Shellfish

Imagine eating mussels in their purest form. One bite of this dish and you’ll feel like you’re at sea. Quickly steamed in a rich seaweed broth, the mussels here are simply amazing. Sticky rice is great for soaking up the sauce, although I also like slurping it straight from the mussel shells.

With both fennel seeds and fresh fennel, you get an intensely fragrant dish. I can’t think of a simpler or faster dinner. With good crusty bread for soaking up the juices and a simple salad, you’re all set. Look for small Prince Edward Island mussels—they’re my favorite.

The beauty of this dish is the butter and soy combination. I dress a fresh green salad with a light, lemony soy sauce vinaigrette, then top it with shrimp coated in a creamy beurre blanc. To marry the two elements, I use champagne vinegar in place of the traditional white wine for a sharper beurre blanc.

Cold soup and hot shrimp—this is a fantastic combination on a warm night. Blending the honeyed sweetness of this summer melon with intensely savory vegetables makes this dish incredibly refreshing. And I give the hot, spicy shrimp a hit of freshness by grilling finely sliced mint right onto them.

The ginger syrup for the grapefruit intensifies the citrus flavor while adding a bright yet subtle heat that cuts through the richness of the cakes and avocado.

There are few things better than a good Maine lobster. With this technique, I preserve the taste of the sea by cooking the meat in its own juices. The secret? Cut the lobsters in half and balance the shells so that they capture all of the cooking juices. If you have a wood-burning oven, now is the time to use it.

At the height of summer, I’m always thinking of new ways to combine farmer’s market vegetables. Eggplants and peppers are a natural pair, and I like to highlight their different textures here. I roast the eggplants until they almost collapse, but quick-char the peppers to keep their crunch while giving them a smoky flavor. Perfectly seared scallops tie the two textures and flavors together.

My take on linguine vongole includes a lot of vegetables for an added freshness. I also use clam juice, as well as the traditional wine, for a more complex sauce.

One weekend in Waccabuc, I was looking for something to snack on. I smeared some garlic aïoli on grilled slices of bread and topped it with some crab. It hit the spot, so I decided to turn it into a complete sandwich with a little chile and herbs. This is a great use of fennel fronds, which usually end up in the trash. Dill works just as well, too.

I love to present this in martini glasses like an old-school shrimp cocktail. The sauce has the horseradish bite of the classic, but with a juicy, sweet freshness from the peach. Traditionally, the shrimp would be chilled first, but I serve them warm for a hit of hot and cold at the same time in each bite.

I like to serve this family-style: Guests spoon the crab onto the toasts just before eating, so the bread stays crisp. At once creamy and spicy, this starter tastes best with an aperitif like champagne, rosé champagne, or a Grüner Veltliner.

This quiche is always one of my first picks for a summer brunch or lunchtime treat. As a New Englander, I am lucky enough to be spoiled with regular access to fresh lobster. I’m also the first to admit that the process of cooking and cleaning lobster can be somewhat arduous. To save time, I recommend purchasing fresh lobster meat (as opposed to a whole lobster) from your local seafood purveyor. Your guests will never believe how simple this elegant tasting quiche is to make.

I discovered this pie while in Maine on summer vacation and could hardly wait to get back to my own kitchen to re-create it. It offers all of the comfort of Chicken Pot Pie (page 153), but with a rich, elegant lobster twist. It’s hard to go wrong with chunks of lobster immersed in a creamy sauce and flaky pastry.

A few months after the Shop opened we got a call from the Food Network asking if we would be interested in being guests on Big Daddy’s House with host Aaron McCargo, Jr. They asked if we could develop a new meatball for their Thai-themed episode. The recipe, which captures all of the fresh, wonderful flavors of Southeast Asia, was a big hit on the show and in the Shop as well. Be careful not to chop the herbs too finely and feel free to add extra chiles if you prefer your meatballs extra spicy. The garnish—crunchy peanuts, basil, and grated carrots hit with rice wine vinegar and soy sauce—is a killer. Serve it all with Peanut Sauce (page 67, optional).

Call them meatballs or call them crab cakes. Either way, they’re an addictive hit. The succulent sweetness of crab is paired with classic Old Bay Seasoning, but it gets a texture twist with the addition of crunchy, salty potato chips. This is the perfect party snack or starter, and it can be thrown together and ready in under fifteen minutes. Serve these balls skewered with toothpicks, with our Classic Tomato Sauce (page 56) or with tartar sauce, or toss them with pasta and tomato sauce for a hearty seafood pasta.

