The leafy wild leeks that inspire euphoria and rage at the Greenmarket in early spring each year are absolutely delicious but pretty mild. Throwing them in a stir fry with everything else in your fridge is a waste; the flavor of the ramps will get overpowered. No, lately I’ve been thinking that they need as little interference as possible.

Lately I’ve been chopping them up a bit and then scrambling them with eggs. This is great on toast but even better on a corn tortilla with a bit of hot sauce or salsa; the sweet ramps will steal the show. They’re also great in polenta, or tossed with pasta. Click through for the recipe.

Scrambled Eggs with Ramps

Serves 2 (but doubles, triples, quadruples quite easily)

Ramp season is fleeting, so I try to buy as many as possible. Ramp Butter is a great way to save them past their short season, and Ricotta Spread with Ramps is great too, but lately my favorite is to simply scramble them with eggs. This makes a killer breakfast taco, but it’s also great simply served with a crusty piece of toast.

4 large eggs
2 tbsp. milk (optional)
1 bunch ramps, about ¼ lb.
butter or olive oil

Thoroughly rinse the ramps. Trim the root ends and separate the leafy greens from the stems. Cut the stems into roughly 1″ pieces. Roughly chop the greens.

Beat the eggs with the milk if using and salt and pepper in a small bowl. Stir in the ramp leaves and set aside.

Heat the olive oil or butter in a skillet (preferably nonstick) over medium-high heat. When hot, add the ramp stems and cook, stirring, for about 30 seconds to a minute. Add the beaten eggs and turn the heat down to low, stirring occasionally until the eggs are just set.

That’s it–season with salt and peper to taste if necessary and serve with toast, or in a soft corn tortilla with a bit of hot sauce. Enjoy.

When I was living in Cambridge, MA during college, I got a paperback copy of the previous iteration of How to Cook Everything: The Basics, which was just a totally bare bones version of the book. I was hooked. The recipes were easy, and after three years of eating like the college student I was, making myself a simple tomato sauce or some grilled chicken with a homemade marinade tasted practically revolutionary. When I graduated college, I graduated to the full version of How to Cook Everything, and this blog was born.

Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time with How to Cook Everything. I’d still recommend it without hesitation to any new cook looking to get started in the kitchen. It’s got simple, dependable recipes for, well, everything. But I find myself using it less and less. Because the real gift of How to Cook Everything is that eventually it sets you free from having to use it. You’ve made the tomato sauce, you’ve learned the techniques, taco nights and pizza parties have been had, and you’re ready for recipes that go beyond the basic. That’s not to say that there aren’t more complicated recipes in there, because there are. It’s just that eventually you want to branch out. It’s not you, Bittman, it’s me.

What I end up coming back to How to Cook Everything for is the basics of what to do with ingredients and how to do it. In other words: the technique. And the new How to Cook Everything: The Basics is at its heart a rock solid book devoted to technique. Everything’s here: the basic tools you need in your kitchen, and tools that you don’t necessarily need but are good to have around nonetheless. How to rinse a vegetable, how to hold a knife, peel, cut into chunks, how to chop, and mince and slice and measure,  how to boil and simmer and steam, and sautee and stir-fry and brown and braise and roast and bake and broil. The photos, which I usually hate in cookbooks (I find them intimidating) here are helpful, and they appear in each and every recipe. They’re not to show you what your dish would look like in a food stylist’s dream world, but rather what it’ll look like if you’re doing the steps right. And they’re imperfect. Imagine that: cookbook photographs that look pretty but still realistic.

So that’s it: How to Cook Everything is the best book to teach anyone the basics in the kitchen, but it looks to me now like How to Cook Everything: The Basics beats its big brother at its own game. And while I’m not going to throw out my treasured copy of How to Cook Everything anytime soon, I’ve also made room for this new edition on my shelf, because it’s so much more than a pared down version of the original. Stay tuned, as I’ll be posting some recipes from the new Basics over the next few weeks.

