Scallion

This Peruvian ceviche offers a plethora of interesting textures: the meaty chew of octopus, the refreshing bite of shrimp, and the marshmallowy smoothness of bay scallops. It's all bathed in the electric yellow glow of a sauce made with Peru's most common chile pepper, the aji amarillo. You can find jarred aji amarillo paste at South American markets. The pepper imparts a distinct fruity quality to this dish, and the addition of turmeric and ginger enhances this fruitiness while toning down the pepper's heat. The variety of seafood in the following preparation, along with its exciting color, is certain to be a favorite on your table.

Cornmeal and fresh corn are used in the creamy polenta. A green onion Dijon mixture is spread under the skin of the chicken before it's grilled.

This slaw is perfect as a side dish or added to a pulled-pork sandwich.

Try with chicken or beef satay, shrimp, or tofu.

Bulgogi (grilled marinated beef) is a traditional Korean dish. Here, lamb stands in for the steak. The meat is served with lettuce leaves and other veggies, hot pepper paste, and a slightly sweet dipping sauce. Guests use all of the ingredients to assemble their own lettuce wraps, which is a common practice in Korean restaurants. Timing note: The lamb needs to marinate for at least four hours.

Farofa is the term for a side dish using toasted farinha de mandioca—in English, manioc flour, which is a dried flour similar in looks and texture to breadcrumbs, made from yucca. The making of farofa as a dish couldn't be easier. It is plain manioc flour toasted in butter. A few of the classic farofa dishes include eggs and scallions, eggs and bacon, banana, bell peppers, and dendê oil, green beans and carrots, peas and corn, and so on and so forth. Farofa can be extremely dry, since the manioc flour immediately sucks up all the juices from anything it encounters, especially when it's served plain. The trick to making a moist farofa is to use a small amount of manioc flour in proportion to the other components, turning a side dish into a savory accompaniment that is so tempting, you may even forget there is a main course.

This is a different sort of frittata, not the neat golden round of well-set eggs that’s probably most familiar. Here the eggs are in the skillet for barely a minute, just long enough to gather in soft, loose folds, filled with morsels of asparagus and shreds of prosciutto. In fact, when I make this frittata or the “dragged” eggs—uova strapazzate, page 143—I leave my eggs still wet and glistening so I can mop up the plate with a crust of country bread. That’s the best part of all.

Sweet crabmeat and sweet peas make a great match in this springlike risotto.

This is a lovely dish to serve with grilled pita bread, either alongside a couple of other mezze, while you have a drink before supper, or as an appetizer in its own right, or as a light lunch with a good salad on the side. In the summer, please use fresh peas; at all other times of year the wondrous frozen pea will do. You can make this dish in advance, put it in the fridge, and bring it back to room temperature when you want it.

It's only natural to use leftover chicken broth (from Blade Steaks with Rosemary White–Bean Purée ) to make chicken soup. But what a soup! Steeping ginger and scallion greens in the stock and then poaching the chicken in it is a quick way to achieve a depth of flavor. The final soup is enriched with silky ribbons of just–cooked eggs, shreds of tender chicken, and fresh rings of scallion. Best of all, this satisfying soup is easy enough to pull together after work.

Nothing could be easier than stirring together chopped scallions with a dollop of mayonnaise, and this quick coating adds considerable verve and oniony bite to meaty arctic char fillets. And it looks great, too—the green of the scallions contrasts nicely against the pink flesh of the fish. For this recipe, we use the leftover scallions from our Tuna Steak au Poivre recipe, but it would also work fine with a full bunch.

Shot through with tarragon, parsley, and scallions, this tangy sauce pairs beautifully with rich southern-fried sweetbreads . If you have any left over, use it as a salad dressing or as a dip for crudités.

The leftover Savoy cabbage from our <epi:recipelink id="351167"">Winter Minestrone</epi:recipelink> makes a quick and easy side dish when thinly sliced and sautéed with some scallions and garlic. It tastes great with pork chops, chicken, or fish.

These small dumplings come with both a story and a significant history. According to legend, they were born in the imperial kitchen when a cook, making dumplings for the emperor, forgot a batch that was slowly cooking. They were singed brown, slightly burned. With no time to spare, and an impatient, hungry emperor waiting, the cook, a nimble and adaptive fellow, arranged the dumplings on a platter, burned sides up, and presented them to the emperor as a new dish that he called, quotie, which means "stuck bottom." The emperor was delighted. Legend or not, it is a fact that these browned half-moons filled with pork and vegetables were eventually sold daily by the thousands from small streetside stands to satisfy the morning habits of people in Beijing and Tianjin, who called them jiaozi, or "little dumplings." It is a tradition that exists to this day. As popular foods do, these jiaozi migrated to Shanghai, where they became known by their imperial name of quotie, to describe their cooking process. The habit of morning pot stickers swept Shanghai, and to this day they are sold, as in Beijing, from small streetside stands. Over the years, they migrated south to Guangzhou and Hong Kong, carried by Shanghainese fleeing the Japanese invasion of their city, and sold first by refugees on the streets as a way of making a living. They have become part of the accommodating dim sum repertoire, and are referred to in Cantonese as wor tip, or "pot stickers." Serve them with a ginger-vinegar sauce (see note).

Grandma also serves the rich, spicy soup with cucumber salad and scallion pancakes.

The Original: Poached and shredded chicken mixed with a curry-powder sauce. Our Version: Chicken thighs simmered with cauliflower, tomatoes, and peas, then seasoned with a mix of freshly toasted and ground spices.

This beautiful seafood salad makes a terrific home for leftover Niçoise olives from the braised Veal Cacciatore . Quickly cooking the calamari renders it snowy white and very tender—such a nice backdrop to the salty olives and crunchy celery. Scallion, lemon zest, and celery add freshness.

A combination of kale, chard, spinach, dill, and fennel fronds gives this soup a fresh flavor. Fiber-rich barley adds a hearty note.