• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

notes on finishing ••• When we talk about “finishing” a dish, we’re really talking about garnishing it. But somehow the word garnish implies an ingredient that’s on the side, that’s optional. We think the grace notes we typically garnish a dish with—olive oil, flaky salt, citrus zest—are important. They make wholesome food extraordinary, especially when you’re cooking quickly and monastically to put nutrition on the table: a pot of rice, a plate of steamed vegetables.

And you need not spend a fortune in a gourmet store to finish food the way the pros do. Taste around the marketplace and settle on one top-notch olive oil and one salt that you really love, and get comfortable and happy with your zesting technique. Here’s what we do:

OLIVE OIL We cook and make salad dressing with supermarket brands of olive oil. But for finishing a dish, we always have on hand one premium-quality extra-virgin oil with fruity, peppery flavor and a luminous green color for drizzling over foods. New York–based Fairway Market has oils from Italy, Spain, Mexico, and California at bargain prices; the $16 liter of one of our favorites, made from Arbequina olives that grow in Catalonia, lasts almost six months.

SALT Some years back, we wrote a story about salts from around the world, and we bought nearly $300 worth from India, Peru, Hawaii, and Denmark, to name a few. After sampling all those salts, and more since, we’ve never found a better or more versatile finishing salt than Maldon salt, harvested from the Blackwater River near Maldon, England. These thin, pyramidal crystals of salt have a gentle aquatic tang; a pinch is all that’s required to bring out the flavor of a dish and add an appealing crunch. An 81⁄2-ounce box of Maldon salt costs about $7 and typically lasts us eight months. It’s available in most cookware stores.

CITRUS ZEST Citrus zest is an intensely flavorful finishing ingredient and it costs next to nothing. A fine-gauge Microplane grater is a cheap, wonderful tool for creating a shower of small flecks of orange zest—or hard cheese, nutmeg, or cinnamon for that matter—in a flash. The resulting zest will be so small, it will seem to disappear into a dish—especially those with dressings or oils—but will provide big flavor. If you don’t have a Microplane grater and just can’t tolerate another tool in the kitchen (or if you want the zest to add visual color to a dish), cut broad chips of zest (not the pith, just the very surface of the citrus skin) with a paring knife, then slice them into thin strips before scattering over your dish.

ROASTED PARSNIPS WITH MINT

serves 4 • TIME: 30 minutes

Although gardeners mostly resent mint for its ability to take over the territory, we use so much in our cooking that it never has a chance to get very far (and unless we get a really hard freeze, it survives year-round in planters!).

We love mint. The flavor is so chlorophyllic, sweet, and sunny, it seems to promise good times ahead. In this recipe, mint transforms a sturdy autumnal root vegetable into something springlike.

We cut our parsnips into 2-inch “rods” for a couple reasons: they cook more quickly, and they’re easier to eat. Serve yourself a generous portion on the first go-round because this dish disappears fast.

2 pounds parsnips or other sturdy root vegetables, such as turnips or rutabagas, trimmed

7 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon kosher salt

¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 bunch scallions (6 to 8 scallions), roots trimmed, white and green parts cut into 3-inch lengths

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons finely chopped shallot

1 clove garlic, minced

½ cup finely chopped fresh mint

1 Heat the oven to 400°F.

2 Peel the parsnips and cut them into 2- to 3-inch-long segments. Slice each piece lengthwise to make rods that are roughly ⅓ inch in diameter. (If using turnips or rutabagas, slice them crosswise into disks ⅓ inch thick, then cut them into pieces about 2 to 3 inches long and ⅓ inch wide.) Place the