Steam

FLAVOR BOOSTER Fennel, tomato, and wine are common ingredients in Mediterranean cooking; in this recipe, they make a wonderful bed for chicken breast halves. Once the chicken is cooked through, the vegetables become a flavorful sauce to serve alongside.

Couscous, made of semolina wheat rolled into tiny granules, is the traditional dish of Morocco and northern Africa. It is cooked to a light and fluffy texture by steaming it several times, perfumed by the aromatic spices in the steamer. It is usually paired with meat or vegetable stews—try it with Moroccan-Style Braised Vegetables—and with spicy harissa sauce (page 112). There are instant varieties available, but cooking it the traditional way results in the best texture and flavor.

Steaming is one of the simplest and most nutritious ways to cook vegetables. It is an especially good method to capture the delicate flavors of tender young vegetables such as turnips and turnip greens, carrots and carrot tops, peas and pea shoots, green beans, cauliflower, beets, and spinach. After cooking, the vegetables can be seasoned lightly with salt and perhaps a squeeze of lemon juice, or flavored with various vinegars, olive oil or butter, or a sauce.

Oliver likes to blanch his greens. Blanching vegetables means cooking them briefly in rapidly boiling water. Blanching is suitable for all sorts of leafy greens: chard, kale, beet greens, turnip tops, collards, cabbage, spinach, sea purslane, dandelion, and nettles. Blanched greens can be seasoned and served warm; chopped and added to stuffings, meatballs, soups, and stews; or dressed and served cold or at room temperature.

The part of the broccoli plant that we eat is the unopened budding sprout, meaning that broccoli is, more or less, a big unopened flower. The most typical variety of broccoli is green and fairly large. Other types include sprouting broccoli, which produces small, dark green sprouts that are harvested individually. Romanesco broccoli looks a little otherworldly; it is chartreuse-green with a conical head made of pointy spiraling florets. There is also purple broccoli, some of which has such compact heads that it looks more like cauliflower than broccoli. Select broccoli that is brightly colored and firm, with compact heads that are not wilted, yellow, or blooming. Remove the florets from the main stem and cut or break them up as desired. Trim the end of the stems, and when they are large, peel them with a paring knife or peeler. Cut the peeled stems into sticks or slices.

Steaming is a wonderful way to cook fish. It preserves the natural pristine flavor of the fish and the delicate texture of the flesh, especially of flaky white-fleshed fish such as haddock, halibut, sole, and salmon. Season the fish and cook in a steamer over simmering water in a closed pot. Aromatics—herbs, spices, and vegetables—can be added to the water for more flavor. Cook the fish until the flesh is set and no longer translucent in the center—except salmon, which is best if its center is still translucent. Steaming has the added benefit of retaining all the internal moisture of the fish, but don’t overcook the fish or it will dry out. Like baked fish, fish to be steamed can be wrapped in aromatic leaves or branches. Steamed fish goes particularly well with sauces such as Salsa Verde (page 45) and Pesto (page 230) and any butter sauce. Steamed sole is ethereally light and beurre blanc (butter sauce) adds acid and richness. Other tasty sauces to consider are Salsa Verde (page 45) or an herb butter (see page 48) or, for a very pure meal, a simple drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil and a squeeze of lemon.

Beurre noisette is browned or nut-colored, butter, a French classic that fully qualifies as a sauce yet contains only one ingredient. If you’ve never had it, beurre noisette’s complex flavor and beguiling aroma, redolent of hazelnuts, will amaze you. And if you like it over broccoli, you’ll probably find that you like it over almost any other sturdy, full-flavored vegetable.

Fish breathes new life into the “sandwich” of Mexico and the Southwest, replacing mystery meat with an identifiable fillet of delicate white fish like cod to make fish tacos, a rarity on the East Coast. Instead of frying, as is common in tacquerias, I like to steam the fish in its own juices, which can be done on top of the stove or in a microwave oven (in fact, this is one of the few cooking tasks at which the microwave excels).

If you have forgotten how delicious a fillet of fish can be, do this: Steam it, with nothing. Drizzle it with olive oil and lemon. Sprinkle it with salt. Eat it. If the number of ingredients and technique are minimal, the challenge is not. You need a high-quality and uniformly thick piece of fish to begin with, your timing must be precise—which is all a matter of attention and judgment, really—and your olive oil flavorful. That taken care of, there is no better or easier preparation.

