Paprika

The lemon juice gives these potatoes an appealing fresh taste.

Have the butcher cut the meat to the specified proportions. Plan ahead to let the steak marinate at least two hours before cooking.

Berbere is a chile and spice blend used to season many Ethiopian dishes. Because authentic berbere can be hard to find, we developed our own recipe. Active time: 15 min Start to finish: 15 min

This recipe is an accompaniment for Tunisian Fish Cakes with Spicy Lemon and Paprika Aioli .

Use any variety of young, small potatoes at the market — such as fingerlings, baby reds, or small Yukon Golds or yellow Finns.

You could also serve it on its own with crackers or bread, or offer it as a relish for grilled chicken or fish. It can be made with black olives as well as with green.

A nod to what could arguably be the dish of the eighties, blackened redfish. The technique works equally well with halibut.

"I grew up in the middle of Croatia, near Zagreb, where the cuisine is very heavy — lots of meat and potatoes," writes Snjezana Hercigonja of Raleigh, North Carolina. "But when I was young, it was customary to vacation on the Mediterranean coast in the summer, where you go to the market every day to see what's good, and everything is really fresh and light. Even the fat is good, since it's usually olive oil. This recipe is based on dishes from that region. Select peppers that are flat on the bottom — they stand up better while cooking. Mashed potatoes would be a perfect side dish.

Adobo — a paste made with chiles, spices, and vinegar or sometimes citrus juice — is a flavoring agent found throughout the Spanish-speaking world. This variation with paprika and rosemary serves as the seasoning rub for the meat.

Nigella Lawson If we're talking about family favorites, I couldn't leave liptauer out. It was the deli counter delicacy of my childhood and another eating item I'd all but forgotten about. But something made me remember it, and from taste-memory and some notes from the kitchen book inherited by my friend Olivia from her mother, I tried my hand at making it myself. I can confidently and categorically state that it's not some sentimental yearning that makes me want to see its comeback. You don't need to go in for the retro-molding here, just mix the ingredients and plonk them in a bowl if you like; but whatever, this glorious cream cheese, caper, caraway seed, and paprika combination, spread over sour black bread or — if you don't have the genetic taste for it — over slices of any dark or brown bread that you can get from the supermarket, is rhapsodically unbeatable.

Hungarian Jewish food is a perfect example of acculturation. Take this piquant cucumber salad, which can be made with one of the three different kinds of paprika — mild, sharp, or sweet. Taken there by the Turks who discovered it in the New World, paprika has been cultivated in Hungary since the sixteenth century.

This is a terrific make-ahead appetizer. The steak must be coated with the spice rub and chilled overnight before grilling, then the empanadas can be assembled completely one day before baking.

This delicious Portuguese regional specialty, called migas, is a dish of sautéed meats served over fried bread. Here is the version from Fialho restaurant in Evora, Portugal. They marinate the pork in a red-pepper paste popular in the Alentejo, but paprika makes a nice substitute. The seasoned pork needs to be chilled overnight, so begin this recipe a day before serving it.

I lived in the Canary Islands for ten years and am reminded in a small way of that happy time whenever I make my former neighbor's spicy potatoes (tradition has it that the real thing is cooked in sea water). I hope that you will enjoy them--they go wonderfully well with grilled fish and meat. Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

If there is any "magic" to our cooking, it's in seasoning mixes such as this. With this mixture, we try to unmask the depth of flavor in our native seafood, not overpower it. We want every bite to display a full flavor profile, so we liberally sprinkle seasoning on the entire piece of fish. That means both sides. Make a decent-sized batch of this mixture so it will always be handy, then rub it or sprinkle it on the food. Remember, mixtures such as this cost very little to make yourself but quite a lot if you buy them at retail.