A Four-Star Guide to One-Pot Cooking

At his four-star Restaurant Daniel, Daniel Boulud can offer diners the finest peekytoe crab and foie gras terrine. But alas, he can’t serve them oxtail on the bone.“There’s not another part of the cow that concentrates as much flavor as the tail, and that is what makes oxtail so delicious,” Mr. Boulud laments in “Braise: A Journey Through International Cuisine” (Ecco Press, 288 pages, $32.50). Fortunately, in his new cookbook, Mr. Boulud gets to let his hair down, so to speak — offering recipes that involve just one pot instead of a sinkful.A lazy, slow-cooked braise is the opposite of four-star cooking — without the seared edges, al dente vegetables, and bright flavors that we associate with refined modern food. But Mr. Boulud and food writer Melissa Clark seize the opportunity to prioritize sheer deliciousness over status or appearance. “Sometimes at the restaurant we do a ‘ratatouille minute,’ a quicker version using diced vegetables,” Mr. Boulud writes. “The cubes always hold their shape and it presents nicely, but it never really captures what a good ratatouille is about — the flavor.” In “Braise,” the ratatouille is a richly spiced stew that braises for a good half-hour and also boasts garam masala and coconut milk, with a rich complexity that a quick sauté would envy.In fact, for eaters who like to bounce from one cuisine to another but don’t want to spend much time in the kitchen, “Braise” is a treasure trove.It’s easy to assume that a braised dish is just a tough cut of meat, seared and gently simmered in a small amount of liquid in a covered pot, maybe with some tomatoes and herbs, until tender. The classic examples are Mario Batali’s famous short ribs in Barolo, or that French classic, pot-aufeu.But Mr. Boulud doesn’t just have his eye on the perfect coq au vin. “Braise” jet-sets from Oaxacan pork belly to Polish-style chicken and kielbasa stew and Afghan greens stewed with rhubarb and dried dill. He doesn’t restrict himself to meaty stews, either. Fish, vegetables, and even fruits gain rich aromas and toothsome textures from braising, too.Mr. Boulud does more than simply rehash traditional braised dishes from around the world — he gives them a makeover, even though it’s not an extreme one. Mr. Boulud applies a yin-yang principle to his braises, often pairing them with a crunchy, cool, or piquant counterpart. Asian-inflected short ribs are paired with cucumber-radish rémoulade, while cardamom-spiced coconut lamb gets a touch of bitterness from a mustard greens and spinach purée.The techniques are easy — only the ingredients are highbrow. Many of the recipes will test the limits of your pantry, but these days, ingredients like curry leaves, star anise, and tahini aren’t particularly hard to track down, and sidebars offer plenty of reassuring insight.As much as Mr. Boulud might dabble in international cuisine, however, his heart is clearly in France. He tops his Flemish beef stew — and his Bombay-style Capon — with the French gingerbread called pain d’épices, and his spicy coconut beef curry also includes trés francais celery root and turnips *** .Mr. Boulud might be voyaging skillfully through international cuisine, but Claudia Roden continues to discover delights close to home. Born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, she’s been an authority on Middle Eastern cooking since she published the groundbreaking “Book of Middle Eastern Food” in 1972, which demystified tagines for the fondue set.Her new book, “Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon” (Knopf, 352 pages, $35) focuses on the cuisine of just three countries instead of an entire region. It’s an in-depth tour that invites readers to learn the differences between delicate Turkish food, earthy Lebanese, and aromatic, spice-laden Moroccan.Ms. Roden has enough memories about each country to fill a thousand and one nights. She reminisces about the Place Djemma-el-Fna in Marrakesh, where after sundown “the smoke of fish frying and meat grilling on braziers and the mingled aromas of mint and cilantro, cumin and turmeric, fill the air.” She remembers the “old-style Turkish coffee, scented with orange blossom water or gum mastic.” And she illuminates the Lebanese tradition of preserving food, when “figs, apricots, and tomatoes were laid out on trays in the fields to dry in the sun.”Most of us lump the foods of Morocco, Lebanon, and Turkey under the vague rubric of “Middle Eastern food” and leave it at that. Of course there are plenty of similarities, but in “Arabesque,” you can discover the differences, too.Take something as simple as eggplant salad. There’s the tomatoey, cuminspiced, cilantro-flecked Moroccan Zaalouk, the simple, tart Turkish Patlican Salatasi, and the lush Lebanese Batinjan Raheb, covered with chopped herbs and pomegranate seeds.Just like in the real Middle East, borders can be problematic. To emphasize the differences of the cuisines, Ms. Roden segregated the recipes into Turkish, Lebanese, and Moroccan sections. That might make culinary sense, but it makes for an awkward experience for the reader, who needs to flip back and forth between the sections to figure out whether to cook lamb-stuffed quinces, chicken and artichoke tagine, or the baked kibbeh.Thankfully, the recipes themselves won’t make you futz or fiddle. Ms. Roden has streamlined and perfected her Middle Eastern recipes during the course of a lifetime, and she boasts the rare mixture of pragmatism and traditionalism of someone who actually cooks these recipes. She rarely bows to tradition when there’s an easier but still delicious way of doing something. Her recipe for preserved lemon isn’t the “most prestigious” method, which takes more than a month to cure. She prefers the “quick unorthodox method, which gives delicious results in four days.”“Arabesque” is a sensible companion in the kitchen, but the question really is: Do you want to take it to bed? The answer is yes. Ms. Roden offers plenty of bedtime stories for the greedy, taking you along as she visits the Festival of Whirling Dervishes in Konya, Turkey, and the legendary mezze to be found along the Bardaouni River in Lebanon.Though the introductions to the chapters are lavish, the recipes stick to simple clarity. Ms. Roden’s meticulous instructions had me wrapping a spiced lamb filling with phyllo dough without even breaking a sweat. Whether it’s a simple braise or fancy phyllo, it’s wise to trust the experts.

A Four-Star Guide to One-Pot Cooking

A Four-Star Guide to One-Pot Cooking

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