Dairy Free

There’s nothing fancy about a whole, roasted fish—it’s just good. While the fish cooks, the herbs and lemon perfume the flesh, and the fish turns out moist and succulent with crisp skin. It doesn’t get much better. If you can’t find black bass, branzino, snapper, or rockfish would also work. This recipe is for one whole fish, but it’s just as easy to double the recipe if you’re having friends to dinner. Roast off a couple of fish, add a couple of other dishes, and let everyone share.

Fluke—often called “summer flounder” on the East Coast or hirame in Japan—is an extremely light and delicate fish. Because of its mild flavor, I like to pair it with this citrus relish, complementing, but not overpowering, the fish’s characteristics. For the baby leaves, you can use arugula, Italian parsley, microgreens, or whatever you can find and like. Feel free to vary the citrus in the relish as well, experimenting with grapefruit, blood oranges, or sweet Cara Cara oranges in the winter. Because fluke cooks so quickly, have your relish ready before you begin the fish. To make sure you get a nice crispy exterior on the fillets, use two sauté pans if necessary. Crowding the pan will cause the fish to steam instead of sear.

Though this recipe sounds straight out of a Coen brothers’ movie, the name refers to the fact that you chop off the squids’ arms and stuff them inside their own bodies. Trust me—this is my kind of punishment. I use cooked Controne beans as a binder instead of breadcrumbs, ensuring the filling is creamy and light, and I add slab bacon for a hit of smoke and texture. When you grill the tentacles, remember that you’re just precooking them and don’t leave them on the heat too long. Another key to this dish is ensuring that your filling is at room temperature before you stuff the squid. If it’s too cold, you’ll overcook the bodies while you heat the stuffing through. If you want to stuff the squid earlier in the day, just take them out of the fridge about a half hour before grilling.

This is a dish to transport you to the Italian Riviera—the freshest sardines, simply grilled, splashed with lemon, briny olives, and the sweet anise flavor of the season’s first fennel. This is also finger food, so get out a big stack of napkins and don’t eat them with those who are excessively dainty. They don’t deserve them anyway. It would play into the whole relaxed-by-the-sea thing if you have your fishmonger scale and clean the sardines.

A 3-pound T-bone makes a pretty fantastic, nearly Flintstonian presentation when you bring it to the table, marked from the grill. If you can, use your charcoal grill for this one—you’ve just spent a tidy sum on this gorgeous hunk of meat, why not give it the best flavor? Think of this as slow roasting—you’re not cooking a hamburger here. A 3-pound steak gives you about 2 pounds of meat, 1/2 pound per person if you’re feeding four. That’s a good bit of steak, but somehow I don’t think you’ll have leftovers. The creamy Controne bean is known as the “no-soak” bean because it lacks a hard skin. You could also use marrow or cannellini, both of which will require soaking, but try seeking out Controne beans in Italian markets.

In this pure celebration of spring, Middle Eastern spices add warmth and depth to tender goat, while the season’s first tender offerings—fresh chickpeas, slender spring onions, tart sorrel—make a fabulous accompaniment. Letting the sautéed vegetables cool before adding the sorrel allows it to keep its vibrant color, and it also makes this relaxed, do-ahead party food. Prepare the side while the goat rests and be prepared to covet the leftovers. Fresh chickpeas look like abbreviated little fava beans in the pod, and, like favas, they require a two-step shelling process to get to the little green gems inside. If you can find them, it’s worth every minute of preparation. Fresh chickpeas are sweet and tender, with only a hint of the nuttiness that marks their flavor when dried. The spices can be found in Middle Eastern markets or online.

Save this recipe for late February, when spring garlic first appears in markets. For this dish, it’s best to use larger heads, planning on one large or two small heads per serving. Piecing out the squab makes for much easier eating and allows you to cook the different parts perfectly, with the added bonus that the wings and body add incredible depth and flavor to the sauce. If you think your knife skills aren’t up to par, you can ask your butcher to do it for you, but be sure to reserve all the pieces. If your guests are big eaters, you might want to double the recipe to allow for one squab per person and serve as an entrée. Lentils would make a nice side.

Veal cheeks make the most delicate braise. Using a combination of water and wine for the braising liquid allows the sweet, subtle taste of the veal to really shine through. As a side, you need nothing more than the spring’s first ramps and some gorgeous porcini, kissed by the grill. Some years, it just so happens that the ramp season runs long, or perhaps the porcini season starts early, or both. When the two magically coincide, some amazing things happen. Using foil as insulation for the delicate ramp tops gives the vegetables a simple char on the grill. The veal needs time to become fork-tender, a few hours in all, so plan accordingly.

