Steam

When we added Earl Grey ice cream to our trucks' offerings in 2009, New Yorkers went mad for it. Not surprisingly—black tea, combined with bergamot oil, cuts through the summer heat about as well as anything. We use a high-quality loose tea from our favorite tea brand, Rishi, which uses pure Italian bergamot citrus oil (and not bergamot flavoring), to make the most intensely fragrant Earl Grey tea ice cream.

When I put these ingredients in my rice cooker, I knew the flavors would complement each other, but I wondered what the dish would look like. It was lovely! The soft, melting goat cheese mingled with the asparagus and creamy eggs. The frittata makes a great light supper or lunch dish; serve it with a fruit salad.

This risotto is dotted with beautiful green spring vegetables and makes a lovely vegetarian lunch or dinner. Delicious with a roasted beet and arugula salad, it's simple to make. There is no arduous stirring; the rice cooker takes care of everything.

(Baha) Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Paula Wolfert's book Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco. Wolfert also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. If you really love the taste of lamb, you will love this dish. It's a pity that we Americans know so little about steaming meats; just as steamed vegetables keep their original flavors, so do steamed chickens and lamb. If you don't have a steamer, use a couscousière or a colander with a tight-fitting lid that fits snugly over a kettle. Some people think that steamed lamb looks unattractive (though no one denies that it's incredibly good). If you feel this way you may brown the meat quickly in butter or oil at the end, or roast it at high heat until it browns. Steamed food should be eaten the moment it is ready, when it is at its peak: if left too long, it will dry out.

Steaming is back! The vinegar-and-spice-infused liquid flavors the beets as they cook.

Prep your green beans quickly; stack a handful of them together on a cutting board and trim the stem ends off the whole stack at once.

You can also make this dish with littleneck or cherrystone clams instead of mussels.

To check if the fish is done, press on the spot right behind the head: If it feels firm and a thin knife inserted there reveals flaky flesh, you're good to go.

Clams are inexpensive, plentiful, easy to cook, and delicious. And you barely need a recipe—once they open, they're done.

Shrimp absorbs the flavors of a marinade rapidly, making this quick entrée ideal for a busy weeknight. Steaming gently cooks the shrimp and reduces the likelihood of overcooking. Regular coconut milk offers the best flavor for this dish, as the taste of light coconut milk is too subtle. I often serve it over brown rice or whole wheat noodles.

Often the last thing people in the North and Northeast of Thailand do before bed is put raw grains of sticky rice in a pot, cover them with water, and leave them to soak. This is sticky rice country, and a day without sticky rice is almost unthinkable. Also called glutinous rice, it has a different starch composition than varieties like jasmine. I'm not qualified to explain the world of amylopectin and amylose starches, so suffice it to say that the glossy cooked grains of sticky rice are particularly chewy and stick to one another in clumps, yet still remain distinct. It's a magical thing. Served in baskets, either one per person or as a mountainous mound to be passed around, the grains of sticky rice form moldable masses. Practiced diners snatch off a gumball-size piece, reflexively fashion it into a sort of spoon shape, and use it to grab a taste of whatever else is on the table. In these baskets or in bamboo tubes, workers carry this rice with them into the fields and forests, a portable, edible eating implement. While you could argue that so-called "steamed jasmine rice" isn't steamed at all but rather boiled, sticky rice is actually steamed. In the Northeast, it typically goes into a bamboo basket; in the North, it's traditionally prepared in a clay pot with a perforated bottom, though today the pot is often aluminum. The basket or pot is set over a pot-bellied vessel filled with boiling water and the steam cooks the grains, already swollen from soaking, in just 15 minutes or so. The process is easy enough for uninitiated cooks. It just takes a little practice to get right.

Editor's note: Use this recipe to make Chef David Chang's Bo Ssäm. Japanese short-grain white rice is the only rice we make. We, like all restaurants and many home cooks, use a rice cooker to prepare it—it's just that much easier and more reliable than cooking rice on the stove. Here are directions for both methods.

If you don't have a steamer basket, improvise: Place a ramekin in the bottom of the pot and prop a dinner plate on top so steam can circulate around it.

Here, cauliflower lightens traditional mashed potatoes and blends in seamlessly. A touch of butter is all you need to make them rich and sumptuous. Steaming the vegetables instead of boiling them helps preserve their vitamin C.

Benefits: Heart + Metabolism My mother innovated constantly to satisfy her two sons' demanding palates, so she adapted quinoa with brown rice to make one of our all-time favorite foods: sushi. Once called "Inca Gold" due to its stamina-building properties, quinoa contains all the essential amino acids, rendering it a complete protein food. Its high manganese content supplies the body's production of superoxide dismutase, an enzyme that protects against free radical damage to your energy factory. Consider this an energizing longevity recipe!