6 recipes
Salads
Thin, cold cucumber slices in a sweet-sour dressing with red onion and dill. It teaches two moves you'll use again and again: salting a watery vegetable so it stays crisp, and taming raw onion in vinegar.
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Salads
Greek salad is ripe tomatoes, cucumber, onion, pepper and olives under a whole slab of feta, dressed with olive oil, a little vinegar and oregano. It has no lettuce and no whisked dressing, because the tomatoes make their own. It teaches you how salting and cutting shape a raw salad.
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Soups
This small soup teaches two things you will use again and again: dashi, the quick broth of kelp and smoked bonito that sits under much of Japanese cooking, and the one rule of miso, which goes in last and never boils. Once you have both, it is an easy weeknight side for any rice meal.
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Salads
A composed platter of potatoes, green beans, eggs, tuna, tomatoes and olives, pulled together by a mustardy vinaigrette. It teaches you to run one pot of water for three jobs and to season each part as you go, so every piece tastes finished before it reaches the plate.
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Breakfast
Stir this together at night and breakfast is waiting when you open the refrigerator. The oats never see heat: cold milk and yogurt soften them slowly while you sleep. Your whole job is the ratio and the seasoning, so the jars come out creamy and spoonable, neither pasty nor soupy.
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Soups
Tom yum shows how a handful of hard, fragrant aromatics becomes a whole broth in minutes, and how Thai cooks balance sour, salty, hot and sweet at the very end. The shrimp shells you peel off become a quick broth, so nothing goes to waste.
View recipe · 4 servings