For those of you who crave the ubiquitous duck breast all dressed up for company, I offer you my version, the little ducky paired with sweet-and-sour roasted figs and given a little edge from the arugula. I won’t lie—it’s good. However, in exchange for my providing a traditional duck breast recipe, you must promise me that you will try either Party Tripe on Soft Polenta (page 159) or maybe Geoduck Crudo with Fennel and Radish (page 24). Do what scares you.

After a rugged weekend of deer hunting, this is the dish I celebrate with . . . okay, not really. I buy farmed venison, just as you will. The nice thing, other than not having to don your camo and risk getting ticks, is that farmed venison is less intense than wild deer meat, with a rich, sophisticated flavor that is perfectly accented with a simple agrodolce. Forget about beef tenderloin and serve this instead—I promise the luscious texture and wild essence will win you over. As with tenderloin, though, make sure you serve the venison rare.

You must believe me when I tell you that making sweet, smoky, succulent bacon with your own two hands is an undertaking you will never regret. It adds something indescribable to dishes like Potato and Asparagus Salad with Home-Cured Bacon and Egg (page 137), and tastes pretty amazing alongside a fried egg. In the restaurants, we cure our own and use it in everything from pastas to panzanella to lentils. Aleppo is a medium-spicy, fruity red pepper that comes from Syria. It has a nice complexity and heat that vanishes almost the minute you notice it’s there. You can find it in Middle Eastern groceries and on the Internet. For this recipe, you’ll need four days, a smoker, and wood chips, preferably hickory.

Swiss chard, with fleshy stems that offer nice texture, has a milder flavor than other greens such as rapini or mustard. I highlight its sweetness with golden raisins and white wine, then add pine nuts for richness and some crunch. Be sure to dry the chard carefully before sautéing, because it gives off a lot of liquid.

I have to say that this is one of my all-time favorite salads, my variation of an Alice Waters recipe I came across years ago, and I’ve always loved the simplicity and the flavor. Shave the mushrooms immediately prior to serving, so that they release their aromas. It’s so intoxicating that you’d think they were pheromones. This salad is actually pretty sexy.

Many recipes that pair carrots with orange call for cooking the carrots with orange juice. Here, I use strips of peel instead, so that you get just a hint of orange, keeping the flavors bright. In the restaurants, we use Thumbelina carrots, a cute, round variety with incredible sweetness. Don’t go crazy chopping the mint—you don’t want to turn it into paste. Just do a few quick strokes with the knife, toss with the carrots, and serve right away. You might want to caution your guests not to eat the orange peel.

This is my idea of bacon and eggs. Thick, homemade bacon adding a smoky, salty touch to gorgeous spring asparagus and tender new-crop potatoes, all crowned with a perfectly poached egg—it doesn’t get much better than this. When you break into the soft yolk, it melts into the vegetables, forming a luxurious sauce. This recipe makes four hearty portions. If you would like to serve six smaller plates, keep the other quantities the same and simply increase the number of eggs.

I’m an ear man—if we’re talking pig. Crispy pig’s ears are gelatinous, cartilaginous, rich, chewy goodness that make an awfully lovely garnish for a fresh panzanella bursting with summer vegetables. You’ll want to allow about half an ear per person, which should amount to about a pound, depending on the pigs, of course. As with many of the best cuts of the pig, it takes a while to get ears into a perfect state for eating. You can boil them, but to get them perfectly tender and ready for frying, I like to poach them in oil first. You need to plan ahead—they take about six hours in a slow oven—but you could do that the day before, or even in the evening when it’s cooler out, then finish them off the day you’re going to serve them.

For those of you not familiar with the term, “alligator pear” is a charming and old-fashioned name for avocado. I use the term here because this is less a recipe than a memory. When I was growing up, my parents thought it the height of sophistication to serve us halved avocados as an accompaniment to our after-dinner salad. They filled them with olive oil and sprinkled them with salt and never failed to mention how rare and expensive a treat we were getting. This is an homage to that family dinner tradition—half an alligator pear, made lighter and more savory with the addition of buttery Ligurian Taggiasca olives and a lightly dressed arugula salad. Serve them the next time you entertain and raise a fork to the Stowells as you do.

This delicious salad makes a solid first course or a hearty addition to a small-plate menu. Mackerel is a fantastic fish, with rich flesh and a deep flavor that is tamed and enhanced by a quick pickling treatment. Crisp radishes and assertive watercress hold up to the forward flavors, while a sprinkling of toasted pistachios adds nice texture and crunch. For a fun variation, use the same pickling liquid on sardines. Because sardine fillets are much thinner, they can be cooked simply by heating the liquid to boiling and pouring it over the fillets. Continue as directed with the rest of the recipe.