Dealing with the lemongrass is the sole challenge of this dish, and only if you’ve never done it before. Maximum flavor is released from whole lemongrass stalks when they are beaten up a bit; bruising the length of each stalk with the blunt edge of a knife takes care of this in seconds. But to include lemongrass in a sauce you must first remove the tough outer layers—this is not unlike peeling a woody scallion—and then carefully and finely mince the inner core.

In a cafe in southern France about thirty years ago, I sat in a bistro and timidly prepared to order salade Niçoise. Just then, a huge bowl of steaming, powerfully fragrant mussels was delivered to a man sitting at the table next to me, and I boldly changed my order. The hot mussels were essentially tossed with fennel and fennel seeds, which I could see, but the licorice bouquet and indeed flavor were far stronger than that combination alone could provide. Later, I realized that there was a secret ingredient: an anise liqueur, either Pernod or Ricard. The combination is alluring.

Most steamed mussel preparations contain parsley, garlic, and white wine, with the occasional addition of tomatoes and herbs. There are, however, other directions to take with no additional effort. Generally, there are two easy changes to make: First, use distinctive Asian seasonings like ginger, soy, or curry powder. And second, omit the cooking liquid. By relying only on the mussels’ natural juices, you can add fewer seasonings (and less of each) and still produce a flavorful sauce that is less watery than most. I always serve Asian-style mussels with a bowl of rice on the side.

Steamed dishes are not common even in Thailand (most Thai dishes are stewed or stir-fried). But this is a lovely, mild, sweet dish I had at an upscale restaurant in Bangkok; I thought it was an innovation, but it turns out to be quite traditional. You can prepare the mixture ahead of time, cover, and refrigerate the ramekins until you are ready to steam them. Serve it with rice and a salad or vegetable dish. To make ground chicken yourself, cut boneless, skinless breasts or thighs into chunks and put them in a food processor; pulse until ground, being careful not to overprocess. You can use turkey or pork in place of the chicken if you like. Information on Thai fish sauce (nam pla) is on page 500.

The simplest and easiest way to infuse the flavor of lemongrass into chicken. For the ultraswell version, see Lemongrass Chicken (page 287). Like that dish, this one is great with steamed Sticky Rice (page 508).

This simple steamed chicken is usually served cold, and it’s refreshing on warm summer days, like a good chicken salad. Shaoxing wine, with its full, distinctive flavor, is best for this dish, but Fino (dry) sherry is a good substitute. Start this as long as a day in advance; the more marinating time, the better. If you don’t have a large steamer, you can use a big pot with a rack set inside. Or simply poach the chicken, as in the variation.

This is an interesting technique: the fish is oven steamed, with just a tiny bit of liquid, thus retaining all of its own juices. Traditionally the packages would be made with banana or other large leaves, and they would be buried in hot ashes. Foil is much more convenient, if not quite as interesting or flavorful. If you make this with fillets, the cooking time will be under 10 minutes. Serve this with Peasant-Style Potatoes (page 477) and a lightly dressed vegetable.

The highlight of many meals in Chinese restaurants, yet few dishes are easier to prepare at home. Start with a medium-sized firm-fleshed fish—black bass and red snapper are ideal, but grouper or, if you can find it, small striped bass, are also good—preferably with its head on (if the head won’t fit in your steamer, cut it off, along with the tail). Scales must be removed and the fish must be thoroughly cleaned; any fishmonger can do this for you. Serve the fish with white rice and, preferably, a few other Chinese dishes.

Plain vinaigrette is lovely over steamed vegetables (or poached or grilled fish for that matter), but gribiche surpasses it. Just the thought of this bistro classic makes my mouth water. Other vegetables you can prepare this way: any vegetable you can steam and sauce—potatoes, broccoli, and carrots, for example.

Edamame—fresh soybeans—are rarely seen “fresh” in this country, but they’re now sold frozen at most supermarkets. You buy them still in their pods and pop the little beans out to eat them (the pods are inedible). Eaten as a little snack at the table or as a side dish, with no more than salt, they’re rather great.

The more-or-less standard meat filling for stuffed vegetables, made with a lot of herbs and spices. It’s so delicious that you can bake the vegetables with no sauce around them, as in the recipe on page 492, or use one of the preparations on pages 445–447. You can add pine nuts and currants to this mixture if you like or make the vegetarian version that follows.