My admiration for her work led me to reach out to Melissa a few months back, and to my delight I found myself doing some freelance work on her blog over at melissaclark.net. Melissa’s been blogging recipes over there for years, but she wanted a page that would index all those recipes. As it turns out, there are over two hundred of them in all! I’m proud to tell you that as of today, that page is live on Melissa’s site, and there’s something for everyone on it.

To wit: this recipe for a stew of braised pork shoulder with tomatoes, cinnamon and olives, which appears in Cook This Now. Melissa posted on her blog ahead of the book’s release last fall. I made it recently for guests and can wholeheartedly say it’s one of those unbelievably clutch dinner party meals: easy, delicious, and stunning to behold on its bed of creamy polenta. Perhaps best of all, it lends itself to making ahead of time. Win-win.

So go check out Melissa’s new recipe index–200 recipes from soup to nuts, literally–and while you’re at it, vote for Cook This Now as People’s Choice in Food52′s Piglet tournament of cookbooks (it was knocked out of official competition in the first round by a phoned-in entry from Ina Garten which did Melissa pretty dirty, if you ask me).

For these I used toasted pumpkin seeds and dried cranberries, for their Christmas color scheme, and broken up pretzels, because I love any chocolate/pretzel combination. Recipe follows, adapted from this one from the Barefoot Contessa.

Chocolate Bark
Adapted from Ina Garten’s recipe for French Chocolate Bark

The recipe could just be written as “melt chocolate, drop stuff in it, let set,” but here’s a more detailed step-by-step. The toppings are completely variable–any combination of nuts, seeds, dried fruit, pretzels, chips, corn flakes, crushed up candy canes, will work.

-16 oz. semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, or a combination (Garten suggests half and half)
-1/4 c. toasted pumpkin seeds
-1/2 c. dried cranberries
-1 c. pretzels broken into roughly 1″ chunks

• Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water.
• Line a sheetpan with a silicone mat or a sheet of parchment paper. Pour the melted chocloate over the mat or parchment and spread to form into a rectangle.
• Sprinkle the seeds, cranberries and pretzel pieces over the chocolate. Set aside for at least 2 hours until firm.
• Cut or break the bark into whatever shape and size you like. Enjoy!

Soy Poached Shrimp with Greens and Tofu
Adapted from Mark Bittman’s Striped Bass Poached in Spicy Soy Sauce

⅓ to ½ cup soy sauce
2 teaspoons sugar
1 fresh chili (optional; dried is fine too), sliced
2 bunches of scallions (15-20 scallions or so), chopped
½ to 1 lb shrimp
1 bunch greens (anything works: chinese greens like gai lan are good, as are chard, beet greens, kale), roughly chopped
½ lb tofu, cut up into whatever shape you like

• Combine the soy sauce, ½ c. water, sugar and chili in a skillet large enough to hold the shrimp. Turn heat to medium high and bring to a boil.
• Add the shrimp. If necessary, add a bit more water so the shrimp are almost covered. Add the scallions and adjust the heat so the mixture bubbles but not furiously.
• Cook for about 2 minutes, turning after 30 seconds. Remove the shrimp to a dish and set aside.
• Add greens and tofu to the cooking liquid and cook, stirring occasionally, until the greens are wilted. Turn off the heat, return the shrimp to the pan, toss, and serve over rice.

When I see a weird vegetable at the farmer’s market, there are a few things I know I can always do. One of my favorites this time of year is to just cut it up, sautee it in some butter or oil, cover with water (or stock if you have it, but it’s not necessary) simmer until tender, and then puree with the immersion blender. This works with any vegetable, or combination of them. This one was parsley root, butternut squash, and leeks. Potato and leek is another good place to go with this, or carrot and ginger… the possibilities are endless.

And, I can now report that I’m a fan of parsley root. It’s a lot like celery root, but, you know, parsley-er.

Any Vegetable Soup
Adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

1 tablespoon butter or oil
1 pound any vegetable, washed, peeled, cored as needed and cut into 1-inch chunks (but really, don’t peel anything unless you absolutely have to)
4 cups water or stock (water’s just fine, really)
salt and pepper

Heat butter or oil over medium-high heat. When butter is melted or oil is hot, add the vegetables, stirring occasionally until they begin to soften, 5 minutes or so.

