Pomegranate

How do you make lemon bars even better? Turn them pink. Add bright color and tangy flavor with a splash of fresh raspberry purée.

Coffee-Cherry Simple Syrup lends fruity and floral notes to this refreshing summer cocktail. The name is misleading: the syrup contains neither cherries nor coffee beans. When harvesting coffee, farmers pick coffee cherries, which are shelled for their bean pits. The beans are roasted to become the coffee you know. While the cherries are usually discarded, you can actually steep their husks in hot water for an aromatic tea.

Flavor fish fillets with the Middle Eastern spice mix za’atar and then serve over couscous and sautéed greens for a totally satisfying 22-minute meal.

I rarely rave about my own recipes, but this is one I can just go on and on about. It is the definition of freshness with its sweet-and-sour late-summer flavors, and it is also an utter delight to look at. But the most incredible thing about it is that it uses a few ingredients that I have been lovingly cooking with for many years, and believed I knew everything there was to know about, yet had never thought of mixing them in such a way. That is, until I traveled to Istanbul and came across a similar combination of fresh tomatoes and pomegranate seeds in a famous local kebab restaurant called Hamdi, right by the Spice Bazaar. It was a proper light-bulb moment when I realized how the two types of sweetness-the sharp, almost bitter sweetness of pomegranate and the savory, sunny sweetness of tomato-can complement each other so gloriously. I use four types of tomato here to make the salad more interesting visually and in flavor. You can easily use fewer, just as long as they are ripe and sweet.

Wrap a mixture of spiced ground lamb and raw jasmine rice in layers of onion and bake in a low oven until the onions are fragrant and tender.

I love the crimson glow of juicy little pomegranate morsels. Mix with fresh winter lettuces, serve it European style after the entreé, and enjoy.

Here's another dessert that was inspired by a wine-tasting dinner. It's often hard to come up with a dessert that pairs well with wine, but this savory-sweet dessert does. At its center is a Seckel pear, a small, reddish pear with a slightly spicy flavor. It has a firm flesh that makes it perfect for poaching. In this dessert I poach the pears in pomegranate juice with some ground black pepper. A chunk of Cabrales cheese, a strong blue cheese from northern Spain, is sandwiched between the top and bottom halves of the pear, and a Szechuan Ice Cream is served with it, sitting on a diamond of baked almond cream.

Vegan The simplest saladitas in my repertoire are the ones that pair a single fruit with just one fresh herb. These are as flexible as they are easy. Extra-virgin olive oil, fresh lemon or lime juice, and salt and pepper are all optional. A small pile of Pickled Red Onions is always welcome on top. Make these shortly before serving.

Across the Middle East, cinnamon is used not only to highlight the flavor of sweets but also in savory dishes—as in this Moroccan-inspired carrot salad. I toss it here with slender Kamut berries, which contribute their distinct buttery chew. Vibrantly colorful and deliciously juicy, this salad steals the show on my holiday table. Try it also next to steak, grilled lamb, or a simple roast chicken.

Sweet and sour is a recurring theme in Arabic cuisine. Pomegranate molasses has this distinct taste. Here I've mixed it with other flavors, but it can be used on its own to enhance a salad, a dip or a savory pastry. The pepperiness of the arugula and the soft buttery eggplant along with the sweet cherry tomatoes are unforgettable.

Why buy bottles of grenadine when it's so easy to make at home, the natural way? This garnet-hued, sweetly piquant syrup is a great addition to any number of beverages for both its color and its flavor—and it makes a delicious soda on its own, too. Use high-quality bottled pomegranate juice, or make your own.

There is not much to say about this salad—it is as charmingly simple and straightforward as it appears. You could likely just copy it without a recipe. The point I do want to stress, however, is the necessity of making your own salad dressings. There is all sorts of junk in store-bought dressings and they don't taste nearly as fresh—not to mention that it's ridiculously easy to whisk a few things together or put them in a mini blender. This particular dressing hovers around the vinaigrette family, with just enough crème fraîche to coat the leaves with the thinnest amount of creaminess. Be sure your leaves are cleaned and fully dry so the dressing can cling on. The recipe yields enough for the given salads, but I typically double it so I have extra on hand.

