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Fresh sheepsmilk ricotta cheese is our current food obsession. It’s wonderful in so many contexts: on toast with jam, in pasta dishes or scrambled eggs, with fresh berries… we could go on and on. But there’s one unexpectedly delicious pairing we're dying to share: Fresh ricotta and roast pork.

As a person of Irish heritage, I always feel a little treacherous admitting this, but honestly I don’t really like to drink Guinness. Still, once a year I do consume a bit of Guinness to celebrate St. Patrick's Day—not in a pint glass, but in Nigella Lawson’s dark, moist Chocolate Guinness Cake.

When I was little, my mother had a tea towel with a map of Ireland on it, and the map was crammed with family names so you could find which county your ancestors came from. For St. Patrick’s Day she used to tuck that towel into a basket and fill it with wedges of Irish Soda Bread, but I never cared for the bread—I just liked the game of finding our ancestors. Now that I’ve come to appreciate the unusual sweet caraway flavor, I’ve also learned there are as many variations on the recipe as names on that towel.

In our house we’re not so big on marinating meat, but we love to preseason it. We realize, of course, that this lands us smack in the middle of a food controversy. There are those who would argue that salt will leach the juices out of your meat, and therefore should be left to the last minute. Time and again, however, our experience has proved otherwise. Click through for the science, and for some practical advice about how (and how much) to preseason your meat.