Chipotles in Adobo Sauce:

Chipotles are jalapeños that have been smoked and dried. Chipotles stewed in adobo sauce—tomato, paprika, onions, garlic, bay, oregano and vinegar—make for a warm and smoky condiment with a tough of sour. Cans of chipotles in adobo sauce are readily available in the Mexican section of your supermarket. Though the cans are small, a little of this stuff goes a long way, so it’s not unusual for a partial can to become a long-term resident of your refrigerator. The residual peppers can be frozen to lengthen their shelf life, but better yet, learn to use them more frequently. You can use chipotles to spike your ketchup or season your Bloody Mary. Spread them sparingly on a grilled cheese or use them as a rub for just about any grilled meat.

Medium-Rare Hamburgers:

One of the restaurants that we’ve opened over the years was Ben’s at the Franklin Institute. It was designed to provide familiar food to the families visiting Philadelphia’s great museum of science and technology. Ben’s was not our usual sort of restaurant. We were there because we were great caterers, and the Institute wanted a single food-service operator to handle both their private catering and public restaurants. But I maintained that if we were going to do this, I wanted to do it to my standards. On opening day, I decided to work the grill, determined to show that hamburger need not be gray and over cooked. As lunch began, I turned out several score of perfectly cooked medium-rare burgers. Soon enough, an avalanche of hamburgers appeared back on the warmers, returned by upset parents who wanted food well-cooked, the way their fast-food-nation children expected. I surrendered. Sometimes, it’s okay to give people exactly what they want.