5 recipes
Breakfast
Fried eggs on warm corn tortillas, with creamy beans underneath and a cooked tomato and chile sauce spooned around them. Everything here is simple on its own; the dish comes together because each part is seasoned and hot at the same moment. It teaches charring vegetables for a salsa, frying the salsa to deepen it, and cooking eggs under a lid.
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Soups
Lentils need no soaking, cost little, and turn a pot of broth into a meal in a little over an hour. This soup teaches you to bloom spices in fat, to cook dried lentils until creamy without bursting them, and to blend part of the pot so it has body without flour or cream. The lemon at the end is what makes it taste alive.
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Soups
Minestrone is a vegetable soup built on timing. The slow base goes in first, the hard vegetables next, and the soft vegetables, beans and pasta last, so everything is done at the same moment. Learn that order once and you can make it from whatever is in your crisper drawer.
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Soups
Split peas cook down on their own into a thick, velvety soup, and a smoked ham hock gives the pot its smoke, salt and meat. This soup teaches slow simmering, pulling flavor out of a bone, and handling a soup that keeps thickening long after you turn off the heat.
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Salads
Crisp green beans, creamy kidney beans and nutty chickpeas in a sweet-sour dressing that gets better as it sits. It teaches blanching and shocking, and why canned beans need real time in a dressing.
View recipe · 4 servings