I just got back from a good long trip to the panhandle of Florida along the Gulf of Mexico coast, where we’ve been vacationing since I was little. I’ve always appreciated the amazing seafood down there, but there’s one thing in particular I look forward to each trip — the shrimp.

Shrimp, of course, look and taste reflective of the water they live in. When raw, these glisten clear and just a little opaque, with a hint of coral and aqua. When barely cooked through they’re bright white and pink, firm, sweet — the best of both shrimp and lobster in a single crustacean.

This year, a few miles from the beach on a bridge crossing a large coastal bay, I came across a shrimp boat selling shrimp caught the night before. Jackpot. I went back again and again.

Because they’re so delicate, for all the ways I cooked them when I was there (I must have eaten six pounds), my favorite was simply boiled for one minute with crab boil, chilled, peeled, then eaten straight up with a glass of crisp white wine. I miss them already.

Recipe: Southern Boiled Shrimp
Recipe: Spicy Shrimp Salad Sandwich
Recipe: Spicy Shrimp And Corn Fritters

Raw vegetable salads lend simplicity, convenience, elegance and a good dose of vegetables to a meal all at the same time. The basic formula is easy: choose three or four different vegetables you’d eat raw (corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, fennel, carrots, radishes, cabbage, radicchio, endive, sweet or green onions), add in some cheese (feta, mozzarella, Swiss, cubed parmesan) and / or toasted nut or seed (pecans, almonds, pine nuts), and toss it all with any simple vinaigrette and some chopped fresh herbs (parsley, marjoram, chives, thyme).

Raw vegetable salads are especially good in summer when the garden and farmers markets are bountiful. They’re refreshing and light, contrast nicely with grilled meats and simply cooked grains (rice, couscous, quinoa), and can even serve as the main taste and flavor component of a meal. They can be made ahead and chilled so their flavors have time to meld, then brought out an hour or so before you serve dinner to come to room temperature. Cut the vegetables into large pieces for a more traditional “salad,” and into smaller pieces for more of a relish feel.

Recipe: Tomato, Corn, Cucmber And Feta Salad
Recipe: Greek Salad
Recipe: Moroccan Carrot Salad
Recipe: Grated Beet, Frisée, Walnut And Goat Cheese Salad
Recipe: Fennel And Orange Salad With Pecorino
Recipe: Tomato, Mozzarella And Basil Relish

I’m almost always hungry first thing in the morning. But today, after a good long jog yesterday, I was ravenous. What to eat?

Before I even got out of bed, a dish I had heard about recently, quinoa pancakes, popped into my mind. I had no idea how to make them, but it was pouring down rain outside, I had a strong cup of coffee in hand and I was up for a little experimentation.

First, I rinsed and drained a handful of quinoa in a colander (some varieties of quinoa have a toxic powdery substance coating the grains). I put the damp quinoa in my mini food processor and tried to grind it to a paste. It was slow going, but after scraping down the sides of the processor a few times and adding a few teaspoons of water, the quinoa finally formed a paste. It had an assertive, nutty aroma — a lot like sesame tahini.

I poured the paste into a bowl, and whisked in some whole milk and an egg. I wanted a savory, not sweet cake, so I seasoned the batter with salt and pepper, and stirred in a handful of grated parmesan and a little chopped fresh rosemary.

Then I just cooked the batter as I would when making pancakes (but with olive oil instead of butter) until the cakes were brown on both sides and cooked through, about 2 minutes total. I topped the cakes with a couple of olive-oil-fried eggs and a little more grated parmesan.

The cakes were really flavorful — bold, nutty — and filling. I’m looking forward to tinkering with the recipe some more. I think they’d be good really big and thin, used like a flatbread.

Reference: What is quinoa?
Reference: How do you pronounce quinoa?
Reference: Is quinoa a grain or a seed?

You want to add some flavor to a cut of meat. Why use a spice paste over a marinade?

First of all, you need time to marinate, time you may not have unless you’ve planned things in advance. Because a spice paste clings to the meat and forms a crust when you cook it, you don’t have to give it the waiting time you do a marinade. (You could rub a spice paste on a couple of hours ahead of time, but you don’t have to.)

Once cooked, the pungent, textured crust contrasts the plain, juicy meat. Unlike a marinade, which evenly coats a cut of meat and results in a consistently flavored finished dish, the spice paste comes with surprises: a cluster of ginger here, a nugget of toasted garlic there.

