Enoki

Plenty of garlic and anchovies gives this stir-fry its bold flavor. Enoki mushrooms can be found in most well-stocked grocery stores and Asian markets.

Sake-glazed enoki mushrooms add a ton of flavor to simply prepared tilapia fillets.

The inspiration for this dish is a bracing soup made with whole fish that Zak Pelaccio likes to eat at Sichuan Dynasty restaurant in Flushing, Queens. "They use it to encourage digestion," he says. Does it work for Pelaccio? "I'm always hungry," he says. "I'm really not a good judge."

After writer Aleksandra Crapanzano enjoyed this salad in her room at the Mark Hotel in New York, she swore she'd add both the velvety, tangy butter sauce on the shrimp and the earthy, salty-sweet vinaigrette on the salad to her permanent repertoire.

This creamy, silky pasta gets salty pops of flavor from fish roe. Paul Qui uses mentaiko (spicy marinated pollock roe), but trout roe or even caviar would be delicious, too.