Pork/Leeks; Salmon/Lime; Chicken/Fennel

Weekday meals can be surprisingly fresh with a little extra effort to flavor standard meat and fish dishes by cooking them with vegetables and fruit.

Marcella Hazan came through with another winning pork recipe. Her pan-roasted pork loin with leeks calls for a bone-in pork loin roast. The key is the leeks. Take 4 or 5 slim leeks, trim, cut in half lengthwise and then cross-wise in 1/2-inch slices. Wilt these with butter and oil in a Dutch oven for a few minutes until soft but not brown. Salt and remove 2/3 of the leeks. Add more butter and oil, flour the pork roast (detach the rib bone and tie it back on with string), brown it on all sides, salt, pepper, then add some wine, boil briefly, cover and reduce the heat to low. Let the meat cook for about 2 hours. Remove, puree the leeks in the pan and add back to pan with reserved leeks and meat. Cook on high for 10 minutes, turning roast. The result is a tender pot roast with a deep, gentle onion-y flavor from the leeks.

When Broad Branch had some good-looking Skuna Bay salmon fillets, I brought home one to grill. Skuna Bay, it turns out, is a "craft" farmed salmon from British Columbia and did have a good flavor. A quick check on Epicurious produced a very popular lime butter -- just garlic, lime juice, salt and pepper emulsified in butter -- to put on grilled salmon. Sprinkle some lime zest on the grilled salmon and serve with the butter. Adds a whole new dimension to the salmon. We had steamed quinoa with it.

After reading the New Yorker profile on Yotam Ottolenghi, we of course immediately bought Jerusalem and started off with his roasted chicken with clementines and arak. It turned us into believers. Just whip up the marinade of arak, oil, orange juice, lemon juice, grain mustard, salt, pepper and light brown sugar. Add the chicken -- either a cut-up whole chicken or 3 pounds of thighs (our choice) -- two fennel bulbs trimmed, cut in half and then into wedges, and 4 sliced clementines. Marinade a few hours or overnight then spread on a baking sheet (chicken skin-side up) and pop into a 475-degree oven for 35 to 45 minutes. Exquisite. The arak enhances the anise-fennel flavor and the citrus adds complexity and freshness.