Herbs & Spices

These caramel-dipped fruits look like jewels and add another layer of elegance to the gingerbread roulade.

Believe it: One-percent milk helps create the rich sauce for the entrée. Team the scallops with steamed red potatoes, Spring Peas with Lettuce and Mint and iced tea for a lovely meal.

This very ancient dish of pickled salmon is of Swedish origin, and considered by a great many Scandinavians to be superior to smoked salmon. It must be made with fresh fish that has never been frozen, and with a plentiful supply of fresh dill weed.

Even though purists protested, a variety of ingredients were used to flavor the classic French custard. And in all its incarnations, it became the fin-de-siécle way to end a swanky restaurant meal.

Moqueca de camarão Dendê (palm) oil brings to the cooking of coastal Brazil what drums bring to samba: an insistent underlying sensuality. It transforms the coconut milk with its deep orange-red color and makes the flavor of the shrimp sing. But it is as perishable as it is seductive, so smell it before you use it. Active time: 25 min Start to finish: 45 min

Use almost any combination of fresh herbs here (watch the tarragon, mint, and sage, since they're more assertive). Accompany this meatless dish with a salad (maybe arugula and radicchio with a red wine vinaigrette) and some seeded breadsticks. Then add a rich dessert, such as an almond tart from the bakery.

Spice Cookies Rice paper is traditionally used in this recipe, but is not essential. You can bake these cookies on buttered baking sheets instead.

Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 1 1/4 hr

The Southwest’s favorite breakfast is often topped with a red sauce or salsa. This version has a tomatillo-based green (verde) sauce.

Brining the shrimp and then grilling them in their shells will help retain flavor and the natural juices.

This stock is even easier to put together than <epi:recipelink id="105266">Strong Fish Stockepi:recipelink. It does not require fish heads, only the bones of flat fish — sole, founder, halibut, or turbot — and it doesn’t call for the extra step of sweating the bones. It has a more delicate seafood flavor, and it is not as gelatinous as the Strong Fish Stock, making it very versatile. In addition to chowder and seafood stews like bouillabaisse, you can use this to make fish velouté and delicate French sauces such as Bercy (based on velouté and shallots) or bonnefemme.</epi:recipelink></epi:recipelink>