The formula for a spice paste is simple: a few ground spices + puréed aromatics like ginger, garlic, chiles + salt and pepper + just enough oil to hold it together — so try a spice paste instead of a marinade the next time you grill.

Yesterday afternoon I was looking forward to grilling two beautiful Niman Ranch pork tenderloins for a dinner party. But when it was time to fire up the grill, the sky cracked open and it started to pour. Even though my grill’s just outside the door, the rain was coming down hard and I didn’t feel like getting wet. So I opted instead for my second-favorite way to cook meat — pan roasting.

I preheated the oven to 375F and sprinkled the pork generously with smoked paprika, toasted and ground cumin and coriander, salt and pepper. I seared the tenderloins in canola oil in a hot skillet until they were dark brown on all sides, then put them in the oven to finish cooking. When their internal temperature was 150F in the thickest part I removed them to a cutting board to rest, loosely tented with foil, for 10 minutes.

The pork didn’t quite have the charred flavor that grilling gives, but thorough searing in the skillet, smoky paprika and toasted spices helped compensate. It went well alongside fragrant coconut rice, mango-avocado salsa, cucumber raita and the sound of steady rain through a cracked window.

Recipe: Pan-Roasted Pork Tenderloin
Recipe: Coconut Basmati Rice
Recipe: Mango-Avocado Salsa
Recipe: Cucumber Raita

In the beginning of the book, Mallmann describes seven types of wood-cooking apparatus: the parilla (a grill grate set over hot coals), chapa (flat cast iron griddle set over fire), infernillo (two-story fire with a cooking surface in between), horno de barro (wood-fired oven), rescoldo (covering food with embers), asado (vertical spit for cooking whole animals) and caldero (iron kettle).

For the rest of the book he harnesses those fires to make dozens of beautiful dishes from salads to desserts, with plenty of meat, seafood and vegetable dishes in between. Savory Corn Pudding, Empanadas, Mussels With Garlic and White Wine, Beef and Potato Pie, Peached Pork . . . the alluring list goes on and on, each accompanied by a little history, clear instructions and beautiful photography.

In a world replete with books about barbecue Mallman manages a completely original take on the subject, a primal exploration of grilling’s “new frontier.” It will have you dying to cook with wood and fire.

Domenica Marchetti is a food writer, recipe developer and cooking teacher who specializes in seasonal Italian home cooking and the author of The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy. Visit her website at www.domenicacooks.com. You can find more of her recipes here.

I have only been to Morocco by way of the movie Casablanca and through the words of my former cleaning woman, Fatima.

Like me, Fatima is an avid home cook and every other Tuesday when she would arrive, we would spend a good amount of time talking about food we had cooked for our families. She described in vivid detail delicious-sounding tagines of lamb or chicken, the proper way to make couscous, and soups featuring lentils and other legumes, assorted fresh vegetables, and spices.

When she traveled home to Morocco to visit her mother, she would always return with a supply of spices for me — cinnamon, cumin, ground pepper and paprika. She brought homemade semolina pancakes for my children, which we warmed in the oven and enjoyed with honey drizzled over them.

At first, it seemed to me that our two cuisines, Moroccan and Italian, couldn’t be more different, with Moroccan being much more spice-laden and, I thought, discordant, with its tendency to mix sweet and savory. But, in fact, this culinary habit also persists in parts of Italy, particularly in the South where it is common to see ingredients such as raisins and sugar added to savory dishes of fish or vegetables that have also been seasoned with lemon or vinegar.

Couscous, meanwhile, is North Africa’s answer to pasta. And both cuisines rely, for the most part, on simple cooking techniques, the use of fresh ingredients and the ability to elevate vegetables to star status. The closer I looked, the more similarities I found.

The tanking economy demanded I give up some of my middle-class luxuries, including Fatima. More than her house-cleaning skills (which, if truth be told, were somewhat lacking) I miss listening to her talk about what she was cooking, whether it was a chicken and eggplant tagine spiked with preserved lemon, or a meal-in-one vegetable soup brightened by a mix of hot and sweet spices.

Recently I thought about Fatima when I purchased a tagine. I had wanted to buy one for a long time, and the one I found was oven-proof ceramic with a beautiful green glaze on its conical cover. I confess that I have yet to cook with it, but the purchase has spurred my interest in Moroccan cooking. I decided to get my feet wet by making a vegetable soup that Fatima had once described to me and that strikes me as very similar to Italian minestrone, only with more spices.

