One Summer, Three Sauces

Are they "dressings"? Idk, but you need to make them

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If I were a fruit, this is where I’d want to be: languishing in a shallow puddle of Spicy Savory Citrus Vinaigrette.

Today’s recipes—for three extremely fast and pantry-friendly dressings—reinforces one of my core cooking and eating beliefs. Shop first; plan your recipes when you get home. This concept was the grounding principle of my first book, Where Cooking Begins, where I made a case that the creative act of cooking started with food shopping. Yes, of course sometimes we just need to solve dinner, but this is the time of year to practice shopping without a list, and being inspired by what you see.

This thinking specifically applies to produce, proteins, and good bread. For everything that comes in a can, jar, bottle, or box, shop online and save yourself the schlep.

Here’s the challenge: the next time you go food shopping—whether it’s at a farmers market, grocery store, specialty store like H Mart, or meat or fish purveyor—buy what looks good to you. What’s abundant, what’s vibrant, what’s calling to you? That’s what you buy. When you get home, I guarantee that one of these sauces will help you turn your ingredients into a meal.

This excerpt from WCB sums up this approach. I wrote this five (????!!!!) years ago, and damn if it doesn’t still ring true. I’ve changed a little bit; see brackets for commentary from Today Carla.

Still in love with this cover design.

This is my perfect day: It’s June, and a Saturday, the best day of the week by far. It’s not too hot to sleep with the windows open but warm enough to kick off the covers when I wake up, take stock of the sun already pretty high up there, and realize with a spoonful of urgency that this day is not for wasting. [Now that Marge is part of my life, I am awakened at precisely 7:30 a.m. by the sound of her silly squeaky yawns and gentle morning growls asking to be let out of her crate.]

Saturday is farmers’ market day in Fort Greene, my Brooklyn neighborhood, and I want to be there ahead of the crowds as much as I want to snag a primo spot at the beach before the parking lot fills up. The thoughts rush in—What am I missing at the market right now while I’m lying in bed and the families with toddlers who’ve been up since 5 a.m. are going to buy because they got there before me? My primary motivators are activated: anxiety, competition, and desire. What if there were sugar snap peas an hour ago, but there are none now? [There were sugar snaps this past weekend, but they were a little starchy, so I left them behind!] What if the best berries have already been scooped up? What if the parade of parents pushing strollers, couples walking dogs, and those people shepherding both strollers and dogs prevents me from getting a front-row spot to assess the lettuces? [Ugh now I’m one of those people with the dog.] What if I am barred from one of life’s greatest pleasures—blueberries that have never been refrigerated—because I arrive too late?

Some of my favorite recipes came about on Saturdays like this one, when I had no plan for what I was going to cook but knew that whatever it was, it would all start with the farmers’ market shop. There have been countless weekends when there was so much good stuff there that I struggled to carry all of it the two and a half blocks home, leafy greens sticking out of my totes and tickling the back of my neck, which is honestly a terrible sensation when you’re trying to hang on to heavy bags. It’s worth it, though, and I’ve eaten many juicy freestone peaches over the kitchen sink as reward for my stamina. …

I’ve now realized that the hunt for peak ingredients is the way I shop for meal ideas, because I can see from the start where I want things to go. When something looks good—vibrant, colorful, abundant, or in fleeting supply—I cycle through a short list of universal cooking techniques in my arsenal and imagine how each one could transform what I’m looking at. (The six methods I rely on the most can be found in a step-by-step technique section.) Ingredient + method = a rapid-fire run-through of all the things I could do with whatever I have the urge to buy, whether that means I’ll pan-roast a thick steak or lazily simmer a pot of runner beans until their cooking liquid is good enough to drink. [Technique and specific ingredient ideas for today’s summer dressings recipes are in the headnote for each recipe, below.] Over time I’ve come to realize that a direct line connects the special feelings I have about certain ingredients and the urgency with which I cook and eat them. … The upside of my occasional lack of restraint is that, over the years, I’ve figured out a lot of strategies for making great ingredients into meals and using everything up.

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