In summer, we say the more burgers, the better. This one provides a spunky break from beef, pork, and turkey, opting instead for fresh shrimp dotted with confetti-like accents of red pepper...

Shrimp Scampi. It may have sunk to diner fare, but then again, diners are kind of where you go to eat any kind of food you REALLY want. Nothing beats those jumbo, juicy shrimp, stewed in white wine with garlic and butter. The parsley is that something green that justifies the ostrich-sized nest of linguine beneath the shrimp. So decadent, and messy, and tangled, and happy.
I love this sleek, modern twist on my beloved scampi.
Char up some thick country bread drizzled in olive oil, and rub it with garlic. Then top it with a five-minute, one-pot stew of meaty shrimp, creamy, comforting cannellini beans, even more garlic, white wine, and just a touch of butter for authenticity. I toss in a handful of parsley or arugula or both, then pour it over the charred garlic bread. The sauce soaks into the crusts, and the shrimp and beans together are so hearty and garlicky and good. Eat this with someone you love, and who loves you. (There's a lot of garlic.)

Thai-style curries are a staple in my weeknight roster. They come together in a flash. All you've got to do is sauté some aromatics and curry paste, deglaze with stock, coconut milk, and fish sauce, adjust the seasoning, and simmer your main ingredient until it's cooked through.
This recipe doctors up some store-bought red curry paste with a few extra spices to produce a more complex, nuanced finished dish. Once the stock is ready, shrimp are simmered for just a few moments until cooked through, then the whole thing is served over noodles. Add a handful of quick-cooking greens along with the shrimp (I'd suggest water spinach or baby bok choy), and you've got an all-in-one meal in a bowl.
The kicker here is the fried shallots, which add sweet crunch to every bite. Frying your own shallots is easy, but you can easily use store-bought fried shallots. They can be found in most decent Asian grocers.

Pakoras typically consist of fish, meat or vegetables that are coated in a batter made from spiced gram flour and fried until golden brown. These prawn pakoras are especially delicious served with a spicy green or tomato and cucumber chutney.

Do you want King Prawn Bhuna with that unique British Indian Restaurant quality and taste? Then simply follow the instructions below for success every time...

Biryani is a rice-based dish cooked with a whole mess of different spices, and usually, though not always, some kind of meat. When that meat is lamb or beef, it consequently takes some time to cook, which means I don't get to write about this dish too often. But this recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's At Home with Madhur Jaffrey solves that problem by using shrimp, so that this dish can be whipped up in less than hour with absolutely no shortcuts.
Not that any of the flavor is left behind. Shrimp are rubbed with a spice blend of cumin, turmeric, cayenne, salt, and pepper, before being sautéed and then removed. The rice then cooks in the same oil, so it picks up the spices and the shrimp flavor. Only at the very end are the rice and the shrimp mixed together, so that the shrimp stay plump and juicy.

For the Super Bowl, my friends and I usually serve food that represents the teams. And with Boston and New York playing this year, clam chowder seemed like the perfect fit.

But since I’m not committed to either the Giants or the Patriots, I couldn’t decide which style of chowder to offer. Did I want to serve the comforting cream-based New England style or did I want to serve the more lively tomato-based Manhattan style instead? Or perhaps I could offer both, and have people choose their favorite in a match called The Chowder Bowl.

It was a tough call and I was having a difficult time making a choice. Fortunately, my fishmonger made the decision easier for me. When I paid her a visit, all she had on hand were littleneck clams. I asked how many I’d need for chowder and she said, “With littlenecks, it’s not worth it. They’re too small. They’re not good chowder clams.”

“But it’s the Super Bowl this Sunday!” I said. “What should I do?” She looked at me and said, “When we watch the game, we like to eat dip.”

With that in mind, I took my bag of not-chowder clams and decided to follow her advice. There was a cream-cheese clam dip recipe in one of my Junior League books, but even after I spiced it up with some chiles and bacon it didn’t thrill me. Clearly, I still had chowder on the brain so I returned to my original plan. But this time, instead of just making chowder with clams, I also threw in some fish and shrimp to make seafood chowder instead.

