Simplicity is key.
Life can be difficult. It can even be daunting. When you come home from a hard day of wrangling penguins, the last thing you want to do is put together a meal with 27 different ingredients.
So you reach into the larder (does anyone even have a larder anymore? When's the last time you saw the word "larder"?) and pull out a handful of ingredients. No more than five. And you make a meal, or at least a dish.
It may not be as complexly flavored as the one with 27 ingredients, but on the other hand, there is less to go wrong, too. It's clean. Efficient. Simple.
Simplicity is key.
And from such simplicity can come bold flavors. I made a pot roast out of five ingredients, and it is so roundly delectable that I am calling it Five-Ingredient Bourguignon.
That may be stretching the point, but only a little. I began with a hunk of meat (top or bottom round; I used top) and I braised it until tender in red wine with onions and thyme.
The key is to cook the meat at a low simmer for a long time (mine took a little under two hours). This not only makes what is typically a tough piece of meat deliciously tender, but it also gives a chance for the acidity in the wine to mellow out as the alcohol cooks away.
It's a breeze to make, and the result is a hearty roast, just right for a cold winter's night.
For a side dish to stand up to the beef _ or an excellent vegetarian main course _ you might want to consider White Beans With Rosemary and Garlic.
Naturally, this is a dish of white beans that has been flavored with rosemary and garlic, plus olive oil and salt. But the recipe comes from Alice Waters, who revolutionized American cooking with her world-famous restaurant Chez Panisse, so you know it is going to be extra good.
And so it is. Beans, garlic and rosemary combine to bring out an almost unworldly earthiness in each other; it is a truly great grouping of flavors. Waters' recipe calls for soaking beans overnight and then simmering them for a couple of hours, but I took the easy way out and used beans from a can.
It was superb. I'm sure her way is better, but this was superb.
And so was Teriyaki Chicken With Bok Choy, a dish that embarrasses me a little because it breaks an unwritten law. I generally try not to cook with premade or processed ingredients (the "Semi-Homemade" way) such as teriyaki sauce. And yet, here is a recipe calling for chicken thighs marinated in bottled teriyaki sauce and garlic, and it was wonderful.
How could it not be? The people who make bottled teriyaki sauce know what they are doing. It adds just the right sweet-spicy notes to chicken that play beautifully off the mildly bitter taste of the bok choy. Serve it on rice and you have a satisfying, easy meal.
Even faster and easier, though, is Crispy-Coated Lemon-Pepper Salmon. The secret to this is lemon-pepper-flavored panko bread crumbs which, admittedly, is also sort of semi-homemade.
But they add a snap of lemon and a hint of black pepper to salmon, which goes perfectly with them. And the panko bread crumbs add a bit of texture to it, though maybe not the crunch the name implies.
The only other ingredients needed are buttermilk and melted butter, both of which help the bread crumbs adhere to the fish. It all takes the salmon, which is already great, and makes it better.
One of my favorite go-to dinners is sausage, peppers and onions, so I made it, as well. There is just something magical about the way Italian sausage blends with sauteed onion and the natural sweetness of a mild pepper.
When I make it, I usually eat it with no embellishments because it needs none. But it's even better when it is sandwiched between two pieces of good crusty bread. I put mine in the middle of a baguette, which brought a new level to an already incredible meal.
And all of this could only be topped with dessert. Something simple (simplicity is key). Something elegant. Something blissful.
In fact, something exactly like Vanilla Pots de Creme, which is to say a light vanilla custard. It's just a gentle combination of milk _ you don't even have to use cream _ sugar, egg yolks and vanilla. Cook until it's thickened, then cook some more in a water bath to regulate the temperature.
It's so good, so creamy on your tongue, you'll find yourself wondering: How can something this amazing be made from only four ingredients?
