Each year during this season, we whip up batches of Cioppino Broth so that you can finish a big bowl of steaming ruby awesomeness with your own choices of shellfish, seafood, or firm-fleshed fish from our seafood case. The broth is a heady mix of tomato, vegetable stock, various chopped vegetables (leek, onion, celery, bell pepper, fennel, and garlic) and several aromatic herbs and spices (bay, oregano, thyme, and cayenne—just a whisper). Here are easy directions for a large serving for one person; multiply as your table requires.

In French, to cook something “sous vide” means that the food has been put “under vacuum” (in a plastic film pouch), perhaps partially cooked, but finished cooking in very warm, even hot, water. Commonly, flavorings or marinades are added to the pouch so that they, too, cook alongside. 

This is a very traditional Mexican side dish, buffet dish, or fiesta standard. Using smoked pimentón (smoked paprika) gives the beans a true cowboy-y, campfire feel.

Do you like French onion soup? Do you like filling your house with the swoon-inducing aromas of cooking? Then this recipe will treat you nicely.

Roasting the main ingredients not only makes for more convenient preparation, but it also develops additional flavors that merely boiling or steaming would not. If you have one, an immersion blender makes puréeing the sauce even easier. (Ask for one for the holidays.)

If you’ve been to a sushi den and ordered and eaten uni, you’ll remember that sea urchin is up there as one of the more delicious combinations of savor, flavor, texture and temptation.

We’ve got a number one recipe for chicken breasts here, pounding them into paillards, thin “cutlets” that are usually breaded in panko crumbs before sautéing. Instead of panko, we’re suggesting some killer Spanish potato chips, a lot more flavorful than panko.

This is a very long recipe (it can take three days to make); it is complicated, though the ingredients are commonplace; and it necessitates using only the best. That said, it is a dish that, if you’re successful making it, will wow anyone eating it as few dishes could.

This soup is the definition of hearty. It’s posole (sometimes spelled pozole), once the most common potage of these parts, a simple mix of pork, broth, hominy, chiles, garlic and onion, and Mexican oregano.

What follows are ten turns on compound butters, both sweet and savory. The process is simple: take a stick of unsalted butter, bring it to room temperature, and, in a freestanding or processor bowl, and whip in the flavorings given. I suggest possible foods onto which a knob of compound butter might be dolloped.

When Marczyk's offers "10/12" count shrimp, now we're talking the oxymoron; these are big shrimps, a dozen max a pound. What to do with them? Skewer 'em on the outdoor grill; they're meat that swims.

The classic Mexican street food of grilled corn slathered in a creamy chili-, garlic-, and Cotija-spiked sauce.

BY BILL ST. JOHN
Butchers or home cooks typically compose pork skewers (or “kebabs” or “kebobs” as they also may be called [although I always have shunned the latter because it’s too much voodoo on my brother, Robert]) from the loin cuts of pork. You might use tenderloin, although as is the case with tenderloin, any pork proposition with it is a gamble: with virtually no fat to guard against overcooking and drying out, “regular” loin cuts such as sirloin call merit to themselves. 

Here are five ways to prepare pork kebabs. Grill any of these on very hot coals for 10-15 minutes, turning once or twice, or until the pork pieces are well browned all over but also being careful to not overcook the meat.