Deep Fry

If you've never encountered struffoli before, they are best described—visually at any rate—as the croquembouche of southern Italy: small dough balls, and I mean really small, the size of marbles, that are deep-fried and then rolled in honey before being assembled into a cone—as in the French piled-up profiteroles model—or a bulging wreath. Since I was taught the recipe by a pair of Calabrian sisters, I make mine as their Mamma makes hers; and this takes the wreath form. I'll be honest: you don't make these because you're seeking some exquisite taste sensation; struffoli are about custom, celebration, and sweetness. This, in effect, is the festive centerpiece of Christmas in the south of Italy. You get a very real sense of this if you make the struffoli not alone, but in company, with other hands to roll out the dough with you. Children love doing this, by the way, and their little hands are much better suited for rolling the small marble-sized dough balls you need. Obviously, children are best kept away from the deep-frying part of the operation. As for the decoration, I've seen not only the regular cake-decorating sprinkles used but also candied fruit, glacé cherries, almond dragées, and cinnamon-preserved pumpkin pieces. It's the former, solely, for me. And although I've seen only the multicolored ones in Italy, I go for the festive and flag-resonant Christmas sprinkles in red, white, and green. The struffoli would look more beautiful, perhaps, left burnished but otherwise unadorned, although gaudiness not elegant restraint—I'm firmly told—is in order here; I have tried to maintain some balance between the two.

Ipswich whole belly clams are steamers that have been removed from their shells and had the necks and membranes removed. And while you can get Ipswich clams from Ipswich, Massachusetts—where we get ours—these days the majority of whole belly clams come from Maine. Never substitute "clam strips" for whole belly clams. Clam strips come from surf clams, and they’ll be very tough if you fry them. This recipe is for a main-dish serving. If you want to serve these clams as an appetizer, reduce the quantities by half.

A splash of brandy—plus orange zest and juice—in the doughnut batter complements the fruity jam filling perfectly. Try it with any preserve, pastry cream, or sugar coating you like.

This is a winning-contestant recipe from Season Four of Fox's MasterChef.

Key when making this batter: Be sure your beer and club soda are ice cold, and chill the batter if prepping ahead.

I call this hapa food. The term hapa is deliciously slippery. It is often used to describe mixed-race Japanese Americans but not always. For me, being hapa provides a way of claiming a whole racial and ethnic identity as opposed to thinking of myself as "just" or "only" half-and-half. I am a whole person, and my experience of race, culture, and nationality is more complicated than adding fractions. This dish did not emerge from a place of separation in which two disparate things were fused together, but rather from the co-constitution, interdependence, and wholeness of my life as a hapa growing peaches in the United States and cooking food from my multiple cultural and racial lineages that go far beyond this country¿s borders. I have learned to make and cook my own path. Biting into this treat is like unleashing a burst of glowing peach wrapped in a crunchy cocoon. This could be served as a side dish with other tempura, on top of a salad, or even with green tea ice cream and chile-infused honey as a dessert. When we step outside of rigid categories, possibilities are infinite, no? --Nikiko

Peruvian Doughnuts These doughnuts were inspired by the ones at Bolivar, the restaurant in New York City where I got my first professional experience cooking Peruvian food. The picarones at Bolivar were made with sweet potato and served with an anise-scented syrup; at Chifa we use pumpkin purée and serve them with a fragrant infused honey that features star anise as well as bay leaf and cinnamon. Any leftover honey can be used anywhere you would use regular honey; store it in an airtight container at room temperature.