Add the stock, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low so the mixture simmers gently, cover, and cook until vegetables are soft and easily pierced with a fork, about 20 minutes.

Here’s the fun part: puree with a hand blender (you can also use a blender or food processor, but you will have much less fun). Serve hot, or refrigerate and reheat when ready to serve.

For my part, I brought an enormous batch of potato leek soup (secret additional ingredient: Jerusalem artichokes) and a new recipe that I’ve been working on, a carrot salad with miso and ginger. I figured that with all that meat and starch*, a bright, crunchy raw vegetable would be a welcome addition to the Thanksgiving table. It’s equally good on the side of a turkey sandwich. Recipe below.

Thanks to Sara and Ari for hosting such a wonderful Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for so much this year, way too much to list here, but having such a great family that I love spending time with is at the top of the list. Getting to watch that family expand and grow is just gravy. Pun intended. Sorry, I had to.

*This is no way meant to knock starch. I love you, starch. I will always be thankful for starch.

Carrot Salad with Miso and Ginger

This salad is a take on the salad you usually get at Japanese restaurants, with its addictive miso carrot dressing. I just took the carrot out of the dressing and made it the bulk of the salad. The bright sauce is adapted from a recipe in How to Cook Everything, and it tastes good on just about any vegetable, though carrots work especially well. You can grate the carrots by hand, but it’ll take forever, whereas if you do it in the food processor, this dish takes no time at all. This tastes great fresh, but even better after a few hours in the fridge, or better yet, a full 24 hours.

1 pound carrots, peeled and shredded with the grating disc of a food processor
1 tablespoon white or yellow miso
1 1/2 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon neutral oil, like grapeseed or vegetable
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
1 inch piece of ginger, finely grated, or more to taste
1 bunch scallions, thinly sliced

In a large bowl, whisk together the miso, vinegar, ginger, and oils. Add the carrots and toss to combine. Garnish with the scallions and serve.

Just about every one of those 700 looks good; the five or six I’ve made so far have been stellar. A lot of the recipes are easy enough to make when you get home from work, though a few are larger projects (looking at you, Charcuterie and Offal sections). Even when the recipes are easy, they’re as elegant as they are delicious. Red Swiss Chard (pg. 454, pictured above) is just chard, boiled, shocked under cold running water, drained and sauteed with butter. But it’s so much more than that. Same goes for Tomatoes Provencal (pg.463) or Tomato and Bread Gratin (pg. 466, more on that later). The Roast Chicken here (pg. 248, pictured below) is simple–roast with salt, pepper, olive oil–but it’s also a lesson in carving technique, a skill you can use with every other version of roast chicken you might make. All of these recipes leave you with a better understanding of proper technique, something that Pépin literally wrote the book on.

Speaking of technique, there’s a DVD with hours of Pépin’s technique instructions and demonstrations at hand whenever you need them. Pépin is a master–I would say the master–of TV cooking. It’s almost unfair. If the greatest TV chef of all time can just add a bunch of great video content to a cookbook, then how can anyone else compete with him? They can’t. If you’ve ever wanted to endlessly watch Pépin chop onions and garlic (I know I have), with the Essential Pépin DVD you can do just that.

When I finished roasting Pépin’s chicken, I popped in the DVD to see how Pépin recommends carving the bird. His method is ingenious, and while mine didn’t end up looking as beautiful as his, it was far and away the best carving job I’d ever done. Pépin’s method is better than Bittman’s, better thank Keller’s. Pépin always knows best. The end.

Finally, the book is beautifully written and illustrated. If you read The Apprentice, Pépin’s memoir, you know he’s a talented writer (if you didn’t read it, you should, as soon as possible–the man’s lived an incredible life stretching from kitchens run by his mother to cooking for French heads of state to running the commissary at Howard Johnson’s with Pierre Franey). Pépin’s also a talented artist, and his drawings and illustrations adorn the pages of this book, making it that much more beautiful.

So Essential Pépin is just that: essential. Every home cook should own it. I’ve gushed enough, so I’ll leave it here. Watch this space for many more recipes from Essential Pépin in coming months.