Seafood

Ever wish you could master restaurant-style egg toasts? Well now you can with this salty, smoky, creamy combo. Crème fraîche is the secret ingredient for a custardy scramble, and high-quality smoked fish and good bread are worth the splurge—they make all the difference here.

Meet your new favorite, cold-weather one-pan salmon dinner. It’s warm and creamy with coconut milk and just spicy enough with green curry paste, ginger, and garlic.

Bay scallops—which are smaller and sweeter than sea scallops—are found in estuaries up and down the Eastern Seaboard, from New England to the Mid-Atlantic region. Any of them will work here, but if you really want to pull out all the stops, search for those from Nantucket Bay, which are prized for their candylike succulence. Celery purée swirled with black truffle butter enhances the delicacy of the seafood.

A bright and spicy sauce works as both marinade for the shrimp and dressing for the citrus salad in these colorful rice bowls.

Broccoli stems are tender and delicious, but it’s important to cut away the dried-out base and peel the tough skin of thicker ones.

You need the fresh, soft, fiery red version of chorizo for this dish, the kind that bleeds out bright red-orange grease into the pot when you heat it.

A topping of salmon roe gives these deviled eggs an extra layer of flavor.

Cod and pollock are both great alternatives for the halibut.

Slow-roasting provides the best insurance for moist, super-flaky fish without the need for much tending—which means you can direct most of your attention elsewhere this Valentine’s Day.

Sometimes, mid-cooking, I like to jettison my plan and make a new, better plan. The trick is knowing when it’s better. I’m not saying I randomly hobble myself, cruelty-cooking-show style, it’s just that it’s exciting to change it up sometimes. And it surprises the family. Historically, some of the best jettison dinners at my house have started out as regular old pasta night and ended up as gather-around-the-skillet-with-bowls-and-bread night. This was one of those.

Searing scallops in the amber-hued fat rendered from cooking chorizo results in a gorgeously caramelized crust and gives the shellfish a wonderfully smoky flavor.

Nduja, a spicy salami now produced domestically, blends cured pork fat and chiles in a spreadable, meltable consistency. Combining it with lobster is transformative, taking this basic pasta Pomodoro to the next level.

Toast hazelnuts in a buttered skillet until the whole mix turns to a nutty golden elixir, then add lemon juice for a pop of freshness and spoon over perfectly crisped fish fillets.

Steam a mixture of corn, green beans, and tomatoes in a foil pouch alongside butterflied trout for an easy one-sheet-pan dinner.

For this popular Filipino breakfast, the eggplants are heavily charred before being battered with egg and pan-fried, making them smoky, creamy, crispy, and totally satisfying.