Readers of earlier printings of my cookbook were treated to the sad tale of my failed attempt to acquire specimens of the world's biggest arachnid, the goliath bird-eating spider (Theraphosa blondi as the pièce de résistance of this recipe collection. Since then, I've had many opportunities to cook with lesser-sized tarantulas and have now replaced the original "hypothetical" recipe with the one on these pages. Although I am at times saddened to dispatch such charismatic and long-lived invertebrates in the name of bug cuisine, I console myself with the thought that most of the tarantulas I've acquired were otherwise destined to unsatisfying lives as classroom pets and lab research specimens. Furthermore, let's face it: tarantulas make for a tasty and texturally satisfying meal. Here's why. Unlike heavily armored grasshoppers, beetles, and other land arthropods, tarantulas wear an outer layer of chitin that is comparatively thin and pliable. That's right: their eight muscular limbs are chewy, not crunchy. As such, the plentiful meat on one of these animals is more accessible and, hence, the makings for a savory spider soirée. If, for my birthday dinner, I could order anything I wanted, I'd request a Maine lobster or a tarantula spider. Properly prepared, either would make an awesome celebratory entrée. Incidentally, this particular recipe helped me best three other chefs in a series of round-robin eliminations, assisting me in bringing home the gold at the first-ever Big Bug Cook-Off, held in May 2011 at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

A change from tempura batter. Use the versatile knafe (also spelled kataife) pastry, a fine, vermicelli-like pastry, for this savory snack. It also makes a perfect lunch with a salad and a spicy dip on the side (like dakkous). The citrus nutty center is a lovely surprise inside the sweet prawn. These prawns are seriously crunchy. You could bake them but they taste better fried.

After a full day of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, these atayef are a welcome treat. Like all traditional foods associated with special holidays, somehow they taste best at the right time. But that shouldn't stop you from making these unforgettable moreish sweets at anytime of year. And by moreish I also mean Moorish, with a flavor and fragrance that is exotic, complex, and evocative of a culture that goes back to ancient times. These are divine.

This recipe was given to me nearly thirty years ago by Garnet McCollum, a North Carolina farm woman I profiled for Family Circle magazine. In that article, I featured about a dozen favorite family recipes, among them her superb fried chicken. I cannot improve upon it. Once salted, this chicken is refrigerated overnight, so you must begin the recipe a day ahead. Note: Back when I interviewed Mrs. McCollum, chicken breasts weren't D cup in size. Now that they are, I suggest that you halve each breast crosswise so that the chicken cooks more evenly.

Look for thicker fish fillets, which will give you the ideal breading-to-fish ratio.

The Perfect Pastry for All Meals

Kick off your Independence Day bash with a patriotic take on homemade chips featuring baking potatoes, purple potatoes, and beets that are sliced and then fried into a hot, crispy red, white, and blue snack. Gather your ingredients and check out our tips on the dos and don'ts of deep-frying.

You might like to double up the ingredients here, because this is effectively two meals in one. You start by making a wonderful, rich mushroom risotto, which you could serve warm one night (perhaps finished with a drizzle of olive oil), and then you could make these rice balls for the following evening. They are perfect with a glass of prosecco (or champagne if you haven't really gotten the hang of this economizing business).

I know deep-fried doughnuts don't strictly count as baking, but I've included them here because they start with a dough, and they taste too good to leave out, especially made with a chocolate ganache filling instead of the ususal jam.

Putting fatback in the frying oil adds flavor, but we find it's a bit too salty to eat on its own.

Using the best and freshest crabmeat you can get your hands on makes all the difference in these lightly battered and totally delicious fritters from La Petite Grocery, a new-school NOLA bistro.

Cookbook author and food photographer Lara Ferroni created this classic doughnut recipe exclusively for Epicurious. For Ferroni's doughnut-making tips and more recipes, see our complete guide to homemade doughnuts. We've included two glaze options, sugar and chocolate, but these doughnuts are terrific on their own or simply dusted with confectioners' sugar. If your kitchen is on the cold side, an easy way to create a warm place for the dough to rise is to turn the oven on to 250°F, and set the bowl of dough or the baking sheet of doughnuts on top.

Rice sticks are a magic trick in a bag: Crumble them into hot oil and they poof instantly into crispy, twisty little morsels of browned, puffed rice—ready in seconds to serve as a crunchy topping for bite-sized pieces of quick-cooked chicken, broccoli, and almonds.