Root Vegetable

Pork shoulder is my hands-down favorite cut of meat. Studded with garlic, it makes a succulent roast for dinner with enough for sandwiches the next day; and braised with a few flavorful ingredients, it creates its own sauce. Hard cider brings acidity to the sweetness of regular cider and apples.

These preserves will keep for a few weeks in the refrigerator and are good on a grilled cheese sandwich or as a condiment for creamy pureed white beans.

Dark green curly spinach varieties like Savoy or Bloomsdale have a deeper, richer flavor than the lighter green, grassier flat-leaf spinach, but any spinach pairs wonderfully with cardamom.

While the squab is resting, fry up the livers in a little butter in a small pan and season with salt. Mash them with a fork and flavor with a little gold rum to taste. Spread on grilled bread as a snack while you wait, or serve it alongside the squab.

The amount of crab and shrimp you need will depend on appetites and on how well your guests know each other. When you serve crabs in mixed company, even dear friends will shock you with their daintiness, but if it’s a family dinner, as ours is tonight, you might expect people to put away eight or ten crabs apiece. If crabs aren’t available, a seafood boil is equally delicious with just shrimp, especially if they are wild ones, still fresh enough to have their heads on.

The fact that our great-grandchildren may never eat a real seafood dinner gives those of us who still eat fish a responsibility not to put blue cheese on it. I like to serve this with pickled beets (page 142) and the potato salad that follows. This treatment would work for almost any flavorful, rich fish.

A laying hen is a different animal from the six- to ten-week-old supermarket fryers, roasters, and broilers we usually see. Laying hens are typically sold between one and three years old and create a different sort of stew, deeper in overall flavor but with less succulent meat. If you are using a laying hen, increase the cooking time to about an hour and a half, or until the meat is very tender. It will not be necessary to remove the breast meat during cooking as directed below.

On the first day of the year that is warm enough to open the windows, we all instantly crave spring foods. While the asparagus, peas, and strawberries we hunger for lag many weeks behind, the early tonics of spring—spring onions, green garlic, and ramps—step in to give us the jolt we need to wake up from winter.