Deep Fry

These can be served on a salad of baby greens. Toss the greens with tarragon vinaigrette and sprinkle with toasted hazelnuts.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Beer makes for a particularly crisp batter here, and the capers add piquancy. The broccoli and carrots work well in this recipe, but cooks might use other favorite vegetables too, adjusting the deep-frying time as necessary.

These can be served as hors d'oeuvres, or placed atop a salad of spinach, walnuts and sliced apples.

The fennel mayonnaise below makes an excellent dip for these zucchini spears if serving them as an hors d'oeuvre. Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Frying tenderloins is like frying chicken: All recipes are fundamentally alike, but each has a twist, ranging from how the flour coating is seasoned to what the cooked meat ought to be drained on (paper towel? brown paper bags?).

A few years back, I renewed my romance with Galatoire's restaurant. The reacquaintance was arranged by my friend Kerry Moody, who is one of New Orleans's black Creoles. A frequent visitor to the restaurant, he led me through the menu and introduced me to such off-the-menu delights as fried eggplant lightly dusted with confectioners' sugar. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I've returned to Galatoire's many times since. Now when I arrive at the restaurant, I feel like a regular when my waiter, Imre, remembers me after any length of absence and brings the eggplant to the table unasked. The combination of eggplant and sugar sounds strange, but the dish is delicious, a perfect beginning to a Creole feast and a subtle reminder of the African traditions of New Orleans cooking. The eggplant on which the dish is based may have originated in Africa, and the frying in deep oil is one of the major African culinary methods brought to this country by slave cooks.

(BEIGNETS DE COURGETTES)

To go with the crispy oysters, place sliced beets on a bed of frisée and top with balsamic dressing, crumbled blue cheese and toasted walnuts. Finish with wedges of angel food cake and caramel sauce.

Whether you pick blossoms from your garden or buy them at the farmers market, choose male flowers. The males — which don't produce a vegetable but exist to pollinate the females — are recognizable by their long, straight stems and the unmistakably male-looking stamen in the center of each blossom. Females swell at the base of the blossom, where the squash forms, and four little shoots make up the pistil inside. Some chefs like to fry female blossoms when the baby zucchini is just emerging and still attached, but Mexican and Italian purists wouldn't hear of it. Other chefs like to remove the stamen of the male flowers, but it isn't necessary.

Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 45 min

Skordalia is a garlicky Greek dip made with mashed or pureed potatoes.

Margaret DeMatteo of Stirling, New Jersey, writes: "My husband recently took me to the nearby Perryville Inn to celebrate my birthday. We had a fabulous 'BLT' appetizer made with layers of fried green tomatoes, pancetta, and basil mayonnaise. I would greatly appreciate it if you could get the recipe."

Active time: 45 min Start to finish: 45 min

One diner's instructions on how to find Mrs. Wilkes': "Walk along West Jones Street until you smell fried chicken."