Shellfish

Just as easy and fun to cook as they are to eat, mussels deserve a spot in your weeknight dinner rotation.

This is a great meal to help you clean out your fridge. Use whatever veggies you have on hand! A cast-iron skillet will help the rice brown and fry to a crispy coating at the bottom of the dish.

Cooking on a bed of salt helps evenly conduct the high heat and infuse the shrimp with seasoning.

Warm, toasty, buttered rolls are key. If you can't find New England-style buns, trim 1/4" from both sides of standard hot dog buns to remove the crust and expose more surface area.

This is one time when the shrimp should be served with their shells on— messy, yes, but utterly delicious.

Serve the shrimp on toast to soak up the delicious pickling liquid.

Using the best and freshest crabmeat you can get your hands on makes all the difference in these lightly battered and totally delicious fritters from La Petite Grocery, a new-school NOLA bistro.

Granny Smith apples are ideal for this dish: Their sweet-tart juice complements the rich scallops, and they keep their shape when cooked.

With the rise of the Italian and Portuguese populations in Rhode Island's fishing communities in the middle of the nineteenth century came the introduction of the tomato into traditional clam chowder. By the twentieth century, this new version came to be called Manhattan clam chowder (some historians say that it was also called Coney Island clam chowder and Fulton Market clam chowder). It is believed that disdainful New Englanders named the red-stained chowder after Manhattan because they believed New Yorkers were the only ones crazy enough to add tomato to a pristine white chowder.

She-crab soup might just be this city's most overworked culinary icon—so much so that in restaurants of quality in Charleston, you can detect more than a few chefs assiduously avoiding it. But an expertly made she-crab soup is a rare pleasure at home, and should be a part of every cook's repertoire. When we were in our teenage years, the soup seemed extra special because it's seasoned with sherry and traditionally served with a cruet of the fortified wine, the latter to pass around the table in case you wanted to add an extra jolt. But she-crab soup isn't about the sherry (and in fact, we've come to realize that too often the sherry overpowers the crab), it's about the roe; and we don't think we'd ever truly reckoned with how important that roe is—coupled with the freshest crab meat you can find, of course—until the recent spring day we picked and cleaned an entire bushel of crabs (eighty, give or take) in a sitting. Since female crabs with roe inside are most prevalent in the spring, we found crab roe inside many of the adult females, called "sooks," as we cleaned them, after cooking. When you remove the carapace (or top shell) from the body of the crab, the crab roe—if it's there—will appear as a mass of bright orange in the middle of the body, and sometimes you may also find more roe tucked in the sharp left and right points of the carapace. The roe has an earthy-briny flavor, and adds a pale orange color to this soup. In our recipe, we blend it into the soup itself and also use a portion to garnish each bowl. Is it possible to buy crab roe alone? Unfortunately, no. So when we make this soup now, we buy picked crab meat and a half-dozen female crabs with roe from our local market. Any fish market that takes the time to sell hard-shell blue crabs will know how to spot a female with crab roe, because the roe makes the underside of the carapace appear light orange. It really is worth going to the trouble to find the real deal; you won't be disappointed! Regarding the sherry: recently we've taken to giving each guest his or her own shot glass full of fino sherry (one of the most delicate expressions of the fortified wine) to drink as a paired beverage, instead of sending a cruet around the table.

New potatoes are freshly dug and have tender skins; wash them gently so that they don't tear. If they're hard to find, any small potato or fingerling variety will work.

If you've never made a savory custard, now's the time. Start with this minimal and delicate Japanese version, studded with fresh peas and tender shrimp.

This stew uses bottled clam juice, a smart shortcut to a robust broth.

If you forget to thaw the shrimp in the morning, set the bag in a large bowl filled with cold water. It will defrost in minutes. One cup of dry rice will yield 3 cups cooked; leftover rice, which is slightly dried out, makes the best stir-fries.

For a simple but elegant winter holiday meal, look no further than this Italian classic.

This one-pan shrimp dinner is just the thing for a busy weeknight when you want something warm, but also light and fresh.

Mussels, halibut and shrimp flavored with chicken broth and white wine makes an outstanding fish soup that’s ready from the start in 30 minutes.

Want to impress your guests? Then whip up a batch of these delectable puff-pastry wrapped shrimp stuffed with a mix of cheese, bacon and parsley. They’re superb!

The subtle seasonings in this simple stew won't overwhelm the delicate lobster meat.

This recipe works best with medium to large oysters. Have your fishmonger shuck them for you.