Now, most people think of chowder as an East Coast dish but it also has a long history in Texas. There are several recipes for it in The First Texas Cook Book, which was published in 1883. And throughout he 1800s, the state’s newspapers published recipes, with a Galveston paper running a chowder tutorial on its front page saying that chowder was a favorite for parties.

The methods for making chowder haven’t changed much over the years, but for mine I swapped bacon for the salt pork and infused my tomato base with guajillo and chipotle chiles for some spice. For the seafood, I used clams, shrimp and red snapper, though you could easily throw in crabs, oysters, grouper, redfish or any other seafood that you prefer. This is a versatile dish.

I love seafood, and having a bowl full of some of my favorites makes for a hearty and satisfying meal. But one of the best things is that you don’t have to make a choice between the Manhattan or New England styles, as it combines the best qualities of both. The tomato and chile base is full of flavor. And since it’s pureed, it’s so smooth and velvety you might swear there’s a splash of cream.

This chowder will definitely be making an appearance on Sunday, along with some of my other game-day favorites. And sure, I might not be that invested in the actual game, but that doesn’t really matter. For me it’s the food served that’s always the true winner.

Combining scallops and butter is never really a bad idea. Throw in snow peas and egg noodles and you have a solid little dinner, albeit one that sounds a tad boring. Not that I would turn it down (obviously) but if it wasn't for the ginger I wouldn't have been so excited to try this recipe from Simply Shellfish by Leslie Glover Pendleton.
My only worry was that I would taste nothing but ginger. Though there's a decent amount of fresh ginger in the mix, it is luckily cooked for long enough that the ginger mellows out. When you first bite into the finished dish, the ginger just hangs out in the background, only making an appearance a few seconds later. It's enough of a kick to make you want to dig in again, making this a surprisingly engaging noodle dish.

This super speedy prawn recipe with a fiery kick makes a great nibble to enjoy with a glass of wine

While chorizo has probably had its time as the ingredient du jour, the classic combination of spiced preserved meats and beans creates perfect winter comfort food. The chorizo really shines in this soup.

Scallops work well with a bit of spice and at this time of the year, spiced-up yellow split peas in the form of dhal are a delicious combination with the scallops.

The most famous dish at the Hive Beach Cafe (in Burton Bradstock, West Dorset), our seafood soup has been on the menu since Day One, and it's every bit as popular with our customers today as it was back then – especially when the weather is cold outside and they've just completed a long, blustery walk along the beach.

If you have live or whole cooked crabs you can make a stock from the shells. If not, you can use freshly picked crab meat and fish stock as the base and/or stir some of the brown meat in at the end.

I could probably live on fried rice and it's such a great way to use up leftovers. The addition of some juicy, fat prawns here makes it a little bit more special if you're inviting friends over.

Adding your favourite white fish and a liberal dose of chilli, parsley and garlic to spaghetti or whatever pasta you have in the cupboard will immediately transport you to the Amalfi Coast.

Kerala curry is a famous fish curry from the southern Indian state of Kerala. It is traditionally served in a shallow clay dish called a chatty, or manchatti.

Kaeng kiao wan is the Thai phrase that indicates a green curry. Shrimp (kung, khung, or goong) is a very popular type of green curry dish, but you can substitute fish, chicken, beef, or shellfish according to your taste.

Goa curry in one form or another is eaten up and down the western coast of India. There are endless variations, but the basic qualities are a fiery hot coconut curry with the sour punch of tamarind.

Chupes are hearty chowders popular along South America's Pacific coast from Chile to Peru. Chupe de camarones is a Peruvian classic made with shrimp and vegetables and is substantial enough to make a full meal.