This is a salsa, but whenever I make it I just end up eating it by the spoonful like a salad. The combination of the tart, crisp pomegranate, creamy cheese, and crunchy pine nuts makes a wonderful topping for grilled fish or even a carne asada taco. Pine nuts can be expensive because of the labor-intensive work of extracting them from the pine cones, plus they have a high fat content, which makes them turn rancid quickly. So buy a small quantity and store them in the fridge for no longer than three months.

Pilafs originated in the Middle East, where they are usually made with rice. The rice is toasted in butter or oil along with aromatic vegetables such as onion, then the mixture is cooked with stock (or water) in the oven. The grain is ready for the liquid to be added when it gives off a nutty, toasted aroma. The desired texture of a pilaf is fluffy, with no grains sticking to each other. Pilafs can contain a variety of other ingredients, such as dried fruit, nuts, and pasta such as orzo. Here is a basic recipe, followed by two variations.

Use a citrus reamer, juicer, or press to extract the pomegranate juice.

Demeter, the goddess of grain, hallowed by i siculi—the warrior tribe that inhabited the island before the Greeks—was all of resplendence, even to the high crown formed from her flaxen braids. It was she who illuminated the magic of sowing seeds beneath the earth and then protecting them, feeding them, and growing them up into ripeness. The tribe’s harvests grew ever more abundantly, the goddess conjuring the sun and the rain and the breezes on their behalf, they honoring her with great bonfires under the full moon’s light and ritual offerings of bread and wine. The island was Elysium, uninterrupted. And then, heaving himself up through a rent in the earth’s crust, Pluto stole Demeter’s daughter, Persephone, as plunder for his abyss. Demeter screeched and mourned and cast Sicilia into darkness. There was nothing to nourish her tribe save the tears Demeter cried down from the heavens. So clamorously did the goddess petition him that Pluto succumbed, vowing riddance to the child as much as to her shrewish mother. He would liberate Persephone. Only then, though, did Pluto take note that Persephone had cut in two a pomegranate, and that she sat slaking her child’s thirst on its juices and its glistening, rosy seeds—a blunder. He howled up at her mother that Persephone had devoured the sacred seeds of fertility, and for this sin he must halve his promise. Just as she had broken the fruit, Persephone would be liberated for only six months of every year. And, as penance, she must, each year and everlastingly, stay six months in the shades of Hades. And so it was that Demeter heralded the sun and the rain and raised up the wheat, thick and golden, from May through October, when Persephone was at her side, leaving the island barren and under an impotent sun from November until April—her half-mourning an allegory of the seasons, of life and of death. In the early springtime, one can see still the great roaring fires lit by Sicilian wheat farmers and whole villages in dance and song, invoking the gods’ promise to keep safe their newly sown fields. Only now, old, sweet Demeter, pagan that she was, has been supplanted by St. Joseph, her powers having been ferried over into his realm. Not so long after a woman in Palermo had told us this story of Demeter, we were staying awhile in Enna, an interior agricultural city. One evening, the man who served our supper of rough-cut semolina pasta with a mutton sauce and thick chops of pork, oven-roasted with wild onions, dispatched to our table his mother—a fine country cook—with the sad news that she’d had not a moment to put together some rustic little tart or other that day. There would be no sweet. Unless, of course, she murmured, we’d like a pomegranate with un cucchiaino di zabaglione—a small spoonful of custard. We agreed. What she brought forth to us on an old plate of cranberry-colored glass were two pomegranates that seemed to be broken rather than cut in two, their crimson juices spilling out from the jagged shells with tiny coffee spoons plunged into the hearts of seeds. Two diminutive porcelain pitchers of some winy custard were laid beside the plate. We were urged to pour the custard over, into the pomegranates. Sweet but not quite sweet against the tart, peppery seeds, the sauce was the color of ambered muscadine, its scent that of crushed violets. It was a plate quietly, achingly beautiful to see and to eat. Later, when we asked her son if we might give our thanks to his mother for the fine supper and, especially, for the pomegranates, he told us that she’d gone upstairs to bed. Thinking to write our thanks in a little note, I asked him, “What is her name?” “Mia madre si chiama Demetra,” said the man. “My mother is called Demeter.” Startled, dazed even, for a moment, the story of Demeter came racing to mind. Thinking the note unnecessary, all we said w...

This time of year, with pomegranates in season, I find myself spooning this salsa over all sorts of things, from duck to turkey and even grilled fish.