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If you’re using fresh crabs, you want to use the meatiest ones you can find, such as Dungeness crabs from the West Coast. The little blue Maryland crabs are good, too, but they are a lot of work to get the meat. I usually figure about one-third of the whole crab weight will be meat. So, for every pound of crab, you might get one-third pound of cleaned meat. If fresh crabs are not available, you can usually find freshly picked lump crabmeat at your fish market. If all else fails, frozen pasteurized canned crab will suffice. Serve with Asparagus Potato Hash (page 210).

For this luxurious omelet, choose a good-quality lean ham, but avoid pepper ham or mapleglazed ham because you don’t want to distract from the flavor of the Gruyère, which has a wonderful taste and melts beautifully. If you don’t have Gruyère, you can use Emmenthal or Beaufort. This recipe doesn’t call for salt because both the ham and the Gruyère are naturally salty. Serve with Steamed Sesame Spinach (page 216).

Chorizo sausage gives this omelet a little kick and is a nice foil to the creamy-smooth avocado. For some extra spice, serve with Pico de Gallo (page 290) and fresh corn tortillas.

This is a springtime treat, when asparagus is at its peak and you can get the young, thin stalks. Making this with thick stalks is fine, though you may want to peel the tougher bottom half of the stalks before cooking. Blanching rather than steaming helps the asparagus retain its bright green color and firm texture. Serve with Niçoise Salad (page 160).

In my house, eggs in the hole were also called one-eyed sailors. Whatever they are called in yours, this is a great dish that children will love. It consists of bread with a hole punched in the middle, griddled with butter, and an egg dropped into the hole and then flipped over to griddle the other side. Depending on the thickness of your bread, or the type of bread, you could create a little “eye patch” by griddling the punched-out part and setting it on top of the egg. This dish is quite versatile. For a more sophisticated variation, try adding basil and Parmesan cheese or a smear of anchovy paste, a clove of roasted garlic, a slice of goat cheese, American cheese, or sharp Cheddar. Put a blanket of crispy fried ham over the “little sailor.” For a romantic brunch for Valentine’s Day, you could use a heart-shaped cookie cutter to punch out the hole in the middle of the bread. For heartier appetites try cutting a larger hole in the bread and cooking two eggs rather than just one.

Sometimes you just need the taste of some eggs cooked in butter or cream. Shirred eggs fit the bill: They’re baked in hot fat or heavy cream. At Bubby’s, we use either butter or bacon fat. They are baked in the same dish in which they will be served—a 4-inch oval ceramic ramekin is perfect.

A contemporary take on the ground meat–stuffed marrow. This economical supper stands or falls by the way the meat is cooked. The real flavor here comes from the caramelization of the sugars in the meat. To make the most of this, I have the oil at quite a high temperature as I add the meat, then resist the temptation to stir or turn the meat too soon. Continual movement will result in “wet” rather than crisp-edged, golden ground pork.

A marrow for supper will generally coincide with the leaves turning on the trees, the first early morning mists, new school uniform. Their bulk and their bargain-basement price ensure that they will make a cheap supper. For this, we love them. This filling—earthy, sloppy, and much nicer than ground meat—is good for pumpkin too.

2008 saw not only my usual terra-cotta pots of Striato d’Italia on the back steps but also a trailing variety known as Caserta, a pale fruit the color of mint ice cream, with darker stripes. The light-skinned varieties such as Clarion, Di Faenza, and the almost ivory Lebanese White Bush look particularly delicate and summery when sautéed in butter and olive oil with a handful of herbs thrown in at the last moment, the scent of late summer hitting you as you spoon over the pan juices. Perhaps that should be swoon. Squashes of every variety love a tomato. Occasionally you could argue they need it too. Late last summer, just as the beans were forming on the poles in the vegetable beds, I made a last-minute, rough-edged supper with little more than a few zucchini and a couple of tomatoes. It was done in fifteen minutes flat. There are many who would insist on skinning and seeding the tomatoes for this, but not only do I think it unnecessary here, it also means missing out on all their rich juices and scrunchy seeds.

As turnips do so well with orange, it is only a small step to use them with marmalade. Duck has this affinity too, so the three can come together successfully in a darkly sweet and rich casserole. Like duck à l’orange but sweeter and more suitable for a freezing winter’s day. The orange flavors here, from both fruit and bitter marmalade, should not dominate. The final flavor can be tweaked to your taste at the end with lemon juice or, better still, a bitter Seville orange. Rice, pure and white, would be my first choice of accompaniment. If you start this dish the day before, you will have a better chance of removing most of the fat that floats to the surface.

Small squashes deep-fry particularly well, offering a refreshing, almost juicy contrast to the ethereally crisp batter. This is one of those recipes—pancakes are another—that I tend to make when there are just two of us, and we can eat our sizzling fritters at the stove while the next one cooks. I find I get a much crisper result if I don’t overcrowd the pan.

The ideal here would be the pale, plump zucchini varieties you find in Middle Eastern markets. I visit one near London’s Edgware Road that even has them ready prepared, their seeds removed for stuffing, and packed into little plastic crates. If these torpedo-shaped squashes escape me, and they often do, then I use the ubiquitous type, halve them lengthwise and scatter the filling loosely over the top rather than making a clumsy attempt to stuff them. The classic zucchini stuffings of the Middle East vary from family to family but usually include cooked rice or ground lamb, or occasionally walnuts, pine nuts, or hazelnuts, stirred into softened onion and then lightly seasoned with allspice, tomato paste, and parsley. The effect is a moist filling of elegance and pleasing predictability. I sometimes want something more unusual. A stuffing that intrigues as much as it pleases.

Whereas most meats give us a choice of cooking on the bone or not, wild rabbit is one that really needs its bones if it is not to be dry. It is not the meatiest of choices, so you need to be generous with quantities here. Rabbit bones are small, and it’s important to watch out for the tinier ones. The turnips in this provide all the carbs you need to soak up the sauce. It just needs some purple sprouting broccoli on the side.

There is a small but distinguished group of seafood and tomato dishes, from the Provençal soups with their croûtes and brick-red rouille to Portuguese soup-stews reeking of garlic. With those dishes as a starting point, I spent some time working on a soup of tomato and crab. After making several versions that were too thick and rich, I took the step of bringing chile and lemongrass into the proceedings to add a breath of freshness and vitality. This is a bright-tasting soup that sings with the sweet heat of chile and crustacean. To add enough substance to treat it as a main dish (when this recipe will serve 3 or 4), I introduce a last-minute addition of bean shoots or maybe some shredded, very lightly cooked snow peas.

How a dish smells is important. It whets the appetite, brings us to the table, and opens up a host of pleasures. With coconut, cardamom, and coriander, this simple dish of baked tomatoes is heady and aromatic. It curdles a bit, but no matter. You will need some rice or bread to go with it. Creamed coconut, a block of pure dried coconut, is available at Asian markets and online.