I cobbled together this recipe from various sources, including a version in Cooking at the Kasbah by Kitty Morse, Fatima’s descriptions and my own (hopefully not too misguided) intuition. I can’t claim that it is in any way authentic, but I can tell you that it good.

Recipe: Moroccan Minestrone (Domenica Marchetti)

Amanda McClements is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance food writer and the blogger behind Metrocurean.

Sweet or salty?

Salty, all day, every day. Can you pickle your insides?

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Pork, mostly bacon and sausage. Garlic would be a close second. When I read a recipe, I typically double or triple whatever the amount of garlic it calls for.

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

Popcorn pushing the lid off a heavy pot.

What’s your favorite cooking smell?

Onions sautéeing in butter. The beginning of so many great things.

What are the qualities you most admire in a dish?

I love dishes that let ingredients speak for themselves and dishes that are playful enough to make me smile. Like the “green eggs and ham” at DC’s CityZen, where sulfur-smelling Himalayan salt grated over the plate stands in for egg yolk.

What is your most treasured possession in the kitchen?

My 9-quart Le Creuset French oven. I can barely lift it off the stove, which is where it lives, but I make everything in it. Risotto, soup, short ribs, braised chicken.

What is a dirty word in your kitchen?

Cool Whip.

What are afraid to do in the kitchen?

Flip a heavy skillet of food. I always spill some.

What won’t you eat?

I’ll eat pretty much anything … once.

Have you ever lost your appetite for a food you once loved?

Yes — cooked salmon. I used to eat it all the time and now it almost turns my stomach. Raw or smoked salmon I still love, but there’s something about the oiliness of cooked salmon.

Have you ever had a change of heart involving a food you once disliked?

Tomatoes! It was the one food I wouldn’t eat as a kid, and one day when I was about 18, it was like a switch flipped. My mom was blown away the day I came home from college and went to the store just because I was craving a tomato.

If you could choose one historical or living cook to make you a meal right now, who and what would it be?

My late grandmother would cook my favorites from her repertoire: manicotti followed by “Biloxi pudding,” a layered meringue and coffee ice cream cake, iced with frozen whipped cream and sprinkled with toffee. That dessert was pure magic to a kid.

Which food website/blog would you be lost without?

The correct answer is Cookthink, right?

What is your favorite food-related word?

Pamplemousse. My favorite French word.

What is your favorite food-related scene from literature or the movies?

I’m sure these have been answers before but it’s a tie between the dinner scenes in Babette’s Feast and Chocolat.

What’s your favorite food-shopping errand or journey?

Going to the Dupont FreshFarm Market Sunday mornings. There’s a great sense of community.

To which country would you move for the food?

Is California a country? Just kidding. I’ll take France. So I can say pamplemousse a lot.

To seduce someone, what would you cook?

Steamed crabs. Assuming the person I’m seducing is my husband, I know that would work.

What’s your poison?

Champagne.

What’s your standard outfit in the kitchen?

Jeans and Dansko clogs or heels — my counter plus bulky wood Boos block is just too high for me to comfortably chop so the clogs (or heels if I’m feeling it) give me a much-needed boost.

You wish to die with what in your stomach?

A buttery grilled cheese sandwich and a side of grits.

If heaven exists, what do you hope they have on the menu?

Fried chicken, seared steak, eastern North Carolina barbecue sandwiches, watermelon and wood-fired pizza. And bowls of olives everywhere.

If you came back as a fruit or a vegetable, which one would it be (and why)?

An olive. My favorite food in the world.

What are you craving right now?

Pizza. I’m always craving pizza. Good pizza.

(Image created at Wordle.)

Whether you’re firing up the grill, having a picnic or just planning to kick back and spend the day drinking, Cookthink wishes those lucky enough to take the holiday a happy Memorial Day!

Long before commercial production of Herbes de Provence began in the 1970s, this versatile aromatic mix was popular with Provençal grandmothers, who crushed it between their fingers before using it to add complex herbal flavor to roast chicken, marinated meats, soups and vegetable dishes. You can now find Herbes de Provence in supermarkets and farmer’s markets throughout the world. But you may have all the ingredients needed to make Herbes de Provence yourself right in your very own cupboard.

Recipe: Goat Cheese With Pastis And Herbes De Provence (Cookthink)