A Dish A Day: 30 Things To Cook In April

Fancier than your typical mayo-slathered egg salad, these open-faced sandwiches get a pungent, saline smack from anchovies and capers and a little crunch from the radish. I love to trot out this combination as an hors d'oeuvre, piling the eggs et al onto small, thin slices of baguette. But for a light supper, late-night snack, or lunch, a crusty country loaf is a better, heartier option. In either case, it's important to use really good ingredients here since the flavor completely depends on them. Seek out farmers' market eggs, imported anchovies packed in olive oil, and good high-fat butter. Although all of this might seem overly precious, these details really matter when you're serving them practically naked. Try it and see.

Okay, time to pay homage to one of my favorite cooks, Nigella Lawson. No, her food isn't fussy. No, I don't love all her recipes. But damn if she isn't happy in the kitchen and sexy while she cooks. Long before I went to culinary school, I'd learned more than a few really useful kitchen tricks from Ms. Lawson, including how to make fantastic risi e bisi. If you're not familiar, risi e bisi is an Italian risotto with peas. Most recipes I've seen are basic white risottos that rely on just-picked fresh peas to bring them to life. Not so with Nigella's: She makes a rich pea sauce that she then adds to the risotto at the end, resulting in a vivid green pot of rice dotted with plump peas and alive with flavor. I took this concept and used it as a pasta sauce for years, until one day I had some left over and smeared it on a pizza, with delightful results. Some extra peas, a few torn slices of prosciutto and extra Parmesan and you have my version of pizza e bisi.

The salt potato is a wonder to behold. Those who think that they have experienced the true essence of earthy starchiness that is the potato but have not tried this method are in for a surprise. The secret is to not be afraid of the salt. A true salt potato is boiled in water salted in a ratio of 1 pound salt for every 4 pounds of potatoes. Yes, that is a lot of salt. It's so much salt that it crystallizes on the skins of the cooked potatoes, making them look like something dug up on a paleontological excavation. But, boy, do they taste great.

Ramps have a pretty short season, but when they're here come spring, they're on every restaurant menu. Its leaves are versatile, adding a garlicky heat to pesto, vinaigrettes and other sauces. They can also be wilted in a sauté pan with other seasonal goodies like morels, which are also out around about now. The ramp's bulb is even more pungent than the leaves. Even though they lack the leaves' gorgeous emerald green color, their texture makes for a fabulous pickle.

With homemade teriyaki sauce, pan-fried tofu, sautéed red bell pepper, broccolette and hearty wild rice, this stir-fry has it all. This recipe makes extra teriyaki sauce, because I love to have this sauce in my fridge to serve over veggies or rice. Broccolette is a delicious, hearty vegetable that is packed with vitamins and minerals. A cross between broccoli and Chinese kale, it's subtly sweet and tastes almost like asparagus. It's also known as broccolini and baby broccoli. If you've never tried it before, this is a perfect introduction to the magic of broccolette.

Artichokes are essentially two vegetables in one. In this recipe we use the heart, which is tender with a texture somewhere between a really creamy potato and a roasted turnip. But you can also eat the bottom part of the leaves; dip them into some homemade lemon aioli or melted butter with lemon juice mixed in. Serve the leaves as a snack while you're getting the rest of the meal ready. It's like the Tootsie Pop of vegetables. As Lil' Kim once said while singing about artichokes: How many leaves does it take to get to the center?

When it comes to the crisp factor, few things match up to a well-made frico. Little more than grated cheese piled onto a baking sheet and heated into a lacy, crunchy round, it's an Italian-restaurant staple that does double duty as a cracker. With spring (in theory) sprung, I wanted to integrate the freshness of young asparagus for a classic touch. What emerged was a combination of tender green spears with the bonus crunch of peppery toasted cheese. Eat it alone, pile some greens on top, or layer a piece of prosciutto on top. Frico-licious.

This salad pairs sweet mâche with peppery arugula and radishes in three hues for a vibrant taste of spring. Chinese green radishes are shaped like a daikon, but with bright-green flesh. Watermelon radishes are green on the outside, with striking magenta flesh, and are also related to daikon. The idea here is to make your salad colorful, so Easter Egg and French Breakfast varieties are options too if green or watermelon radishes aren't available.

I like leeks. They are different, they taste amazing, they are easy to cook, and they are not too expensive. Often, they are merely a component in a recipe, but here they take center stage on the salad plate. To add a little more substance I have teamed them with plump pearls of Israeli couscous, some seeds for crunch and taste, and fresh herbs. Simple, tasty, striking.

I'm not so sure this recipe is really Italian, having brie as a main accompaniment to the artichokes, but it turned out so well that I wanted to share it with you anyway. Rather than dip your artichoke leaves in butter, aioli or other sauce, bake a creamy-crunchy brie-spiked sauce right on top and let the goodness ooze all over. Sound like a plan?

I came up with this dish one spring when I wanted to create a showcase for a lot of peas: a pressing issue, since they were pouring out of my garden faster than I could cook them. I also wanted to make sure that the sugar snaps were prepared in such a way that there was minimal risk of overcooking them, which I think is too often their unhappy fate. Peas are very nice paired with cracked wheat, an ingredient that I once thought of only in the context of breakfast. The nutty flavor and chewiness of the cracked wheat complements the sweet sugar snaps and English peas. Pureeing some of the peas and stirring the puree into the wheat underscores that fresh, green flavor that tells us spring is here.

We could wax on and on about the complexity and finesse of this compound butter, but really, the name says it all: Bacon Butter. Serve it with radishes in the spring and homemade bread all year long.

Thin flakes of dried bonito, a fish that's related to mackerel and tuna, have been used as a briny, faintly smoky seasoning in Japan for centuries. Bonito flakes are available at Asian markets, many supermarkets and Asian Food Grocer.

I have done it before, and I am doing it again here, that is, placing leek right in the center of a substantial stand-alone dish. This is not trivial for a vegetable that is normally given the side job of flavoring other things, like stocks and soups. I find the creaminess of leeks and their sweet oniony flavor very satisfying. This dish, with its jewel-like currants, makes an elegant starter. Use long, relatively thin leeks if you can find them; otherwise, just halve their number.

Scallops are incredibly quick to cook but really need a skillet that's large enough to give each of them plenty of breathing room to sear. To ensure a golden crust on each scallop, wipe the skillet between batches. The moisture left from the first batch will keep the second one from searing properly. If you can find pea shoots at the farmers' market, this is a perfect time to show them off as a garnish.