Shellfish

Fresh Prince Edward Island mussels are God’s gift to an appetizer menu. This dish has worked in every restaurant that I’ve been involved with and people just love it. If you don’t have saffron, it’s okay—but the curry is a must. I like serving grilled bread with this for sopping up the delicious broth.

I love bacon and shrimp. It’s a classic combination that works really well in this Southwestern-inspired bistro dish.

The clams in this dish are steamed with tomatoes, fresh basil, and red pepper flakes. The flavors are simple and delicious. Dinner in under an hour never tasted so good.

Hong Kong is a truly eye-popping place for a food lover. The dai pai dong (food stalls) around Stanley Street on Hong Kong Island are full of noodle shops, fishmongers, live chickens, and a dazzling display of the strangest produce I have ever seen. The whole place smells like ginger and fresh coriander—I had a blast. When I got back to New York I was playing around with some of the flavors that I had experienced and came up with these crab cakes. Although crab cakes are not exactly Chinese, the flavors are pure Hong Kong. These crab cakes can easily be prepared ahead of time. Serve with Perfect Steamed Jasmine Rice (page 240).

Meals don’t come much easier, quicker, or better than this!

This is a quick and easy main dish. Although most shrimp you buy have been frozen, this dish is absolutely superb made with fresh shrimp, the largest you can find.

This terrific lobster preparation reminds me of a dish that was popular on the menus of Italian-American restaurants when I first came to the United States. Lobster oreganata, as the dish was called, was a split lobster topped with bread crumbs, seasoned with dry oregano, and baked. On recent visits to the Sardinian coast, I’ve often had its prized spiny lobsters prepared in quite similar fashion. So, though I am pleased to bring you this recipe for authentic Sardinian aragosta arrosta (roast lobster), I am quite sure that Italian-American restaurants and immigrants had the same idea many years ago. As with the preceding Aragosta alla Catalana, I like this dinner to be a hands-on, fully absorbing experience. After my guests have salad or a vegetable appetizer, I give everyone a half-lobster without the distraction of side dishes, furnishing guests with plenty of wet towels and bowls for empty shells. Then we all just concentrate on getting every morsel of meat out of these amazing crustaceans.

Throughout history, Sardinia has been a territorial prize for the great powers of the Mediterranean Basin, and every period of dominion has left its mark on the island. One of the most distinctive influences—both cultural and culinary—was the 400-year rule of imperial Spain, from the early 1300s to the early 1700s. Today, in Alghero, on the west coast of Sardinia, residents still speak a form of the Catalan language. And the spiny lobster that abounds in the waters off Alghero is prepared alla Catalana—cooked, chopped into large pieces, and tossed into a salad. In Sardinia, it is expected that you will grab a chunk of lobster from the salad with your fingers and dig into the shells with gusto. Here at home, I do the same thing with our great Atlantic lobsters, which are certainly as good as if not better than their Mediterranean cousins. I prepare them alla Catalana and serve them Sardinian-style, with lots of moist napkins and bowls for the shells, encouraging everybody to dig in.

It always pleases me when such a simple recipe can be so good. But every ingredient and every step must be perfect—the calamari, fresh; the olive oil, the best; and the pan must be hot for the quick cooking. I always prefer to buy whole calamari and clean them myself (you can see how easy it is to do in my book Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen). I also like to leave the skin on the bodies, because it takes on a lovely color when cooked. However, now that squid are frequently sold already cleaned, which is a convenience, the body skin is usually peeled off as well. So, if you like the skin, as I do, ask the fishmonger at your market to leave it on. If that’s not possible, don’t worry: the dish tastes marvelous either way. (And if you are not a fan of squid, you could also prepare scallops, swordfish, or even a fillet of cod using this recipe.)

I love this simple method for cooking whole octopus so it explodes with flavor. You just put it in a heavy pan and let it cook very slowly (with only olive oil, sliced onions, and olives to season it) for a couple of hours. As it cooks, it releases all of its natural, tasty water, which serves as a braising liquid. Though the meat loses some volume, its flavor is retained in the liquid, which naturally cooks into a great dressing for spaghetti or other pasta. In this recipe, the meat is cut into chunks that are tossed with the spaghetti and cooking juices. For a special occasion, though, you can serve the whole octopus, uncut (or two smaller octopuses, as called for here). If you dress the spaghetti with the juices alone and set the octopus on top, with the tentacles curling around and under, it makes a beautiful presentation. You can also serve this delectable cephalopod—either whole or cut into pieces—over freshly cooked soft polenta or slabs of grilled polenta. And any leftover octopus meat or sauce can be incorporated into a terrific risotto; with so much flavor in them, just a small amount of leftovers is all you’ll need to make a great risotto for two.

For me, there’s no better way to dress spaghetti than with a fresh seafood sauce. And this sauce, from the old fishing port of Termoli in Molise, is as simple and delicious as any. In the restaurants by the docks in Termoli (near the old citadel called Tornola), just-caught seafood is served in a brodetto. You eat the seafood, and then the kitchen will toss spaghetti into the sauce you’ve left in your bowl. In my version of spaghetti di Tornola, the calamari, scallops, and shrimp are part of the pasta dressing, but you can eat the brodetto in separate courses, Termoli-style, if you like. In summer, I use my mother’s home-grown, sun-ripened cherry tomatoes to make an exceptional sauce, but in winter, a couple of cups of canned plum tomatoes make a fine substitute.

I love all kinds of Italian fish soups, having sampled countless versions of zuppa di pesce, served with just enough tomatoey sauce to slurp up with a spoon, as well as brodo di pesce, a flavorful fish stock usually with nothing but rice. A new discovery for me, though, was this Molisano version of brodo di pesce, with chard and peppers floating between chunks of seafood in a savory broth. Served with grilled bread or a slab of grilled polenta, it is indeed a complete meal. Relish it with a glass of crispy white wine from the region’s distinctive Falanghina grape varietal, and you can taste Molise beckoning you.

This is a very flavorful rendition of pasta and clam sauce, a bit more complex than the one Aunt Anna made for me on my first visit to Le Marche. It can also be made with other seafood, such as shrimp or calamari, in place of the clams—just keep in mind the varying cooking times of whatever shellfish you use. If you are not in the mood for seafood, omit it altogether and double the artichokes. And who is to say that you can’t do this recipe with chicken breast? Just add slivers of breast meat before the artichokes, cook and stir for a few minutes, then proceed with the basic recipe.

Cold soup and hot shrimp—this is a fantastic combination on a warm night. Blending the honeyed sweetness of this summer melon with intensely savory vegetables makes this dish incredibly refreshing. And I give the hot, spicy shrimp a hit of freshness by grilling finely sliced mint right onto them.

To make this pasta sing, use the freshest, best-quality crab available, such as jumbo lump crabmeat, Dungeness, or king crab. Adjust the heat from the chiles and the amount of lemon juice to your liking.

Gently poach shrimp, then marinate them in the rémoulade for at least 2 hours or overnight to allow the flavors to meld.

There are two categories of entrée in Thailand: dishes served with rice, and noodle dishes, which are presented as one-pot meals and often eaten on the go. Rice noodles cook more quickly than wheat pasta and are the perfect neutral vehicle for intense Thai flavors. This Pad Thai is not the dish from the neighborhood take-out joint. "It ain't made with chicken," says Ricker, whose traditional take—pleasantly funky with fish sauce and preserved radish and a touch sour from tamarind—is meant to be eaten in the evening as a stand-alone dish.

You'll want crusty bread for sopping up this San Francisco fish stew.