First, the golden rule of crab cakes: only use enough extraneous ingredients (i.e., anything that's not crab) to hold it together; it follows that the crab should be of good quality, preferably not canned.
Yes, they have a tendency to fall apart, but the key is to use plenty of butter in the pan, wait until it's very hot before adding the cakes, and turn them only once when the crust is fully formed and golden. Though these guys were nearly a hash when I finally got them onto the plates, they did make it—and the flavor was excellent.
It did feel a little bit funny cooking this dish for dinner in January, since crab cakes remind me of summer more than anything else. But maybe that's actually the perfect reason to prepare this classic from the New York Times Country Weekend Cookbook, which opts for an egg and a minimum of breadcrumbs to tie it all together.
I modified the recipe to include a homemade tartar sauce, which isn't too difficult, and raises the bar for this meal considerably.

Feel free to makes the cakes ahead of time and hold them in the fridge overnight. You can even take them from the fridge straight to the pan, although if you do, I'd recommend letting the cakes sit in a warm oven for a few minutes to let the center of the cakes get up to temperature. Some sour cream or Greek yogurt, lemon wedges, cold beer, and a green salad, and brunch is ready to serve.

Yes, curry is popular in Indian cuisine. Except it's not a singular dish that you will find across all tables. There are plenty of curries in India. Each region, each home, each religion has its own variations. This translates into a delicious abundance of liquid manna in shades of amber, red, yellow and green.

I've always been fascinated by the gushing reviews that "curry" gets in the west, especially in the UK. So on a recent trip to Britain, I was eager to try the dish that has put Indian cuisine on the world map, in its new home. I ordered the first chicken curry I saw on a menu. Suffice it to say that the only thing that I could recognize was the white rice accompanying the dish. This was no curry! The dish had barely enough gravy to smudge the bottom of the serving bowl. It did have spice, but it wasn't really amalgamated and the sweetness was disorienting.
For Indians, a curry is a fish, meat, or veggie preparation swimming in a sometimes-spicy, sometimes-mellow gravy. The copious amount of gravy is used to drape each grain of rice, till every morsel is bursting with the flavor of the aromatic spices.
There's enough space on the global table for all versions of curry, but here's a glimpse of an authentic version of Goan fish curry. The blend of spices and coconut brings out the mild sweetness of the tender fresh fish that is so abundant in Goa and around the coast of India. Serve it with steamed white or red rice.

This is shorshey macch, a great fish dish full of the flavours of Bengal

Creamy Corn Chowder

Cajun Seafood Balls

Coconut Fried Shrimp with Dipping Sauce

Crab Cakes

Crab Hushpuppies

Crab Stuffed Mushrooms En Croute

Lobster Club Sandwich

Potato Soup with Shrimp

A tasty and healthy main course.

Shrimp are a great go-to for lowfat protein. Opt for those farmed in the United States: Foreign farms use potentially harmful antibiotics and chemicals.

Shrimp Salad Sandwich.

Scallop Burger Sliders with a Cilantro-Lime Mayo.

Shrimp and Scallop Lasagna.

Rice can sit on the sidelines sometimes, acting as a starchy support. Not so in the case of biryani. Baked with all sorts of sweet, heady aromatics as well as deeply caramelized onions, this Shrimp Biryani from The Food52 Cookbook by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs makes a main event out of delicate basmati rice.
The rice is soaked (a great trick for cutting down on cooking time) then tossed with a bright green chile-ginger-cilantro paste, then baked in the oven until cooked through and just a little crusty on the bottom. Shrimp rubbed with turmeric and salt are briefly sautéed, coated with that same bright green chile paste and spooned over the cardamom scented rice.
It's a lovely plate, full of all sorts of exotic spices that pop up in each bite—heat from the serrano chiles and black pepper, warmth from cinnamon and cloves, and bright bursts of ginger and cilantro.
If you're looking to add more to the dish, a vegetable-heavy yogurt raita works quite nicely, balancing the heat and adding a welcome creaminess.

Speedy, spicy and really special, this easy supper dish from Rose Prince is sure to become a favourite

Republished with kind permission from Ferns'.

