“Peter Miller makes cooking at home with dignified ingredients easy and delightful. You will laugh, be inspired, become incredibly hungry, and come away with loads of smart and useful ideas.” —Renee Erickson, James Beard Award–winning chef and author of A Boat, a Whale & a Walrus No matter how busy your day has been, there is time to eat well. A good lentil soup may handle the task on nights that only need a light meal. With a little care, cauliflower and couscous can ably sit in as a weekday supper. A plate of pasta, with some of spring’s first asparagus, can become a quiet feast. The only hard part is recognizing the possibilities on hand. For Peter Miller, the number five provides a framework for inspiration and focus. In Five Ways to Cook Asparagus, Miller reveals five brilliant ways to cook each of his favorite versatile, healthy foods. He begins with five types of vegetables—asparagus, cauliflower, onions, broccoli, and carrots—including five recipes for each. He then presents five ways to cook grains, beans, pasta, meat, seafood, and more. With more than ninety recipes, paired with rich photography and charming hand- drawn illustrations, this is a beautiful, practical guide that celebrates the everyday art of getting dinner on the table. PETER MILLER has operated his shop, Peter Miller Books + Supplies, in Seattle for more than thirty-five years. He is a trained chef, contributor to Crosscut.com and Food52, and author of Lunch at the Shop. CHRISTOPHER HIRSHEIMER and MELISSA HAMILTON are cofounders of Canal House, a culinary and design studio, and the authors of many cookbooks, including Canal House Cooks Every Day. Cover design by John Gall and Najeebah Al-Ghadban Printed in the United States U.S. $29.95 Can. $35.95 U.K. £18.99 ISBN: 978-1-4197-2393-3 ABRAMS The Art of Books abramsbooks.com ISBN 978-1-4197-2393-3 9 781419 723933 5 2 9 9 5 Photographs by Hirsheimer & Hamilton Author of Lunch at the Shop PETER MILLER THE ART AND PRACTICE OF MAKING DINNER FIVE WAYS TO COOK ASPARAGUS (AND OTHER RECIPES)THE FIVE LIQUIDS Olive Oil / Vinegars / Stock / Water / AlcoholIt is not a simple matter to choose your olive oil. There are too many factors, too many places to hide (the packaging often being better than the oil), and too many customers. It was once, even ten years ago, a quite simple matter to find a good olive oil and, when you felt wealthy or worthy, a very good olive oil. But the customers for olive oil have multiplied tenfold: People have learned to love its taste, to trust its nature, to believe in its quietly mythic assets. Climates have become more fragile, entire seasons have been lost to uncommon droughts and rains, and the sheer pressure of modernism has threatened the supply— and, of course, broadened the attempts to grow olives wherever it might be possible. You must now be more cautious. Many olive oils are a blend, which is not in itself a terrible matter, but they are often concealing a weakness of quality. For my part, I simply want an honest olive oil. I do not want it to be deceitful regarding its origin or its value. I want its taste to be authentic, and I want its provenance to be accurate. For my everyday olive oil, I use Partanna, a Sicilian extra-virgin oil, and have since it was recommended to me ten years ago. We use it at the shop as well, for cooking and for dressings. For a fancier oil, I asked DeLaurenti’s, our wonderful Italian market, for their favorite, and they all agreed on Poggio la Noce, a Tuscan all-natural olive oil. Once you have tasted a fine Tuscan oil, with all its flavors and hints of elegance, then that becomes its own standard. The trick is to find a true version— Poggio la Noce is precisely that. You must use and trust your olive oil suppliers. It is their repu- tation that is being wagered, so they should be able to help. They will know which oils have the highest regard —which oils have quietly emerged and been praised. It is difficult to simply trust your taste. Anyone can make olive oil taste greener or subtly herbal. You must start first with the designa- tion extra virgin, for that will eliminate the largest percentage of fraud. To be extra virgin, the olive oil must have been extracted in the least manipulative, most fundamental manner possible—a cold process of OLIVE OIL THE FIVE LIQUIDS 2990 FIVE WAYS TO COOK . . .FIVE WAYS TO COOK Broccoli You must come to terms with broccoli. It has wonderful versatility, it is available year- round in good variety, it can carry nearly an entire