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Answers by James Kenji Lopez-Alt, Author of The Food Lab, on Quora.
A: Simple but perfect salads! I keep a couple bottles of different vinaigrettes in my fridge at all times so a good salad is just a stop at the grocery store away. It's really important to make your vinaigrette properly so that it adheres to the leaves and seasons them without turning them greasy or limp. Stay away from the store-bought stuff! Southeast Asian salads are excellent for making meals out of because you combine so many different textures and flavors. Like this Issan-style steak salad(great for leftovers!) and this Spicy Thai-Style Pomelo, Green Bean, and Zucchini Salad.
Stir-frying is probably the technique I use most often and I've got a
I like this Stir-Fried Lo Mein With Charred Cabbage, Shiitake, and Chives, and also this takeout-style kung pao chicken
I've also been more into pasta recently (especially when it's sauced right) though my doctor told me to cut it out so I'll probably cut back. It's strange, I didn't eat much pasta growing up but man, is it good when it's good. It's so often mediocre though unfortunately.
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A: Keep a pepper mill and a salt cellar filled with kosher salt by your stovetop or counter at all times. It'll remind you that seasoning is the most important thing when it comes to cooking!
Instead of getting more gadgets, ask yourself what you do the most in the kitchen each day and upgrade those components. Most likely that's cutting things with a knife and working around your cutting board. If you're using a crappy knife, you're slowing yourself down every day and that's going to make cooking more of a chore in the long run. Get yourself a decent knife and a GOOD cutting board.
Put down that stamped blade, plastic-handled, poorly balanced thing that keep getting bafflingly good reviews fro otherwise respectable publications. Those Victorinox Forschner Fibrox things are built to give you long-lasting poor knife skills. They're cheap, but for only $15 more you can get a Tojiro DP Gyutou, a far superior knife in every respect from balance to weight to craftsmanship. And it'll last you longer.
Get a nice large cutting board and stop chasing your food around the counter. Give yourself some room to work!
Also get aamazon.com bench scraper so that you can transfer prepared food to bowls or pans without dulling the edge of your knife (don't do that scrapey knife thing!)
Finally, work clean. That means every time you finish one task, clean up all traces of it before moving on to the next. You don't want to be chopping parsley on a board that is overtaken by onion scraps, garlic peels, and bell pepper seeds.
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A: The mortar and pestle!
Everybody should have one, and I mean it. There's no better (or faster) tool for grinding spices (if you include clean up time, it's way faster than an electric spice grinder). It's amazing at extracting flavor from moist aromatics like garlic and chilies for everything from guacamole to Thai curry pastes and Indian curry blends topesto. I also use it for better flavor in sauces like this Thai sweet chili sauce or allioli or rouille, etc. It's great for grinding nuts like in this peanut soup.
It'll do 80% of the things most people use food processors and spice grinders for, and it does them better.