Tandoori: Chunks of Meat, Fish or Vegetables marinated in spices and yoghurt, then skewered and cooked in a Tandoor Oven, under a grill or on a barbecue.

Tandoori dishes are often served as a starter or as part of a mixed grill.

This particular dish has to be left to marinate for at least 3-4 hours in the fridge (covered) before cooking.

Enjoy a taste of Goa with Mahernosh Mody's flavourful large prawns braised in a fragrant spiced coconut gravy

We love noodles in the Route 79 darbar! And especially Thai-style ones too. Everybody's heard of a dish called Pad Thai, and just about everybody I know has ordered it at a Thai restaurant at some point in their Thai-food-eating lives. But have you ever thought of giving it a go at home? After trying this a few times over the years having looked at many different methods and recipes on the Internet it dawned upon me that if it's hard and complicated then it's probably not Pad Thai! Simplicity in the cooking is the key, but complexity in the flavours is what makes Pad Thai so tasty. What that means is that most of the work goes into the preparation and assembly of the ingredients, and NOT the actual cooking itself. And in this recipe method I'm going to try to convince you, so as to hope that you might give this a go yourself sometime.

The term "bhuna" is used to describe a method of cooking spices "dry" - which means only in oil - and no other moisture. So, effectively it's about cooking with very little water. For those of you who follow these recipes - you will notice that tinned tomatoes (chopped) is used quite frequently as the base to the "sauce" used to cook many dishes. In a bhuna you don't create a sauce as such - but you might garnish the end-dish with finely chopped tomatoes to add some moisture.

The prawn cocktail has been around now for a good 30 years, and has spent most of it see-sawing from the height of fashion to the laughably passé. This mixture of lettuce, prawns and Marie Rose sauce has seen countless amounts of tinkering, not all of it wise, and now tends to make its appearance with something of an ironic wink. The truth is that properly made, with sweet lettuce hearts and juicy prawns, it is the perfect way to start a summer's lunch. If it could leave its 70s baggage behind, it could get on with being what it is – a thoroughly delicious little salad.

I already knew I loved maque choux, the Cajun combination of corn and okra. I figured it would be an easy fit for shrimp. This recipe from Saveur hits all the right notes. The jalapeño adds a bit of spice, the corn a little sweetness, and the bacon, well...it does what it does. But what I love best is how the okra helps bind each bite together.
This all comes together really fast. The bacon is cooked off, and then removed. The fat left in the pan is used to cook everything else. The only exception are the shrimp, which are cooked quickly underneath the broiler. I wondered why this wasn't just a one-skillet meal, but the broiler method works quickly and well. The shrimp come out tender and juicy, and pair beautifully with the maque choux. The only thing it needed was a little hot sauce to help kick it into gear.

Crab cakes are simple to bring together and make a great last minute brunch because most of the items you can keep in your pantry. This recipe is for very simple crab cakes, but a few great additions would be any fresh herbs you've got in the garden, capers, or even bits of smoked salmon. A dry white wine would be the prefect thing to round out this simple brunch.

Spicy and spectacular, enjoy Aldo Zilli's temptingly fragrant Thai prawn curry

A quick store cupboard Caribbean curry from Gary Rhodes and Fazil Bacchus

For classy fast food that won’t break the bank, Jun Tanaka’s scallops come in at only £1.24 per serving

How does seafood in a spicy cream sauce served over pasta sound to you? Sounds pretty good to me. Adjust the spiciness in this recipe to suit your taste.

This popular Cajun dish is really more of a casserole than a bread, so treat it more as a side dish than something to spread butter on. Frozen crawfish are widely available in the US these days, but they still tend to be on the pricey side so feel free to substitute shrimp and still achieve excellent results.

Here is a classic shrimp and rice dish from the Caribbean.

