Cooking the ground beef first also gives you the option to pour off some (or all) of the fat that renders out to keep the sauce from becoming too oily.. Do I have to boil pasta before baking?.

Most Chinese-takeout sweet-and-sour sauces are bright red, gluey, and sugary.Grace Parisi’s version is light as well as a little spicy, which allows the fresh, briny flavor of the crispy fish to come through.. Get the Recipe.

Shrimp Boil with Spicy Butter Sauce.In this especially delicious version of a classic shrimp boil, the seafood is simmered with lemon, garlic, and a touch of Old Bay seasoning.Shell the shrimp right at the table and then dunk each one into our positively irresistible cayenne-spiced sauce.. Get the Recipe.

Crunchy Fish Sticks with Tartar Sauce.Grace Parisi dredges cod strips in flour and potato flakes to create crunchy fish sticks, which she serves with a chunky sun-dried-tomato tartar sauce.. Get the Recipe.

Fish Teriyaki with Sweet-and-Sour Cucumbers.

This is a fairly classic take on teriyaki — broiled or grilled slices of marinated meat or fish.So, Leonti bought some large cleavers in Chinatown and a wood butcher block, and set up a soffritto station in the kitchen, where his cooks rhythmically chopped and broke down the whole vegetables into rubble using the same kind of chopping technique I saw a barbecue cook use at Skylight Inn BBQ in Ayden, North Carolina, to break down the meat of whole smoked hogs into a fine mince.

The size of the mince matters — the smaller the better — Leonti says, because you're multiplying the surface area of the vegetables by a thousandfold.More surface area to caramelize in the pan equals more flavor..

When I made Leonti's ribollita at home in my Birmingham, Alabama, kitchen, I tried the double-cleaver technique, but quickly switched to an efficient, two-handled mezzaluna after too many stray bits of onion, carrot, and celery fell to the kitchen floor.I followed his advice and sweated the vegetables in olive oil in a Dutch oven, slowly cooking the mixture, stirring almost as often with a wooden spoon as you would with a roux.