Citrus

Mackerel is a rich fish with fabulous texture and depth of flavor. Though it’s not traditional, preserved lemon adds a piquant, salty touch to a rustic pounded sauce. To make sure the potatoes are crispy when you serve the dish, grill the fish first and fry the potatoes right before serving. Parboiling the potatoes makes it easy to get them crispy, while ensuring they’re cooked through.

There’s nothing fancy about a whole, roasted fish—it’s just good. While the fish cooks, the herbs and lemon perfume the flesh, and the fish turns out moist and succulent with crisp skin. It doesn’t get much better. If you can’t find black bass, branzino, snapper, or rockfish would also work. This recipe is for one whole fish, but it’s just as easy to double the recipe if you’re having friends to dinner. Roast off a couple of fish, add a couple of other dishes, and let everyone share.

Fluke—often called “summer flounder” on the East Coast or hirame in Japan—is an extremely light and delicate fish. Because of its mild flavor, I like to pair it with this citrus relish, complementing, but not overpowering, the fish’s characteristics. For the baby leaves, you can use arugula, Italian parsley, microgreens, or whatever you can find and like. Feel free to vary the citrus in the relish as well, experimenting with grapefruit, blood oranges, or sweet Cara Cara oranges in the winter. Because fluke cooks so quickly, have your relish ready before you begin the fish. To make sure you get a nice crispy exterior on the fillets, use two sauté pans if necessary. Crowding the pan will cause the fish to steam instead of sear.

This riff on veal piccata is not a complicated dish, but it does have a few steps to it and requires some planning to allow the sweetbreads time to soak overnight. Poaching the sweetbreads in milk and aromatics before sautéing them ensures they’ll turn out sweet and meltingly tender. I prefer veal sweetbreads, though you can use lamb. Either one is usually sold in one-pound packs, with two large lobes per pack. If you don’t see them out on display—they’re usually not—ask the butcher if there are any in back, and make sure they are impeccably fresh. The delicate richness of the dish means that nothing more than boiled potatoes are needed as an accompaniment.

Many recipes that pair carrots with orange call for cooking the carrots with orange juice. Here, I use strips of peel instead, so that you get just a hint of orange, keeping the flavors bright. In the restaurants, we use Thumbelina carrots, a cute, round variety with incredible sweetness. Don’t go crazy chopping the mint—you don’t want to turn it into paste. Just do a few quick strokes with the knife, toss with the carrots, and serve right away. You might want to caution your guests not to eat the orange peel.

This salad is a stellar addition to a midwinter antipasto plate, full of bright flavors that seem to hint at warmer days ahead. In the short, dark days of a Seattle January, that’s especially welcome. Because of the salad’s simplicity, it’s important to use the heaviest, sweetest oranges you can find and use a firm, briny olive. Arbequinas or Gaetas are fine substitutes for the Taggiascas; mushy supermarket Kalamatas are not. Serve the salad shortly after you prepare it. As it sits, the flavor of the shallot continues to develop and the lovely balance of the salad is lost.

This lovely salad can slide from late winter into early spring when bouquets of radishes proliferate in the market. Some people find endive too harsh, but here the flavor is mellowed a bit and the leaves are given extra snap by a saltwater soak. This is a study in textures, with the silky endive accented by the crunch of the nuts, all lightly bound with a tart but delicate Meyer lemon dressing. Because of the egg yolk, the vinaigrette won’t last for more than two days in the fridge, but you’ll find lots of uses for any leftover dressing. Try tossing it with boiled Piccolo potatoes or use it on your favorite greens.

Maloreddus are delicate, saffron-infused pasta with a lovely golden hue and a hint of warmth from the saffron. They are especially good paired with fish or seafood, and lend themselves well to sweet and sour combinations, like this dish featuring a light, fresh tomato sauce accented with lemon and briny olives. You can find maloreddus in Italian specialty stores or through online sources.

This is a great dish to bridge the end of winter with the beginning of spring. The bite of the garlic and chile is balanced by the mild flavor of spring’s first onions. Long, oblong, and pretty, spring onions are the first indication to me that fresh garbanzos and nettles are on the way, signaling the end of butternut squash and other winter vegetables. If you can’t find cuttlefish, you may use fresh calamari instead, though the cavatelli is a nice balance for the size and texture of the cuttlefish.