This simple, light dinner is easy to prepare, and much of it can be made ahead of time—making this a perfect dinner to serve guests you actually want to spend the evening chatting with. Polenta chive cakes can be made the day before, and the shrimp can be marinated and placed on skewers at that time, too. So all you've got to do on a Sunday evening is make a quick green salad and open a bottle (or two) of wine.

Laurel here in Portland, Oregon. My husband, Larry, volunteers at the Oregon Coast Aquarium every three weeks. This time I sent him $20 of my grocery money and asked him to bring home same fresh crab meat. I used to buy crab in the shell but I found that it took too much time and energy to get it clean so I now let the fish mongers do the work for me.

For the price, I don't get a lot of crab meat so I try to highlight it whenever I serve it. The recipe says to serve it as a dip with tortilla chips but I like it served on top of a baked potato. I also like to mix it with a bit of green onions and mayonnaise and serve it topped on an English muffin. I then top it with a bit of shredded Cheddar cheese.

Three of my favorite things - pasta, bacon, and scallops - in one dish? I'll have two servings, please. I use olive oil instead of bacon fat to decrease the amount of saturated fat in this recipe, but feel free to use the fat produced when frying the bacon if your diet will allow.

No matter how many times I cook scallops, they still feel utterly fancy and special when I make them at home—it's more like I'm eating at a restaurant than my own kitchen. This recipe, from Diane Rossen Worthington's Seriously Simple, does nothing to spoil this fantasy. It features a complex twist on pesto using toasted almond and pungent mint leaves that pairs wonderfully with the sweet scallops and is pretty easy to prepare. I served the scallops on a bed of greens, but it would go just as easily on top of cooked pasta for a heartier meal. The key is to use the extra pesto to dress the salad or pasta, as well as the balsamic syrup that's drizzled on the scallops. That syrup, by the way, is a fantastic method for turning average balsamic vinegar into something far more special: By just reducing the vinegar for a few minutes, it becomes sweeter and closer in taste to far more expensive aged balsamics.

This is a Vietnamese variation on the classic omelette. Cooked shrimp may be substituted for the crab, but the crab version is more often found in Vietnamese restaurants.

This classic Russian dish always signals celebration. It's possible to take much of the grueling work out of this arguably arduous dish by making all the separate parts the day before; then it's a simple matter of assembling and baking, once your party is ready to eat. A cucumber salad and a few bottles of something with bubbles will be the perfect thing to cap off this Mother's Day meal.

I jumped right into this recipe from Raymond Sokolov's The Cook's Canon as soon as I saw the ingredients. I am an absolute nut for Sichuan peppercorns, and while it's apparently a common combination, the mixture of it with Chinese five-spice powder and shrimp sounded remarkable. I'd heard of black pepper shrimp, but this seemed to take the notion one delicious step further.

But the recipe is a little odder than I realized. The shrimp are dropped straight in bubbling oil, tossed with salt, and then coated with Sichuan pepper, black pepper, five-spice powder, and lots more salt. The shells crisp up in the oil, and as Sokolov claims, it is perfectly acceptable to eat the whole package, shell and all. I was reluctant at first, but turns out he's totally right. They are crunchy, but not tough. It works.

The only issue is the sheer abundance of salt. It's kind of a relief to remove the shells. You'll still get the sensation of the spices, but without the abundance of sodium. Perhaps I'll just have a lighter hand next time. My wife brought up a good point—these would make a better appetizer than a main course because they are a little too flavorful.

If you are looking for an interesting item to serve as an appetizer, when you want something not simple and takes a lot of time and lots of kitchen pots and pans and ingredients, well, here it is. It's very "futtsy". In other words something that my wife, SueEllen, NEVER lets me make any more. It looks nice and tastes wonderful.

"Gumbo" refers to any soup or stew that is partially thickened through the use of okra. If okra is not available in your part of the world then it may be omitted, resulting in a less authentic but still wonderful version of a Southern classic.

