I had the good fortune to travel to southern Spain last year where I was introduced to an alternative to rice paella, fideos, or broken pasta. The fideos have a personality of their own taking on a nutty flavor, providing a full bodied backdrop for the seafood and tomatoes.

Fried oysters are a real treat. Until recently I thought of them as a food only to bought "out". I discovered the lure of the oyster fried at home and haven't looked back. I have tried both pre-shucked oysters (better than no oyster) and ones shucked to order (by me) for frying. There is no doubt that the home-shucked oyster yields a better result. However, if all you have is oysters by the pint, it's better than going without. I use a 50/50 blend of olive oil and canola to fry these babies.

Actually, I think the spicing of these shrimp is a little more Creole, but that doesn't make a slant rhyme with flamin' now does it? Anyways, this is actually a recipe from a college boyfriend of mine. I think I've said it before (I have a terrible habit of repeating myself), but I'll say it again, there is no relationship that doesn't wind up leaving you with something worthwhile, and this dish is certainly one of those things. It's one of my very favorite dinners—super fast, super easy, and super delicious. I've tweaked it over the years, and now I finally decided it was time to let it go up in flames, but only literally. The addition of cognac and the lick of the flame over the shrimp adds a whole new dimension of wonderful flavors to those already in the dish. Make sure to have lots of good French bread on hand because you really don't want to let any of the sauce go un-sopped up. This dish is fabulously messy, as you have to peel the shells off of the sauce slicked shrimp as you go. And then you get to lick your fingers, yum. If you need to, you can use peeled shrimp, but I really recommend shell on shrimp because the shrimp meat cooks to a nicer texture and has more delicate flavoring, while the sauce also winds up with better flavor.

This dish is a combination of two recipes. The spiced shrimp is my go-to recipe for a shrimp cocktail, which I learned many years ago from a Chinese cookbook by Sunset. It is delicious, aromatic, and with a pungent cocktail sauce makes a perfect appetizer. I usually make the second recipe, for the Lemon-Ginger Sauce, to serve over roasted or fried fish or chicken, and use chicken or fish stock for the liquid. I have to say that the idea to marry these two recipes and serve it hot as an entrée was a successful and a delicious one. You also can make this recipe with lobster tails, crab, or scallops. It's a saucy way to serve shrimp over pasta, white or brown rice, or just with fresh crusty bread for dipping and enjoying the wonderful sauce.

The first time I tasted Pesce al Sale was at a restaurant in Milan. I remember the dramatic presentation of the baked fish encrusted in salt and cracked open tableside, revealing a steaming, aromatic and succulent fish. This preparation is my favorite way to eat a whole fish, and it's easy to do at home. Have your fishmonger clean and scale your fish for you. Once cooked, filet the fish and serve simply with extra-virgin olive oil, lemon and parsley gremolata. Note that since the fish cavity is stuffed the cooking time will run about 10 minutes longer than unstuffed.

I love the flavor that the cedar imparts to fish ... I have made this recipe with other whole fish, it's very good with trout too. A word on cedar planks - you can buy them from a specialty store for like $11.99 if you want, OR - you can go to Home Depot and purchase UNTREATED cedar fence pickets for about $2.49 and cut them to length, thereby getting a BUNCH of planks for a fraction of the cost. Fish wider than the picket? Just lay 2 side by side on the grill and proceed!

I've been playing with brown rice in this recipe for a while and this method seems to work pretty well. I have tried it in the oven, but stove top makes it easier to check the liquid level. I leave out one of the trinity of New Orleans style cooking, the green bell pepper, because I just don't like them. To use bell pepper, add about a half a pepper, diced, when you add your onion and celery.

A Parsi recipe from the Zoroastrian communities of Pakistan, this green masala is made with cilantro leaves, mint, green chiles, and coconut. Its freshness complements firm white fish without masking the flavor with spice. The elegant presentation of the fish makes for lovely little parcels at a dinner party. You can even make it using a whole fish.

It's summertime, which means All The Things are grilled, lotsa smoke involved, corn and tomatoes everywhere, and chilled rosé. I decided to try using the corn husks for smoking this salmon and it worked perfectly—the smoke is sweet and subtle and to be perfectly honest it smells a little like pot when it hits the grill, so the neighbors might peek over the fence when you make this.