Imagine a hot dog without mustard or relish or Thanksgiving turkey without stuffing or cranberry sauce. Side dishes bring color, taste, and variety to a meal; without them, our meals would be dreary affairs, indeed. In On the Side: More Than 100 Recipes for the Sides, Salads, and Condiments That Make the Meal, celebrated writer Jessica B. Harris provides mouthwatering recipes for salads and slaws, pickles, salsas, chutneys, relishes, and savory sauces that will liven up any plate. From delicate condiments to hearty side dishes, from mild to piquant, all-American or distinctly exotic, there are accompaniments to suit every meal and every palate.

All it takes is one side to transform a dish into a meal. Recipes such as classic Cole Slaw, North African Olive and Lemon Salad, and Jamaican Cucumber Salad are a welcome break from plain garden salads. Easy English Pickles, Tomato Relish, Cherry Ketchup, and Pineapple-Rum Mustard redefine the flavors of American favorites and will make the ordinary hamburger come to life. Even salsas get a new twist in On the Side: Pomegranate Salsa, Passionfruit-Peach Salsa, and Roast Corn Salsa are a few variations to try with your quesadillas or grilled meats and fish. Also featured are substantial vegetable sides that offer a taste for every season: Artichokes with Lemon Garlic Sauce and Grilled Asparagus with Shaved Parmesan for the spring; Corn on the Cob with Herbed Pimentón Butter and Ratatouille for the summer; Braised Celery Root and Leeks with Lemon Butter for fall; and Three-Root Gratin and Baked Turnips with Sweet Potatoes, Apples, and Dried Cranberries in the winter. Year-round delicacies include Carrots with Orange Juice and Ginger and Artery Cloggers -- mashed potatoes with roasted garlic, bacon, and cream.

In addition to the recipes gathered from family, friends, and travel, Harris informs, educates, and entertains us with essays about the ingredients throughout, blending a dash of history and culture into the mix.

Looking for culinary inspiration? Let this refreshing collection spice up your table.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A Few Words on the Side

Sides make the meal. Most of the color, taste, and variety of a meal come from their presence. It's impossible to imagine the Thanksgiving turkey without the trimmings of candied sweet potatoes, creamed onions, cranberry sauce, and the individual additions that each family brings. A New England clambake without the corn and potatoes is simply clams and lobster. Even a humble hamburger reverts to a slab of chopped meat without the coleslaw, lettuce, tomato, and pickle (not to mention the mustard, ketchup, and relish!).

In restaurants, it often seems that tiny elfin hands have labored until each plate looks like an Arcimboldo still life and there are few separate side dishes. In the home kitchen, things are different. Sides rule! They transform the mundane into the magnificent and round out the meal.

In my twenty-five years of writing about food and my fifty-six-plus years of eating it, I must confess that while I am a confirmed carnivore and adore fish and poultry, what really keeps me going is an overwhelming desire to eat the food to the side of the protein. This book is the result of that love. It is also the result of decades of collecting interesting and innovative side dishes from around the world that are simple and flavorful. These are honest dishes that may be as simple as a new twist on string beans that I picked up in a Paris kitchen, or a North African way with tomatoes, or a Brazilian hot sauce that adds extra zest to sautéed greens. Some recipes are from my family and friends, others are variations on international classics which I developed during my nightly adventures in the kitchen, and still others come from my travels around the world researching culinary history. They all are simple to prepare and they add zest and color to the plate, vibrancy to the meal, and most important, flavor to the table.

Vegetable side dishes in the European tradition, though, are not always a part of other culinary traditions. Side dishes may come to the diner as snacks, as road food, or even as a meatless main dish. I've taken the liberty here of using the European format of service and calling the seasonal selection of vegetable dishes sides.

Salads range from the simple green salad to a pull-out-all-of-the-stops potato salad complete with olives and dill pickles. Again, salads are not always served as a separate course in other cultures, if they come to the table at all. They can appear at virtually any place in the meal from beginning to end.

There's no such problem with condiments. Here, world dining traditions offer a range of relishes and pickles, salsas and chutneys, hot sauces, mustards, ketchups, and more.

Each of the book's five chapters begins with its own presentation of the sides discussed, so read straight through or flip and skip. When you are finally ready to cook, turn to "A Few Notes on Ingredients" on page 5, as well as to "Mail-Order Sources" on page 201, for advice on choosing and finding ingredients. Whether you're a partisan of the tastefully mild or delight in the astonishingly piquant, you're sure to find something that will allow you to have just a little bit more on the side.

New York, New Orleans, and Oak Bluffs,

August 2003

Copyright © 2004 by Jessica B. Harris

Guyanese Curried Cabbage and Potatoes

Serves 4 to 6

If it's in Guyana and it's a vegetable, it will probably end up being curried at one time or another. This is a simple yet delicious way to prepare the winter cabbage instead of the usual braising and boiling. It also brings home a bit of the tropics on a dreary winter day. Let the vegetables cook down a bit so that you can get some of the edges of the cabbage caramelized.