Usually, my go-to technique when cooking fish is to crank up the heat for a smoking hot sear. The theory goes that fish, especially white-fleshed varieties, are pretty mild in flavor, so the more caramelization and flavor that can be built into the cooking process, the better. Of course, that all falls apart when you taste a recipe like this, with the fish resting in a broth so intensely flavored you don't need much else.

I pulled the excellent recipe from Seafood all Siciliana, and it's based on a traditional Sicilian dish known as cous cous di pesce, the base of the recipe is an elixir of saffron, tomato paste, red chile flakes, and fish stock, much of it sucked up by the chewy cous cous. The fish is delicately poached and added just at the end. With a scatter of crunchy toasted almonds to finish, it's a pretty fine dinner.

Coconut shrimp. Even if they're fried, the fact that they're coated in fruit means they're healthy, right?
Coconut has both a distinct flavor and texture. Mixed here with panko, the coconut toasts as it fries, and becomes part of the tooth-cracking crunch on the outside of these giant, juicy shrimp. I serve them with store-bought spicy pineapple salsa, hence the "Pina Colada" part.

Though I've experimented with Thai red curry paste for its intended use—stirring into coconut milk to make remarkably deep flavored curries in very little time—I was attracted to this recipe which uses it in a completely different way: whisked with oil to make a pungent, spicy marinade. Unlike curry powder, which can be easily hobbled together if you've got the right spices in your pantry, curry paste is harder to reproduce at home.

Count me in for any dish that has fewer than five ingredients. The recipe from an issue of Gourmet a couple years ago paints the marinade over shrimp, which are broiled for a few minutes until just cooked through. It's intended as an appetizer, but the flavors are satisfying enough for dinner with a little white rice. The paste gets caramelized all over the shrimp, which are spicy and light, while the cool, fragrant basil leaves are the herbal counterpoint.

Shrimp is not exactly cheap, but there are degrees of not-cheap. If you take on the burden of shelling and cleaning the shrimp yourself, you've already cut the price on a pound down at least a couple of bucks. Make sure you don't get jumbo shrimp (pricier) and you're sticking within the EfEB budget.
This method for shrimp is inspired by Mark Bittman: cooking the shrimp fast in a hot oven. The flavor is inspired by Amanda Hesser, who zests citrus to flavor the quick-cooking shrimp. The onions are all mine: they're the cheapest accompaniment I could think of, and by flavoring them with pantry basics (mustard, dried herbs, and red pepper), you roast them into the perfect foil for the juicy, lemony shrimp.

This recipe also works well with sea scallops. If you use the sea scallops, cut them in half before adding them to the pot. I have not yet tried using lobster in this recipe, but I see no reason why the finished product would not be excellent.

These are crab cakes the way you want them: chock full of sweet crab and little filler. They're moist and light with a thin, crunchy crust. The accompanying pimento mayo is a nice change from regular tartar sauce and gives the dish a bit of heat.

Pad Thai, Chiva-Som Style

This recipe can be easily tailored to your personal preferences, so don't be afraid to experiment. Using the same basic recipe but substituting salmon or cod, and dill or cilantro, you can create your own interpretation of this simple dish. These fish cakes can also be assembled the night before (to just before the breading phase) so it's a great dish for company.
These light cakes are wonderful simply paired with a green salad, but also make a great sandwich on a soft roll with a light smear of mayo and a piece of Bibb lettuce. If you're in the mood, a bloody Caesar is nice on the side as well.

This recipe presents a fun variation on the traditional dish of shrimp and grits associated with the southeastern coastal regions of the United States. Polenta, thyme, capers, feta cheese, and currants update the classic with Mediterranean flavors. The inclusion of honey injects just the right amount of sweetness to complement the dish's many savory flavors. I encourage the use of sustainably raised and harvested prawns here, as they exact a considerably smaller toll on our global aquatic ecosystems.

