Like your sauce green?

Salsa verde, a tangy green pesto-like condiment, goes beautifully with grilled meat. Recipes are generally pretty flexible, but there's always lots of finely-chopped herbs (either parsley, cilantro, or a blend of the two) and olive oil. Some recipes also call for tomatillos (either grilled or raw), chopped almonds or even olives. Make it about half an hour before you plan on serving it to give the flavors a chance to meld. It'll keep in the fridge for up to a week.

Flavor-all

Herb butters dress up anything from steaks to veggies. To make them, you'll need a stick of room-temperature butter and a wild imagination: Add salt, pepper and a generous fistful of chopped herbs (or port wine and blue cheese, or shallots), blend it into the butter, then scoop the butter onto a sheet of plastic wrap, roll the wrap up to form a sausage shape and then freeze till firm. Slice as needed. We love it worked under the skin of a roast chicken, on top of a steak or as a simple dressing for grilled asparagus.

Tossing food

When you're tossing food in a skillet, jerk the skillet in the shape of a vertical oval, starting away from you, then up

	language=JavaScript1.1 type=text/javascript>GetAd('tile','box','/entertainment_article','','www.presstelegram.com','','null','null');</SCRIPT> language=JavaScript1.1 src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/www.presstelegram.com/entertainment_article;abr=!webtv;kw=;pos=box;tile=NaN;ord=296849179407212?" type=text/javascript></SCRIPT> src="http://m.2mdn.net/879366/flashwrite_1_2.js"></SCRIPT> language=VBScript> dcmaxversion = 9 dcminversion = 6 Do On Error Resume Next plugin = (IsObject(CreateObject("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash." & dcmaxversion & ""))) If plugin = true Then Exit Do dcmaxversion = dcmaxversion - 1 Loop While dcmaxversion >= dcminversion </SCRIPT> <NOEMBED></NOEMBED><NOSCRIPT></NOSCRIPT>

slightly. Practice with dried beans until you get the hang of it; they're much easier to clean up than, say, sauteed mushrooms.

Morel ideas

Morels, whether fresh or dried, have a rich, earthy flavor and a slight chew. One of their most-common flavor pairings is asparagus, in part because they tend to appear in markets around the same time. But they're also good with roasted poultry, game or pork, or with wine-based cream sauces, pastas and soups. The advantage of dried morels is that once you soak them in hot water, you're left with an intense-tasting broth that's great as a base for soup - just make sure to strain it first, as the folds of morels can harbor grit.

When purchasing morels, look for wild morels if you can find them; they tend to have more flavor than the cultivated kind, though the cultivated ones are delicious, too.