This is a wonderful winter dish—fresh and simple with nothing to get between you and pure clam flavor. Steaming the clams first in a little white wine, then using that liquid in place of broth, infuses the rice with a briny essence that totally sings. Because of the star ingredient, you shouldn’t need to use much salt in the dish, and cheese here would be a no-no. A little butter at the end provides the perfect touch of richness, while a bit of lemon zest accents the clams perfectly.

Italians say that to ensure your octopus is tender, first you pound it on the dock as you bring it in from the boat, then you put a cork in the cooking pot. I don’t know what magical alchemic properties are supposed to be at work there, but I always put a cork in my pot, just to be sure. I like to use bigger octopi because I think they have more developed flavor. They’re a little chewier, but I don’t mind—that’s just part of the joy of octopus. Use the recipe as a guideline, and feel free to experiment with combinations of whatever aromatics you have on hand. As a variation, add 2 cups cooked corona beans to the octopus as it marinates.

If you love fried clams or a nice bowl of clam chowder, then eating clams on the half shell will be a revelation for you. Serving clams as a crudo plays up their assertive, concentrated clam flavor and guarantees tender meat. It’s easy, delicious, and a little bit different. If you don’t have baby fennel, you can use finely chopped fennel bulb. For a less spicy dish, you can split the chile lengthwise and remove the seeds and membrane first, then dice.

It’s no wonder that this intensely lemony custard pie, which is a close relative of chess pie, is a favorite of Southern seafood restaurants like the Catfish Hotel in Shiloh, Tennessee—it’s got just the sort of pucker-inducing, palate-cleansing properties you need to set you straight after a heavy meal of fried catfish and hushpuppies. In this version, I use Cornmeal Crust to play off the cornmeal in the custard.

Whenever I’m at the market during tomato season, I keep my eyes peeled for what the farmers call “ugly tomatoes.” You can buy them for a song because they’re bruised, misshapen, or ripe to the point of bursting, but that makes them perfect for canning or cooking. This sweet and savory tomato jam, which is equally at home on toast for breakfast or on a baguette with fresh mozzarella and baby greens for lunch, is one of my standards.

Delicate and shimmering red, molded tomato aspics are the stuff of ladies’ luncheons and afternoon teas, circa 1950. But when fresh tomatoes, garlic, and herbs step in for canned tomato juice, this old-school dish is transformed into a modern summertime must. Serve topped with a creamy dollop of Homemade Mayonnaise (page 280) or Buttermilk Green Goddess Dressing (page 284).

This recipe is a Foster family standard, a permanent fixture at holidays and other large family gatherings. Along with most other Southerners, I’ve been a huge fan of sweet potatoes for as long as I can remember, but in my case I think this sticky-sweet preparation may be the root of my obsession. When I make it today, I add fresh orange juice and zest to brighten the flavors and cut the sweetness just a hair, yielding what I think of as a grown-up version of this childhood favorite.

I often serve this dish when I have guests because it makes for such easy entertaining—something you’d never know from the complex combination of flavors that emerges as the red wine and orange-spiked pepper jelly melt into a sweet and spicy glaze over the heat of the grill. Don’t forget to budget at least two hours of marinating time before firing up the grill.

This exotically spiced curry of chicken, tomatoes, peppers, dried fruit, and nuts is proof of Southern food’s cosmopolitan roots. Served with steamed rice, slivered almonds, and fresh parsley, it is wonderfully bone-warming and fragrant.

The inspiration for this dish came from Paula Wolfert’s excellent version of “chicken under a brick,” and from my brand-new, heavy-bottomed cast-iron skillet. Chicken under a brick—what Wolfert calls Italian fried chicken—is a traditional Tuscan preparation in which chicken is weighted with a clay slab over dry heat. The weight of the slab drives the juices and rendered fat back into the chicken as it cooks, resulting in succulent meat with crackly, golden-brown skin. Well, I soon put two and two together, and chicken under a skillet was born. Just think of it as Southern fried chicken’s long-lost Italian cousin. Note that you’ll want to let the meat marinate for several hours prior to cooking to get the big flavors that make this simple dish shine.

I grew up on these tasty little fried cakes, which Granny Foster used to serve for breakfast with fried eggs and biscuits, or sometimes for supper along with mashed potatoes and coleslaw. Like most Southerners, Granny used canned salmon in her croquettes. I opt instead for freshly poached or grilled salmon, a move that allows the delicate, grassy flavor of the fish to come through. Crispy and satisfying (the name croquette comes from the French for “to crunch”), these easy treats are an excellent way to revitalize leftovers from last night’s salmon dinner, ensuring that the switch from canned to fresh fish does not necessarily sacrifice convenience.