I once saw a friend top their movie popcorn with the pickled jalapeños meant for the nachos—confiding that they enjoyed not just the spice of the chiles in their popcorn, but also the pickling juice oozing all over it. Then I came across Todd English's recipe for Sizzling Shrimp Popcorn with Jalapeños and was further intrigued. I wasn't sure about the recipe--okay, I'm down to try fresh jalapeños topped over my popcorn but adding shrimp to the mix? However, I'm an equal-opportunity popcorn eater, so I gave it a whirl.

Guess what? It's delicious. Bites of butter-drenched Parmesan popcorn are combined with jalapeño slices and parsley. Each bite offers a varied taste and mouth sensation. I polished off the entire bowl before I even knew it. This is just begging to be served during a movie night. Just be careful regarding the chiles. When you're eating the popcorn, don't use your fingers to touch your eyes, or it could result in a sting from the chiles.

This Shrimp and Avocado Salad from One Big Table by Molly O'Neill comes from the glory days of department store dining. Located in Houston, Texas, in the Sakowitz department store, the Sky Terrace restaurant catered to ladies of means, serving up delicate dishes like this remoulade-dressed shrimp salad over a fan of avocado.

As is the case with most things involving copious amounts of mayo and iceberg lettuce, this salad is retro through and through, and it's pretty easy to imagine it being enjoyed circa 1963. But unlike other retro plates, this salad is packed with bright flavors that keep it fresh, exciting and memorable.

The shrimp are dressed in a creamy remoulade that blends in spinach and scallions for a green sauce that coats bright pink shrimp beautifully. Served over a bed of shredded iceberg and sliced avocados, it's a really pretty salad—composed and put together, much like the ladies that enjoyed it at The Sky Terrace.

Cubans are likely to have a drink or two before dinner, and little
fritters of various kinds are often provided as a cocktail snack.
You can substitute any cooked seafood for the crab in this recipe,
but keeping a can or two of crab meat handy in your pantry will
make these a quick and easy snack on short notice.

Trying to pick a favorite cookbook is like trying to pick your favorite Beatle. Hard to do and changes all the time.

When I first started cooking Thai food in the 1980s there weren't many cookbooks around (at least not in Anchorage). At that time we had only 1 Asian store, which later expanded to 2 well stocked international markets.

Now Anchorage is a Mecca of Asian stores and you have your pick if you want to cook Thai, Filipino, Chinese, Japanese or Korean. Indian has been a bit slow catching on - hopefully that will grow in the future.

The first Thai cookbook I bought was called "Thai Home-Cooking from Kamolmal's Kitchen" by William Crawford and Kamolmal Pootaraksa. Even though today I own close to 20 Thai cookbooks, this is the one I refer to the most. It is very traditional in its preparation, which I like. After I get the traditional down pat I can adapt if needed.

Stu and I had an online conversation about fish sauce recently. Try to find one that only contains anchovy, water and salt. I recently switched to Squid brand from the popular Three Crabs which contains fructose and soy protein.

If you have a large enough mortar and pestle by all means use it instead of a blender or food processor. The pounding really brings out the full flavor of your ingredients.

Here is an adapted version of Garlic Shrimp. The recipe calls for coriander root which is very hard to find. Instead I use cilantro stems. If you do find coriander roots they must be pounded to a pulp. Also included is the delicious lime dipping sauce which I love drizzled on the shrimp dish. Serve with jasmine rice.

When thinking about responsible, healthful eating, crab cakes aren't exactly the first dish that springs to mind. But leave it to Mark Bittman, author of The Food Matters Cookbook to create a crab cake recipe that you can feel good about eating. Embracing a less-is-more philosophy when it comes to animal products, these New Crab Cakes are made with equal parts lump crab (preferably responsibly caught and American-sourced) and creamy, mild celery root. If it sounds like an odd combination, all I can say is, don't knock it until you try it. There's something about the sweet shredded celery root that mimics the texture of crab beautifully.

The crab cakes fry up nice and brown after a dredge in curry powder-spiked whole wheat flour. Instead of serving with a mayonnaise-y tartar sauce, Bittman whips up a chunky Dijon mustard relish with diced cucumbers, red peppers, and sliced scallions that acts equal parts sauce and salad. This ingenious reinvention was just as enjoyable as any all crab meat version I've had, and perhaps even more so with the knowledge that you're getting in a few servings of vegetables as well as delicious lump crab.

