Orange

I wanted to be sure to include a few words about fruit salads—not sweet fruit cocktails in heavy syrup, but savory salads made like other composed salads. These may consist of fresh fruit alone, or fresh fruit combined with lettuces or other salad greens, with nuts and cheese often added for richness and texture. When there are no greens available and I desperately want something fresh, fruit salads are refreshing alternatives, either at the beginning or the end of a meal. Figs, apples, pears, pomegranates, persimmons, and almost all of the citrus fruits make good salads, with or without greens. All these fruits of fall and winter have an affinity for hearty chicories such as escarole, radicchio, and curly endive. Among my favorite fruit salads are an orange salad with black olives; avocado slices and grapefruit sections; persimmons or Asian pears with nuts and balsamic vinegar; and orange slices with marinated beets. Oranges and other citrus fruits need to be peeled and sectioned for a salad. When skinning the fruit, you want to remove all the outer peel and the membranes that enclose the sections, exposing the juicy fruit inside. You will need a small, sharp knife to do this. First, slice off the top and bottom of each fruit, slicing deeply enough to expose the inner flesh. Then, position your knife blade at the top where the fruit and peel meet, and carefully cut down following the contours of the fruit. Continue around the fruit, cutting from top to bottom, rotating the orange, until all the peel and membrane is removed. Trim away any remaining white bits of membrane. You can then slice the orange crosswise or cut between the membranes to free the individual sections. Apples and pears can be peeled or not, but to avoid oxidation, which turns the cut surfaces brown, they should be prepared just before serving. Persimmons must be peeled; this can be done in advance, but keep them covered so they don’t dry out. Fruit salads are usually dressed very simply, sometimes with nothing more than a drizzle of olive oil or vinegar, or with a vinaigrette made of some citrus juice and a touch of vinegar, a little chopped shallot, salt, pepper, and olive oil.

“Drunken” salsas have been around forever. They were originally prepared with pulque, an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented juice of the once-sacred maguey (agave) plant. Pulque, which is not easy to find outside of Mexico, is not distilled and has a much stronger flavor than tequila, which I use in its place in this recipe. The alcohol is mostly burned off in the cooking process, leaving only its musky flavor. The sweetness from the freshly squeezed orange juice gives this salsa a wonderful balance.

Couscous, made from semolina, is a staple in North African cuisine. Here it is infused with spicy chiles and cinnamon in this easy-to-whip-up salad that would pair nicely with grilled lamb or poultry.

Pickled veggies show up on tables in many restaurants, bars, and homes across Mexico. These are great alongside meat, atop a quesadilla, or alone as a happy hour snack.

The thing I love the most about Mexico is that everything has a story. In this recipe the word pibil comes from a Mayan word for stone-lined pits, used for cooking underground. Today pibil refers to the technique of steaming meat in a sealed dish in the oven. In the Yucatán, where this dish comes from, it is prepared with Seville oranges, which are tart and bitter. These oranges aren’t readily available in other areas, including Baja, so here we add lime juice to give that distinctive kick.

Sarandeado, as a technique, refers to grilling a cleaned fish in a basket, constantly flipping it from one side to the other in order to preserve all the juices and flavors before they seep out of the fish. In this recipe we use the oven, so there’s no need for a fish basket or even a grill. It is essential, however, that you use a properly butterflied fish (the skin prevents the juices from seeping out and yields a moist and succulent fish). I strongly suggest asking your fishmonger to do it for you.

To create these vegetarian egg rolls I use wonton wrappers, which can be found in the refrigerated section in well-stocked supermarkets. You can use store-bought prune sauce in place of the California Chile–Prune Sauce; just mix some ground California chiles into the prune sauce. Either purchased or homemade, spicy prune sauce is the perfect counterpoint for fresh avocados.

Brunch is a funny meal; many of the main dishes are sweet enough to make dessert seem almost redundant. That’s why I like to serve this dish, which is bright and fresh from the citrus with a hint of licorice from the fennel. It bridges the gap between salad and dessert, ending the meal on a sweet but not heavy note.

