Main Dishes

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.

We often overlook the bell pepper, which bestows an uncanny, slightly smoky sweetness to a dish.

Ingredients

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.

With their sticky, spicy glaze, these hens are a diminutive riff on our holiday turkey. The birds can be served with Butter-Roasted Cornbread — a twist on traditional stuffing, made of cornbread with sausage, nuts, and cheese baked into it and then toasted into crispy croutons. That crunch makes them irresistible. Spoon them over the hens and serve with Roasted Grapes and Winter Vegetables and you have a dish worthy of a cover shot.

The Parmesan cheese and bread crumb crust and topping of this soufflé will be browner and crunchier when it is prepared in a gratin dish, making it easier to serve at the table. It can also be made in a conventional soufflé dish. Leftover soufflé will reinflate when reheated in a 350-degree oven.

Time spent on a rapid-fire hot line of a busy restaurant has taught me an appreciation for the ability to multitask. This is the kind of simple yet delicious dish born out of a need for dinner in a hurry met with a quick raid of the icebox and pantry.

These are meatballs like no others. Rich with spices, cheese, peppery salami, nuts and candied fruit, there is clearly Arab ancestry in this dish. This particular recipe comes from Puglia, the heel of the boot, though you will find similar versions throughout Southern Italy.