For me, driving through Texas is therapeutic. Seeing the big sky, the wide-open spaces, the cattle, the trees, and the cacti out my window is always a pleasure—coming from New York, it’s always a memory come to life.

Last week, however, another memory returned—that dreadful feeling when you look into your rearview mirror, and see flashing lights from the car behind you. I thought I was being careful, but when I looked at the odometer I saw that I was indeed going a bit too fast. Yep, for the first time in 20 years, I was going to get a speeding ticket.

Pathetic doesn’t even begin to describe my pleading with the officer. I explained to him that it was an honest mistake, and that I hadn’t meant to go fast. I had a clean record and that surely there were more criminal types out there who deserved a confrontation with the law. As a last, desperate attempt at getting out of the ticket, I told the policeman that I was scared to be driving by myself in such a remote area, and I was in a hurry to return to civilization. Well, he didn’t buy any of it (and in hindsight, I’m lucky he didn’t haul me to jail). So when he handed me my ticket, I simply said, “Thank you,” and bid him goodnight.

It was getting late, and as I was in the middle of nowhere, by the time I returned to a place where I could grab some dinner, all of the restaurants were closed. My remaining choices were gas-station food, Whataburger or a 24-hour taco joint. I’d already enjoyed a couple of Whataburgers on the trip, so I opted for the taco joint, seduced by its offer of shrimp quesadillas. Well, that was a mistake, as it was a handful of rubbery shrimp that had been sealed with bland cheese into a cardboard tortilla. I was disappointed.

There were a couple more days spent in Texas, and I did finally eat some excellent shrimp dishes—meals that helped fade my memories of that mediocre shrimp quesadilla. But when I returned to New York, I was still craving one—a shrimp quesadilla that had some flavor, some life, and some snap.

One of the things I love about shrimp is that it’s a terrific match for so many flavors. I’m partial to citrus and chiles, so I decided to pair mine with an ancho chile and orange marinade that was a little earthy, tangy and sweet. To assemble my quesadillas, I used a combination of creamy Monterrey Jack along with tangy Muenster. I also added some chopped jalapeños, and when I saw a few slices of bacon leftover from breakfast, I added them to the quesadillas, as well.

I don’t think I have to convince you that shrimp, jalapeños, and bacon are a winning combination. Plus, besides the time spent marinating the shrimp, the quesadillas came together in almost no time. These shrimp quesadillas could work as either an appetizer or a meal, best served with salsa and guacamole.

Of course, a quesadilla recipe is about as simple as a grilled cheese recipe—but the star of this dish is the shrimp flavored with ancho chile and orange juice, which, if you’re not in the mood for a quesadilla, can also be eaten on their own, with rice, with pasta or spooned over some grits.

So yes, while I’m a bit upset about my now tarnished driving record, if getting a speeding ticket is what it took me to make quesadillas with an excellent batch of ancho-chile shrimp, then I reckon I can’t complain too much.

Here is an Asian-style dish that is so quick and easy that you'll want to keep the recipe handy for future reference.

Fiber-rich bulgur and protein-packed shrimp in this mix will keep you full for hours—but it takes mere minutes to make.

For some reason I am always astonished at how easy it is to make mussels at home. Toss some things into a pot, add mussels, and you usually end up with something relatively good. But occasionally all those ingredients create something sort of transcendent. I'm not sure why this particular recipe from Pop Artichoke did it, but I've been thinking about it a lot since making it a few days ago.
Of course, bacon is almost always a good idea, but the fennel is just as important. Butter also helps make the sauce luxurious, while the lemon helps sharpen the flavor. You will need some crusty bread to dip into the liquid. But the best part is still the mussels themselves. Each one is briny, and yet enveloped in the bacony sauce.