Fish/Seafood

If you're new to stir-frying tofu, start with this marvelous marriage of land and sea. It is easy and the ingredients are readily available. The results showcase how tofu can absorb the flavors of its companion ingredients while becoming velvety. Include the peas for bright color and a little sweetness. The shrimp shell stock gives the dish a real seafood taste, tester Johanna Nevitt remarked.

In the Mexican state of Veracruz, a local recipe calls for simmering fish in a rich sauce of garlic, tomatoes, capers, green olives, and chiles. This version uses grouper, but any firm white-fleshed fish will do.

The Chinese tradition of smoking foods over tea instead of wood has become popular in this country, especially as more home cooks have learned how simple it can be. Done right on the stovetop, it makes no mess. The smoking ingredients - a mixture of dried black tea leaves and spices - are put in a foil-lined wok. The food is placed on a rack above the mixture and covered until the distinctively flavored smoke cooks the scallops. A simple soy, ginger and cilantro marinade gives a delicate lift to big sea scallops. The light, slightly sweet smoke cooks them to silky perfection. After chilling, we serve them with a creamy mustard sauce. You might also want to slice the smoked scallops and serve them on endive spears, garnished with a dollop of the sauce.

Forget everything you have ever learned about flash cooking fish. In this southern Vietnamese “kho,” or traditional, homey braising recipe from Vietnamese scholar and author, Andrea Nguyen, catfish steaks are bubbled for an hour in a caramel sauce, resulting in deliciously dense pieces of fish cloaked in a sticky mahogany sauce.

Due in large part to its health-giving omega-3 oils, salmon has become one of the most popular types of fish consumed in the United States. I prefer to buy wild salmon for its flavor. The seared salmon and easy slaw are excellent served hot, room temperature, or cold.

Shrimp/prawns, so often overcooked in boiling water, are beautifully poached in butter—they remain tender, do not become rubbery, and develop an almost unfamiliar sweetness. What better pairing for buttery shrimp than butter-loving grits? One of the great regional American dishes, it is a specialty of low country, South Carolina.

Quick, tasty, and nutritious, this makes a great midweek supper. The yellow bean paste is a great pantry ingredient, perfect for marinades and speedy home-cooked meals like this one.

This can wait, chilled, for 30 to 40 minutes.

Salmon fillets are poached briefly, then served with a ravigote sauce. Ravigoter means "to invigorate" in French, and this sauce, containing tomatoes, scallions, garlic, parsley, lemon juice, and olive oil, awakens the taste buds and complements the salmon. The pickled capers lend wonderful piquancy to the sauce.