Gourmet

Pair this surf-and-turf dish with white rice to soak up the delicious rock-shrimp sauce — a quick and easy variation on Marcella Hazan's pink shrimp sauce (from "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking"), which she serves over pasta.

It may appear very oily at first, but this dish comes together in the end without being the least bit heavy. We realize that not everyone will have 3 colanders on hand. You can also toss the vegetables with salt and let them drain in large bowls.

Greeks call puréed split peas fava, not to be confused with what we call fava beans. The combination of puréed split peas and honey-kissed eggplant compote makes for a very comforting dish.

Chojín Alma Guillermoprieto of Cambridge, Massachusetts, writes: "My guatemalan grandmother made a salad she called chojín. I remember the taste vividly, but when I went to Guatemala, no one knew the dish. This is my attempt to re-create it." While the ingredients in this recipe are extremely simple, the result is an eye-opening explosion of flavors.

Gravlaks — fish cured with salt, sugar, and dill — is usually made with salmon, but we like the milder flavor of arctic char for this particular dish. Keep in mind before starting to cure your fish that you will need to turn it every 12 hours for a total of 36 hours.

Tapered eggplants and a mix of large and medium tomatoes will give your stacks a more graceful appearance.

To make your cocktail party more participatory, have your guests grill their own skewers. A hibachi is even more user-friendly than a grill, since the ends of the skewers hang out over the edge, eliminating the need for tongs. If you're cooking everything yourself, it's easiest to use a large grill or a broiler (see cooks' note, below) and serve the skewers in batches.

Great with: Grilled rib-eye steak.

Breakfast often comes later when you're on vacation, so we figure it's okay to indulge in this refreshing Mimosa alternative. It's important to use pure mango nectar here (though it may not be labeled "pure"); nectar mixed with other fruit juices or high-fructose corn syrup makes the drink too sweet.

Though you could certainly use regular red cherries in this recipe, we prefer yellow cherries such as Royal Ann or Rainier, available in supermarkets, for their lovely yellow color, as well as their bright flavor and mild sweetness. We use Greek yogurt because it has a much thicker texture than other yogurts and holds its shape nicely.

We prefer Nova salmon for this particular recipe because it's the mildest and least salty. Although Nova has become a general term for smoked salmon, it really describes the delicacy made from fish descended from wild Nova Scotia salmon.