Citrus

What to drink: Offer a Pinot Grigio with these toasts.

Chill the orange curd overnight before using.

The salsa has a nice balance of sweet and spicy flvaors and is a perfect compliment to purchased frozen spring rolls or egg rolls.

This dish is delicious over couscous, which will absorb the flavorful broth.

While in Costa Rica, Boston chef Steve Johnson was inspired to make fish cakes from leftover red snapper and boiled yuca. The combination takes clever advantage of the vegetable's starchy character, which binds the cakes together while allowing the flavor of the snapper to come through cleanly. We prefer to use frozen yuca, which has a better consistency and is easier to prepare.

A wonderfully homey cake that's equally good with afternoon tea, after a meal, or for breakfast with a cup of Italian roast coffee. Maple sugar is available at some supermarkets and at many natural foods stores.

Sheila Stein of Woodbury, New York, New York, writes: "We've eaten several times at La Viola of Syosset. Their chicken française is excellent. Could you get the recipe for me?"

Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 6 hr (includes chilling) Chillingsworth, in Brewster on Cape Cod, was one of several restaurants that caused a great deal of mail to flow into our You Asked for It department during the '60s and '70s. This homespun lemon roll is part of its legacy.

This recipe has a small yield, so it's not necessary to sterilize and process the jars if you plan on keeping the marmalade in the refrigerator and eating it within a few weeks. But if you want to make larger batches, process the jars. Active time: 40 minutes Start to finish: 1 day

If you don't want to cook a live lobster for this recipe, buy 2/3 pound cooked lobster meat from your seafood shop. Active time: 45 min Start to finish: 2 3/4 hr (includes chilling)

"In our family," writes Georgia I. Chletcos of Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, "we have a saying that the Greek kitchen is the original twenty-four-hour diner: It never closes. And being from a Greek family, I can say unequivocally that food is the center of our lives. The great thing about these home-style dishes is that they're generous to the cook and to everyone else: You don't have to be a pro to prepare them, there's always plenty to share, and you'll have a delicious meal on the table in no time."

This recipe works best with thin-skinned lemons because the slices, having less pith, will not be as bitter.

Hollowed-out orange halves are filled with mashed yams and topped with marshmallow creme and pecans.

Mascarpone cheese, with its slightly tart flavor, gets a sweet boost from honey. If you can't find mascarpone, top this with honey-sweetened sour cream or crème fraîche.

Nuoc Tuong Pha This vegetarian dipping sauce can be made with any soy sauce, including the Japanese-style Kikkoman, although the Vietnamese prefer the lighter-bodied Chinese-style products marketed under the brands Kim Lan, Bo De, and Pearl River Bridge. Like dipping sauces made with fish sauce, you can embellish this with different aromatics such as ginger and cilantro.

Cooking doesn't get much easier than this, but it still took me a while to catch on. Being a northerner, I didn't realize that everyone south of Baltimore knows spiced shrimp like New Englanders know maple syrup. I tried spicing up my shrimp and crabs with a spice mix called "Shrimp and Crab Boil." I took the cue from the name and added the spices to boiling water to boil the shellfish. Not until I moved to Maryland crab country did I find that you douse the shellfish with spices and steam them over boiling water. Perhaps someone should market a spice mix called "Shrimp and Crab Steam" for us literalists. The shrimp are cooked with their shells on, so provide lots of napkins for spice-coated hands and beer or lemonade for spice-coated throats.