Delicate and unusual, shrimp and pancetta combined into a sausage is an example of the delightful ways in which seafood and pork can glamorize each other, here in ravioli made easy to execute using store-bought wonton wrappers for the pasta. Edamame (fresh soybeans) and fava beans (broad beans), both Old World beans, can be used interchangeably in this recipe. Both are almost meaty and bright green, and provide similar vivid leguminous presence in dishes that employ them. However, practically speaking, edamame have the advantage because they are available already shelled in supermarket freezer sections in all seasons. Favas, in contrast, are mainly spring to early summer and fall fare, and they are a chore to prepare, requiring first shelling and then peeling each bean after immersing in boiling water for 1 or 2 minutes to loosen the bitter-tasting skins. (A side note: if you are using fava beans and purchasing them at a farmers’ market, you can probably also pick up some fava leaves. As our vegetable horizons expand more and more, they have become available and are quite tasty as a green for a soup such as this one or tossed into a salad.) Shrimp and pancetta sausage can also be made into small balls and dropped into a chicken or vegetable broth for a substantial appetizer or light first course. Or, you can use it to top small cooked and halved artichokes, then generously sprinkle the sausage with bread crumbs and briefly cook the sausage and brown the crumbs in a hot oven or under a broiler.

The journey of French rémoulade sauce, a classic mustardy mayonnaise with herbs, capers, and gherkins, across the Atlantic Ocean to Acadia (now eastern Quebec), the Maritime provinces, parts of New England, and eventually on to the American South is a culinary story worth telling. In the early 1600s, the first French arrived in Acadia and took up a life of farming crops and raising livestock. A century and a half later, many descendants of those early Acadians were forced from their northern homes by the British, eventually winding up in South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana. Those who settled in Louisiana soon came to be called Cajuns, as did their language, a lilting patois unique to the area but universally understood in their joyous music. And rémoulade? Unfortunately, there is no accessible literature that describes how the sauce was interpreted on Acadian tables. However, as it wended its way to Louisiana, via the American Northeast and the French Indies, it underwent a gastronomic evolution, becoming more spirited with additions of minced bell pepper and celery, tomato paste, sometimes Worcestershire sauce, horseradish, and especially Louisiana’s own feisty Tabasco sauce. Here is my interpretation of that well-traveled sauce, now a Cajun rémoulade, served on a New Orleans plate with crab cakes and Creole sausage.

Cod, as food historian Mark Kurlansky convincingly purports in his fascinating exegesis on its commercial history, is “the fish that changed the world.” Evidence exists that commerce in cod was founded in the tenth century by seafaring Vikings who, seeking new fishing grounds when their homeland supply was depleted for the season, came upon Newfoundland and its cod bounty, establishing a trade route between the Old World and what was called the New World. In time, cod commerce gave rise to emigration and engendered settlements, eventually towns, along the northern Atlantic seaboard. Naturally, the first settlers in that harsh environment created food based on what was available: cod. Although much of it was preserved with salt to use at home and to ship across the Atlantic to the waiting market there, some was used fresh, especially in chowder. In this version, the cod is fashioned into a sausagelike mixture and formed into balls, which are joined in the soup pot by another popular local catch, shrimp. Northeast fishermen harvest the pink, intensely flavored Northern shrimp, also known as Maine shrimp, which are available only from winter through early spring. But almost any medium shrimp can substitute, as long as they are from North American waters.

Portugal lies on the Iberian Peninsula between the Atlantic Ocean and Spain, and many of its culinary inspirations pull from both those places. In the province of Alentejo in southern Portugal, a combination of pork and clams expresses the inherent poetry of this duality. Ruddy with paprika, fragrant with garlic, and redolent of salt air, it is an exotic, compelling dish in which land meets sea in a bowl. The Portuguese are so fond of it that it is exported with them anywhere they settle, including New Bedford, Massachusetts, where it is served with corn on the cob. The dish is traditionally made with pork meat, cubed, spiced, and marinated overnight. I have simplified the recipe by using chorizo for the pork. It provides the same spiciness and color while eliminating a lengthy step.

Paella is one of the great composed rice dishes of the world. Many regions in Spain boast of serving the “finest” rendition, but Valencia, its original home, claims the blue ribbon. Many tourist guides acquiesce. Located close by the sea, the city provides its cooks with a daily supply of fresh seafood. Squid, which blackens the rice with its ink, and mussels are abundant and have become key elements in paella valenciana, along with snails and green beans. That repertoire has been expanded to include a selection of chicken or rabbit pieces; small sausages; other shellfish, such as shrimp, crayfish, or cockles; and other vegetables, such as red bell pepper or artichoke, though not all at once. I like to use shrimp in the shell, but if you don’t think your guests will want to peel their own shrimp, you can cook them as directed, then peel them before returning them to the pan. Paella is traditionally cooked over a charcoal fire in a large, wide, two-handled shallow pan called a paellera. As is common in many Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures in which dishes, such as shish kebab and gyros, are cooked over an open fire, the paella cooks are traditionally men because the men own fire. Nowadays, the paellera is more often used indoors, and women as well as men cook the dish. It is always a festive offering, worthy of a get-together of any size, indoors or out. No matter who is cooking, the key to a successful paella is the rice. It must be Spanish or Italian short grain.