meal, and it can be prepared quickly. That said, it can be a tricky partner to meals. It comes from the Brassica genus—cabbage and such—so you must be careful to not overcook it, or the sulfurous smell will cut into your anticipation. In culinary terms, it has the perfect lineage, having been first perfected in Italy two thousand years ago. It was not popular in America until nearly the 1930s, and in the 1950s, it was put on its own kind of blacklist, as it became typical to boil it for thirty minutes. With the lid on. My mother was a gentle and intuitive cook, but she was a butcher of broccoli. In recent times, broccoli has been rescued by two factors: One, there was a medical discovery that broccoli had distinct anti-cancer, anti-bacterial properties. And two, Italian cuisine became extraordinarily popular, and the Italians know well and naturally how to cook broccoli. They blanch it, but only for a minute or two (after five minutes of boiling, it quickly begins to lose its curative strengths). If you should be fortunate enough to travel to Italy, note how they cook and use broccoli—it will never, ever, have a sour taste or smell. There are a couple of important details to preparing it. First, you must soak it in cold water. That will restore and refresh it, but will also drown any critters who have curled up in it—cutworms and such. They are rare in supermarket broccoli, but common in the organic type, of course, and especially in the farmers’ market variety. Always soak it. Trim it just before soaking, either just the ends, or you could cut it into parts. Five minutes of soaking in cold water is certainly enough. Should there be a slight film to the soaking water or debris in the bowl, change the water a time or two until it is clearer. Broccoli has a long, thick stem that is probably the tastiest part, but the part most often thrown away. Peel away the outer length, using a peeler or small knife, and it will cook better. If blanching or slightly boiling, always add salt to the water after it comes to a boil, then drop in the broccoli, and of course only boil it until it slightly softens—with fresh broccoli that might mean only three minutes or so. If you can smell the broccoli, that is your warning that it is done or near so. You must drain it before it has completely softened. It is a task of vigilance to not overcook it. Ninety percent of the broccoli you will buy is near precisely the same. You might find some in a lonely all-night mart that appear particularly pale, but for the most part, it seems the green version of the yellow onion. But it does indeed have its natural season, late spring to middle summer, and for that period, you can use it with even more exuberance. BROCCOLI 91156 FIVE WAYS TO COOK . . .176 FIVE WAYS TO COOK . . . Couscous or Quinoa with Pear, Walnut, and Feta SERVES 4 This dish is a nice way to acknowledge the hospitality of couscous and quinoa, both very gracious hosts. It is a vignette of textures and colors, and it is important that each element is honored and part of the whole. Serve this as a lunch or as part of a dinner. Heat a small sauté pan over low heat. Stir the walnuts for 5 minutes, until lightly toasted. Transfer to a plate to cool. Put the couscous or quinoa in a medium bowl. Add some salt, half the lemon juice, and half the parsley. Stir to combine. Fold in the arugula. Drizzle 2 tablespoons of the olive oil over it all. Gently lay this in a serving bowl with shallow sides. In a separate bowl, stir together the yogurt, remaining lemon juice, and some salt. Spoon this mixture onto the center of the couscous mixture. Do not clean the bowl—the trace of yogurt and lemon will work perfectly with the pears and walnuts. Put the pear slices, walnuts, and feta into the bowl that had held the yogurt. Stir gently one or two times and then lay the pieces casually around the yogurt and the couscous. Use a light touch; they should not appear to be mashed together. Add the rest of the olive oil, sprinkle with the rest of the parsley, and serve immediately. ½ cup (50 g) walnuts 2 cups cooked couscous (360 g) or quinoa (400 g), at room temperature (see page 237) Sea salt Juice of 1 lemon ½ cup (25 g) chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley 1 cup (20 g) baby arugula, rinsed and spun dry ¼ cup (60 ml) extra-virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons plain Greek yogurt 3 ripe sweet pears, peeled and sliced into thin wedges ¼ pound (115 g) feta, crumbled and kept coolNext >