy peppers. Serve the butter as is, soft and spreadable; or put it in a piece of plastic wrap or waxed paper, roll it into a log, chill until hard, and cut it into coin-shaped pieces to put on top of hot food. Any extra herb butter can be frozen and used later.

It’s no secret that I love mascarpone cheese—and who doesn’t love bacon? Stir them together and you have a super-creamy, elegant dip that tastes like the most decadently topped baked potato you’ve ever had. The mix is surprisingly versatile, too: thin it down a bit with milk and use it as a dressing for greens or a sauce for salmon or chicken.

This dish has become very popular on restaurant menus, because it seems extra-special—and tricky to make at home. Special it is, but in fact it’s quite easy to pull off, as it uses frozen lobster tails—no live lobsters to boil. The key is to brown the butter well for a deep, nutty flavor.

This dish hails from northern Italy, where the climate is mushroom-happy and cream sauces are the norm. In lean times, frugal Italian cooks often substituted mushrooms for meat in dishes like this one because their meaty texture and earthy flavor give the sauce real substance. I often make this as a veggie option for parties, and even the carnivores go for it.

The omelet remains the standby dinner for many accomplished French cooks, and it remains on the menu of many restaurants. Delicious and gorgeous, it’s a bit trickier than a frittata (page 558), but considerably faster, and nonstick pans have made it a lot more reliable. Fresh herbs are a must here; I would say butter is a must also, but I’d rather you made the omelet with olive oil than not at all. Once you learn how to do this, it will become a staple for you, and variations will be second nature. I offer a few to get you started.

The most difficult part of making negima, the popular Japanese appetizer in which meat is wrapped around scallions or chives, is slicing the meat thin enough. You can ask your butcher for ultra-thin-cut sirloin, and you might get it, but it’s probably easier to use pork, chicken, or veal, all of which are regularly sold as thin cutlets. With a little gentle pounding, they’re thin enough, and the process becomes easy.

Another good pancake starter or side dish. At their best hot, but still good warm. You can use frozen spinach for this if that’s all you have.

In Korea, this popular starter and snack is served at home, in restaurants, and on street corners. (It’s also one of the most popular dishes in Korean restaurants in the States.) At its most basic, it’s a large egg batter scallion pancake, but other vegetables, meat, and seafood are often added to make it a fancier and more substantial dish. Glutinous rice flour creates a wonderfully chewy texture, but if you can’t find it, all-purpose flour is perfectly fine. Serve these immediately after making them.

Though not traditional, fried wontons are extremely popular. They are an easy finger food for parties and a snack that your kids will love. If you’re making the wrappers, try to get 60 out of the dough, or you may have a little filling left over.

These small frittate make a wonderful appetizer cut in wedges and served at room temperature. Or serve one per person as a nice lunch dish. We always thought they were best made in the springtime, when nettles, fennel fronds, young shoots of wild asparagus, or ramps could be gathered in the fields. But if you are more city-bound, you can infuse the eggs with fresh thyme leaves, parsley, and chives, which you can get year-round.

The key word here is “Gouda”: it takes your mashed potatoes right to the VIP list. This way, please!

Think of this dish as the upscale cousin of that old standby, linguine with clams. Sparkling and oysters are a natural and festive combination, and here they combine to create a quick, fabulous pasta. This dish is almost a lighter version of an oyster stew, with the oysters poached just until done, the sauce brightened with prosecco, and then served over a fresh tangle of tagliarini. This would make a nice addition to a New Year’s Eve menu, or make any winter supper feel like a holiday.

A classic of the West Coast, this dressing was created in the 1920s by San Francisco’s Palace Hotel in honor of a play by the same name. With buttermilk standing in for sour cream, my “Southern” version is light, tangy, and chock-full of green herbs. It’s the quintessential spring and summer dressing, and because it’s all about using the freshest herbs—whether dill, chervil, sorrel, or cilantro—I almost never make it the same way twice.

Allowing the farmer’s market to determine the mix of beans in this filling salad gives new meaning to the traditional “three-bean salad.” Fresh beans are always a treat, but I make this dish year-round by using canned navy, garbanzo, or cannellini beans when fresh ones aren’t available. If using canned beans, just skip the blanching step and toss the beans with the herb vinaigrette.

With their outsize flavor and perfectly bite-size proportions, deviled eggs never go out of style. The best part is that they’re one of the few dishes fit for entertaining that’s also so simple, you can probably throw them together on a moment’s notice without even going to the grocery store. All you need are some eggs and a little something to give them zip, from chopped pickles or pickle relish to cayenne pepper or spicy pepper relish. I like this version, which is topped with fresh herbs and cornichons or other pickled vegetables, like okra or asparagus.

One summer when I was child, a family friend regularly gave us grocery bags full of Chinese chives (he) from her garden. The grassy foot-long chives are easy to grow from seed, and this woman must have had a bumper crop that year. We put the bounty to good use in this delicious noodle dish. No matter how many times it appeared on the dinner table, I never tired of the soft chives, hints of garlic, bits of shrimp and pork, and tart lime finish. Chinese chives are significantly larger than Western chives, and their flat leaves have a delicate garlic, rather than onion, flavor. In Chinese and Southeast Asian markets, they are typically sold in one-pound bundles. Vietnamese cooks treat them like a green vegetable, often cooking them with noodles. Here, their flat shape mixes perfectly with bánh pho. For a light meal, serve the noodles as the main course, pairing it with one of the special-event salads in chapter 1.

You could certainly serve these hash browns with eggs, but I didn’t find the inspiration for this dish at my local diner. These belong right next to a juicy steak. I mix sweet caramelized onions with cooked potatoes seasoned with smoky paprika. Cooked in butter and oil, the bottom layer of potatoes becomes amazingly crisp and is browned to perfection. Serve this bottom side up so that everyone can see what crispy potato goodness awaits.

Chef Quincy Adams Erickson and I worked together in Austin during my stint as executive chef for a national chain. A graduate of the famed cooking school Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, Quincy now owns Austin’s Fête Accompli, a catering company specializing in fresh, handmade appetizers. I asked Quincy to give me a cocktail party recipe for this book and, as usual, she came up with a winner. Make sure you have a small cookie cutter that will make bite-size shapes that your guests can easily pop in their mouths. Use whatever shape you’d like: circles, hearts, stars, triangles, or squares.

Alain Passard is the chef-owner of the Parisian restaurant L’Arpège, awarded three Michelin stars, the highest possible rating from the most prestigious organization. He caused quite a stir when he “went vegetarian,” as he had come from the classic French tradition of cooking with meat stocks. This salad is inspired by a dish he created when he entered his veggie phase. This is well suited for cooks who grow their own herbs or are able to purchase good quality fresh herbs from their farmer’s market—otherwise, it can be somewhat costly at a traditional grocery store. Rinse the herbs under cold running water, then spin them dry in a salad spinner. Carefully remove the leaves from the stems (don’t cheat: use only the leaves, discard the stems). Use more herbs than lettuce. Nasturtiums (both leaves and flowers), cilantro, basil, and chervil are other herb suggestions.

These aren’t hard to make, but it does take a while to clean out the insides of all of the tomatoes. The good news is that they can be made up to a day ahead and the taste is most definitely worth the effort.