8 recipes
Soups
A thick, cheesy soup that comes down to one skill: getting cheese to melt into hot soup smoothly instead of turning grainy or stringy. Along the way you build a roux-thickened base, the same method behind many cream soups and cheese sauces, so what you learn here carries over.
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Salads
Raw broccoli, crisp bacon, a sweet-tart creamy dressing and a handful of crunch. It teaches you how to make a raw vegetable a pleasure to eat: cut it small and give the dressing time to soften it.
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Soups
Make this when sweet corn is piled high at the market. It teaches you to get every bit of flavor out of the ear: the kernels, the milky pulp you scrape off the cob, and the bare cobs themselves, simmered right in the pot. Blending part of the chowder gives it body without a heavy hand of flour.
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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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Soups
This soup is really a lesson in caramelizing onions. Three pounds of them cook down slowly until they're deep brown and jammy, and then broth, a splash of wine and a bubbling cheese crust do the rest. Once you can judge caramelized onions by color and smell instead of by the clock, you'll use them on burgers, in dips and on pizza too.
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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
A smooth, golden soup that shows what the oven can do for a vegetable. Roasting the squash browns its sugars and deepens its flavor, and then the rest is balance: salt and a little acid so the sweetness tastes bright instead of flat. It also teaches you to blend hot soup safely and set its thickness at the end.
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Soups
A pot of tomato soup made from canned tomatoes teaches three things you'll use for years: how to draw sweetness out of an onion, how to take the raw edge off tomato paste, and how to taste your way to a soup that is bright but round. You'll also learn to blend hot soup without redecorating the kitchen.
View recipe · 4 servings