Arborio rice is essentially risotto rice. I use these short grains to make classic risottos but also for this most decadent dessert. It’s rich, creamy, and, most important, absolutely loaded with chocolate! When I serve this I make a very light meal so everyone has room to indulge and the pudding is the star of the show. It’s a good choice if you need to make dessert ahead of time, as it keeps well in the refrigerator for several days.

Cornmeal, or polenta, is a staple ingredient in the Italian pantry and is used for both savory and sweet dishes. This not-too-sweet cake combines cranberries and orange, which remind me of the holidays—which is when I most often make this. It’s one of those versatile cakes you can serve for breakfast, with tea in the afternoon, or at the end of a big meal topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I like to make a few extra to give as hostess gifts.

This is my favorite way to eat fish, with a very clean, fresh, and simple preparation. Agave is a natural sweetener from the blue agave plant in South America, and brushed on the salmon it creates a nice caramelized crust. Topped with salsa verde made of citrus zests and herbs, this dish is super-light and perfect on a hot summer day. Jade loves the grilled salmon, too!

Few things are more enticing than the smell of a chicken roasting, but for a special meal or a romantic evening such as Valentine’s Day, I like to serve game hens, so each person can have a whole bird of his or her own. It’s a beautiful presentation that is ridiculously easy to put together, and the pan juices, full of fresh citrus flavors, are especially delicious. If you prefer, though, you can easily make this with a large chicken; just increase the roasting time to 60 to 75 minutes, depending on its weight.

This Dessert the kind of thing that Jell-O is supposed to imitate is unusual these days, but it’s easy and delicious, a nice use of fruit that’s available year-round.

It isn’t often you can combine a few winter staples and create a novel, fresh-tasting dish that is easily varied, stands on its own, or forms the base for a variety of other foods. Yet a simple mélange of fennel and orange does all of these things and without a lot of effort. Take some slices of boneless pork, for example, marinate them briefly in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper, pan-roast them, then serve them on a bed of the compote: the mingled juices are sheer delight. (I’ve presented the recipe that way here, but it is easy to cook the fennel-orange combination on its own.) Similarly, the compote works nicely as a bed for simple roasted cod, sautéed duck breast, and grilled chicken. There isn’t much technique to speak of here; you’ll know the dish is done when the orange juice bubbles become scarce. Just be sure not to cook the compote entirely dry; the orange juice sauce is a nice touch.

Although this minimalist but infinitely variable technique of herb-coating salmon is about as straightforward as can be, allowing the fillets to sit for a while after coating will encourage the fragrant seasonings to permeate the flesh of the fish; try fifteen minutes or so at room temperature or up to 24 hours in the refrigerator.

Traditionally served at Christmas parties in Sweden and elsewhere, this is powerful stuff, as you can see by its ingredients. Nevertheless, it goes down easily, so be careful. The wine and port should be decent but obviously need not be fantastic; most of their flavors will be overwhelmed.

The original sangria is this: good red wine, spiced with lemon juice, served with a piece of lemon over ice, with a splash of soda. That sangria has become more complicated, and a cliché of America’s Spanish restaurants, does not detract from its basic appeal; it’s as good a way as exists to spice up insipid red wine. Of course, the better the wine you start with, the better the sangria; decent but inexpensive (red) Zinfandel, wine from the south of France, and Rioja are all good.

Here are two versions of this delicious sweet-and-sour dish, which is prepared at roadside stands and restaurants on many Caribbean islands: Pan-cook it in the winter, grill it in the summer. Serve it with Coconut Rice and Beans (page 516).

How wonderful is the marriage between thyme and lamb? So wonderful that this dish conjures up visions of Greeks spit-roasting lamb or goat on rocky hills above the sea, basting it with branches of thyme dipped in olive oil. (Which is not a bad recipe itself, especially if you have the rocky hills and sea.) This lamb is lovely with a rice dish or simply with bread. Note, interestingly, that this recipe is virtually the same as the one that follows—except the flavors are distinctly different. Under many circumstances, I would have made one a variation of the other, but it would have seemed, in this case, to give one or the other short shrift. They’re both great. Other cuts of meat you can use here: thick cuts of “London broil” or flank steak.