1 tablespooon Madras curry powder

1 teaspoon cider vinegar

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 small cabbage (approximately 1 pound), shredded

2 cups peeled, diced Yukon gold potatoes

Prepare a paste with the curry powder and the vinegar. Heat the oil in a heavy skillet and cook the paste over high heat for 1 minute, then add the cabbage and potatoes and cook for an additional minute. Lower the heat, cover, and continue to cook for about 15 minutes or until the cabbage is cooked and the potatoes are fork-tender. (You may need to add some water but the cabbage will release water as it cooks, so don't add too much.) Serve hot with Plain White Rice.

Copyright © 2004 by Jessica B. Harris

Orange and Radish Salad

Serves 4 to 6

Moroccan salads are worthy of an entire chapter by themselves. Ranging from the savory to the slightly sweet, they offer a range of flavors. This variation on the classic orange and radish salad combines the sweetness of the orange-flower water, confectioner's sugar, and the oranges with the bite of the grated radish for an unusual but refreshing taste.

6 large red globe radishes

4 large navel oranges

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice

1½ teaspoons orange-flower water

1 teaspoon confectioners' sugar

Wash the radishes thoroughly. Cut off and discard the green tops and roots and grate or shred the radishes into a glass salad bowl. Peel the oranges and segment them, removing all membrane. Reserve 2 tablespoons of the juice. Place the oranges in the bowl with the grated radish. Mix the orange juice, orange-flower water, and sugar together in a small glass bowl, and pour over the orange and radish mix. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside for 30 minutes so that the flavors mix. Serve at room temperature.

Copyright © 2004 by Jessica B. Harris

Easy English Pickles

Makes about 2 pints

This is a variant of a recipe I discovered in an English pamphlet on how to make soups, sauces, pickles, and chutneys. I can't find a date for it, but the language and the graphics and the fact that it cost tuppence (2d) make me suspect that it may date from the 1930s. The recipe is simple, surprisingly spicy, and is perhaps a remnant of England's colonial legacy.

2 cups cider vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons dark brown sugar

1 jalapeño chilli, minced, or to taste

1 pound Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and coarsely chopped

1 pound Vidalia onions, peeled and thinly sliced

Place the vinegar, salt, sugar, and chilli in a non-reactive saucepan. Add the apples and onions and bring the mixture to a boil. Cook for five minutes. Spoon it into canning jars and cover tightly. This is a quick pickle and should be kept refrigerated. If you want to make a large batch, preserve according to proper canning procedures.

Copyright © 2004 by Jessica B. Harris

Wortel Sambal

Serves 6

Like so many other condiments, sambals have traveled far afield from their Southeast Asian home. This carrot sambal was no doubt brought by the Cape Malay to South Africa, where it accompanies barbecues and curries.

1 pound carrots, peeled and trimmed

2 green cardamom pods

1 dried hot chilli, to taste

1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

1 teaspoon sea salt

1½ cups sugar

¾ cup distilled white vinegar

Grate the carrots on the large holes of a hand grater or by putting them through the medium grater blade of a food processor. Remove all of the seeds from the cardamom pods and grind the seeds into powder in a spice mill along with the dried chilli. Place the carrots, spice mixture, ginger, salt, sugar, and 1¿2 cup of water in a 3-quart non-reactive saucepan and bring to a boil. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. Add the vinegar, lower the heat, and cook for an additional 30 minutes or until thick, stirring occasionally to make sure that the mixture does not stick to the saucepan. When the sambal has thickened, spoon it into a bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Serve chilled.

Copyright © 2004 by Jessica B. Harris

Cherry Ketchup

Makes two 8-ounce jars

I love cherries and cannot get enough of them in season. One year I purchased $50 worth before heading off to Martha's Vineyard, where cherries are even more expensive than in New York City. I found that my bumper crop was going bad by the third week and thought I'd better do something; this is what I came up with. If you want a smoother, more ketchup-like consistency, put the mixture through a sieve after cooking. Be careful not to overcook this ketchup; if you do, you'll have a cherry chutney. Remove it when it seems a bit too runny to be a ketchup. You'll need about a pound and a half of cherries for the pulp, but the exact amount will depend on how juicy your cherries are. This ketchup is great with grilled or roasted meats.

1½ pounds bing red cherries, pitted

1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon cider vinegar

1 tablespoon jalapeño balsamic vinegar

¾ cup sugar

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

Pinch of ground cinnamon

Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Prepare the cherry pulp by placing the pitted cherries in a food processor and pulsing until they become a thick paste. You want 2 cups of pulp. Combine the pulp, vinegars, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a non-reactive saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil, lower the heat, and cook for about a half an hour, or until the mixture is almost the thickness of ketchup. Spoon into sterilized jars and seal.

Copyright © 2004 by Jessica B. Harris