Asian chile paste spices up these crabmeat wonton cups. A simple appetizer with minimal ingredients that looks attractive. Perfect for the holidays.

These bite-sized puff pastry hors d’oeuvres are filled with smoked salmon, a creamy sauce, horseradish, dill, and capers.

In the town of Miao, fish is cooked in an red sauce filled with red chiles. The red sauce can made a head of time. Serve the fish and sauce table side.

This creamy salad can be made with any combination of seafood — lump crabmeat, octopus, shrimp, squid, scallops, mussels, conch are all appropriate.

by Jacques Pépin
from Chez Jacques: Traditions and Rituals of a Cook
(Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2007)
Serves 6
I always enjoy going back to classic recipes and reinventing them in a more modern way closer to my own tastes, keeping most of the same ingredients but interpreting them differently. We have always loved oysters and often get them [...]

Salmon gets dressed up in this recipe when accompanied by a gin-vermouth-juniper sauce filled with green peppercorns and olives. Elegant, simple dinner.

Inspired by the Amalfi Coast, this fried fish recipe uses a low frying temperature and olive and vegetable oils to make moist seafood with a crisp crust.

A perfect party starter, these salmon cakes are lightly coated in panko and crisped in olive oil. Chipolte and corn salsa complements the rich salmon.

Nicoise salad, or salade Nicoise in French, is a composed salad. Fresh tuna, potato salad, egg, green beans, tomatoes, and greens are arranged and served.

A classic recipe in Portugal, this dish features softly scrambled eggs filled with fried potatoes and shards of salt cod. On top: olives and parsley.

For a taste of Martha’s Vineyard away from the coast make these stuffed quahogs – hard shell clams – to enjoy with an evening drink before dinner.

Monkfish fillets are wrapped in escarole leaves, which keeps the fillets moist. The monkfish packets are served up in bowls with a tomato-olive sauce on top. A simple weekday meal.

Sweet and salty, this black bean and pepper shrimp stir fry is a hit on the flavor parade. Dry the pineapple in the oven to intensify the sweetness.

Utterly fresh, these oysters–drizzled with a sauce filled with ginger, soy sauce, and lemon juice–are best when just shucked. Do try for Pacific oysters.

Finger food at its best: tender shrimp dipped in garlic butter. Cooking the shrimp in their shells intensifies the flavor and keeps them moist.

Baked seafood imperial, a riff on crab imperial, is shellfish tossed with cream and seasonings, breaded, and baked. Seafood imperial can be small or big.

As fresh tasting as it is colorful, this Japanese inspired tuna tartare appetizer is best with cucumber, red onions, and chiles from the farmer’s market.

Sea bream fillet bundles alternate with lemon slices on skewers and are then grilled until the sea bream is cooked and the lemon slices are caramelized. A summer spectacular.

This dish, called Trutas a Moda de Braganca, consists of trout wrapped in a deep red jacket of smoked Portuguese ham and fried in bacon drippings.

Couscous cooks quickly and is easy to mix with a variety of flavors. Shrimp, oranges, tomatoes, raisins, and almonds make this a delicious picnic salad.

Grilled tuna steaks are cooked medium-rare and served with watercress and parsely. The vinaigrette dressing packs flavor and punches up the grilled tuna.

Big chunks of dungeness crab, celery, and jalapeno peppers stud these crab cakes. A homemade tartar sauce and asparagus and lemon dressings add color and zing.

Called bacalhau a Gomes de Sa, this Portuguese recipe is made of layers of salt cod, potatoes slices, sauteed onions topped with olives and hard-boiled eggs.

Called Acorda de Mariscos in Portugal, this thick, fluffy dish is filled with plump shrimp, pork sausage, tomatoes, onions, and lots of chopped cilantro.

A Portuguese staple from the island of Madeira, swordfish marinated is a spiky oil of pepper, garlic, and oregano, are threaded on skewers and then grilled.