413 may recipes

Old-fashioned seven-day sweet pickles brined with apple cider vinegar, sugar, and pickling spices. This slow canning method yields 7 pints of crunchy, sweet cucumber pickles worth the wait.

Grilled artichoke bottoms stuffed with bay scallops, bread crumbs, tarragon, and garlic. A 3-minute grill appetizer that looks like it took hours.

This old-timey Southern bean recipe simmers all day with a ham bone, canned tomatoes, and garlic until thick and soul-warming. Serve over cornbread with chopped onions for a cheap, filling weeknight supper.

Sweet and tangy pickled day lily buds spiced with allspice, cinnamon, and cloves. A unique foraging recipe that turns backyard flowers into 8 jars of crunchy, spiced preserves.

My copycat version of the top secret famous A1 Steak Sauce.

Sweet refrigerator pickles ready in 24 hours, with crisp cucumbers, sliced onions, garlic, celery seed, and mustard seed in a sweet vinegar brine. No canning required, keeps two months chilled.

Seared bay scallops glazed with a reduced vermouth and lemon sauce, finished with fresh dill and cracked pepper. A light, elegant 20-minute seafood dish with bright, clean flavors.

Black-eyed pea soup slow-simmered with a ham bone for New Year's Day good luck. Creamy, smoky, and served over white rice in the Southern tradition.

Old-fashioned eight-day bread and butter pickles made in a crock with cucumbers soaked in boiling water, then cured in a sweet vinegar syrup reheated daily for extra crunch.

If you run out of preserved lemons, or decide on just a few day's notice to cook a chicken, lamb, or fish dish with lemons and olives and need preserved lemons in a hurry, you can use this quick five-day method taught to me by a Moroccan diplomat's wife. Lemons preserved this way will not keep, but are perfectly acceptable in an emergency.

Make your own snacks rather than buying from a bulk store or box. Store bought packaged snacks always have huge amounts of salt, reduce the sodium by making your own.

Mother's Day baked apple-cinnamon French toast assembles overnight, then bakes into a puffed, custardy casserole with dried apples, raisins, and warm spices. Zero morning-of stress.

Neil Perry's Rockpool Coffin Bay scallops with braised capsicum and tomatoes: pan-seared scallops on a blanched pepper-tomato base, crisped herbs, and lemon-olive oil pan dressing.

Smoked trout crackers with lemon-dill mayonnaise top thin whole-grain crackers with sliced smoked trout and a bright lemon-dill aioli. A five-ingredient elegant appetizer.

Thai red curry scallops (Chuu-Chii) with homemade curry paste, coconut cream, kaffir lime leaves, and fish sauce. Includes a from-scratch paste recipe using galangal, lemongrass, and shrimp paste.

Pan-seared bay bugs on wok-fried egg noodles with speck, smoked eel, peas, and capsicum, finished with a turmeric-chilli oil drizzle. Australian seafood meets Asian flair.