Seafood

One-pot meals are low maintenance, easy to clean up, and offer lots of great flavors in one vessel. You can make something stewy on top of the stove, or layer everything in a handsome baking dish and use the oven. Here, haddock or cod is roasted with tomatoes, onions, and potatoes tossed with olive oil, oregano, and herbs. Before you cook it, marinate the fish in the herbs. While that sits, layer yellow potatoes, a chopped Spanish onion, and tomatoes in the baking dish. Roast until fork tender.

Tartines are essentially French open-face sandwiches. In this nibble, crunchy toasts are topped with roasted Spanish piquillo peppers and rich, savory sardines. A few drops of spicy sriracha sauce give this sophisticated starter a bit of heat.

What to Drink:

With the tartines, pour a refreshing Albariño, a white wine from Spain. We like the Carballal 2008 "Sete Cepas" from Rías Baixas ($15). The wine's mineral notes are balanced beautifully by stone-fruit flavors.
 

Vegetables from the supermarket salad bar get an Asian spin. Start with purchased wonton soup, and serve a mixed green salad with ginger vinaigrette alongside the rice. Sliced pineapple with coconut sorbet is the perfect finish. Look for hoisin at Asian markets and in the Asian foods section of most supermarkets.

To ensure even-sized pieces of fish, we prefer to buy a whole center-cut fillet and cut it into four pieces. If a skinless whole fillet is unavailable, follow the recipe as directed with a skin-on fillet, adding 3 to 4 minutes to the cooking time in step 2. Remove the skin after cooking (see instructions below). This recipe will yield salmon fillets cooked to medium. If you prefer rare salmon (translucent in the center), reduce the cooking time by 2 minutes, or until the salmon registers 110 degrees in the thickest part.

Japanese breadcrumbs and shredded coconut give these shrimp a crispy, crunchy crust.

You can grill, saute, or broil these shrimp, which are still in their shells. In winter, the broiler takes only a few minutes. If you have a nice-looking cast-iron skillet, set it right on the table. Peel the shrimp at the table, which is messy but fun.

GUMBO, the Southern stew, is like many regional dishes: there are nearly as many interpretations as there are cooks. Most include the common Louisiana trinity of vegetables: green peppers, celery and onion.

Some include meat, often a spicy sausage like andouille, in addition to or in place of shellfish. And while some gumbos rely on okra as a thickener, others use a roux, a combination of flour and fat cooked until brown and tasty.

Start with pear slices wrapped in prosciutto; offer a radicchio and fennel salad and breadsticks alongside the pasta, and rich tiramisè to end the meal.

Cookbook author Page Bingham says that in the Shan region, a dish like this shrimp preparation is eaten with the fingers - red chilies and all. If the dish seems too hot, use fewer chilies, and when it’s time to serve the shrimp, push the chilies aside.