With its lustrous green skin and flesh the color of flames, the emerald satsuma is just one of many orange varieties making their appearance this time of year, offering opportunities at every turn.

"By late fall," she writes, "we start to see the first citrus fruits: mandarins, clementines from Guru Ram Das Orchards in Esparto, and then Fairchild and Dancy tangerines. Later come the Page and Pixie mandarins from Jim Churchill in Ventura County and the incomparable Satsuma tangerines from Fairview Gardens in Goleta, California — best served with their leaves still attached in a basket offered at the end of the meal."

All this reminds me of something I once heard Julia Child say. "That's not cooking, Alice," she said, "it's shopping." But I'm with Alice. I know that when it comes to oranges and their kin, shopping is more important than cooking. When orange season is in full swing, I depend on the fruits themselves to provide all the complexity in a dish. I might use only segments of orange with a few curls of zest as a sauce for seafood. And with a drizzle of oil, a squeeze of orange juice might serve as a complete dressing for a salad. There's no hiding a lack of flavor in simple preparations like these. So it's good to know what varieties of orange to look for and when.

Sorting out the different varieties can be a little tricky because all the citrus fruits can be — and often are — crossed with one another willy-nilly. Tracing their origins can be like tracking one's genealogy without benefit of marriage certificates. Still, when it comes right down to it, all oranges fall into one of three categories: Bitter oranges, sweet oranges and tangerines.

Serves 6

3 cara cara or other medium-sized oranges 1 cup chilled cream 1 cup sugar 1/3 cup water 1 cup egg whites (about 8 large) 1 teaspoon lemon juice 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt Powdered sugar for garnish 1. Trim about 1/8 inch from the top and bottom of each orange. Put the trimmings in a food processor and grind until very fine. Set aside in a separate bowl. Cut each orange in half along the equator and carve out the pulp, to form small bowls. Put the pulp in the food processor and process until fairly smooth. Pass the purée through a strainer to remove bits of peel and pith, then chill. 2. Cut six parchment paper strips measuring 3 inches by 12 inches. Wrap a strip around each half orange to make a collar rising about 2 inches above the lip of each "bowl," and secure the parchment with freezer tape or masking tape. Put the prepared bowls in the freezer. In a chilled bowl whip the cream until stiff and put it in the refrigerator while you make the meringue. 3. Stir the sugar and water in a small saucepan and set over medium-high heat to boil. Cook the syrup for 3 minutes or until a drop of the syrup holds together to form a soft ball when dropped into cold water. While the syrup is boiling, whip the egg whites with lemon juice and salt until they are standing up in soft peaks. With the mixer motor running, stream the hot syrup into the beaten egg whites and continue beating until the whites are as stiff as shaving cream. 4. Chill the meringue by placing the mixing bowl in a larger bowl filled with ice water and stirring occasionally with a rubber spatula for about 10 minutes. Fold the cold, strained orange pulp into the meringue, then fold in the whipped cream. Pile the mixture into a large pastry bag and pipe it into the frozen orange "bowls," or simply spoon it in. Freeze the oranges for several hours or overnight. 5. To serve, sprinkle the top of each orange with powdered sugar and the finely ground orange trimmings, then peel away the parchment to expose the filling. Serve at once. Print friendly version.

For all practical purposes, Northwest citrus-seekers can dismiss the bitter orange (Citrus aurantium) outright. Lovers of classics like Duck á l'Orange and traditional English marmalade know that bitter oranges like the Seville are the best for cooking, but most of us never get to see them. When we try to re-create the dishes made famous by them, we have to make do with combinations of sweet oranges and sour lemons.

Among the sweet oranges (Citrus sinesis), juicy Valencias and seedless navels are the pillars of the North American orange trade. Both are available year 'round, but they are at their best right now, when the new crop is beginning to flood the market. The Valencia is generally considered the best orange for juice; sweet and a little more flavorful than the navel, it is a versatile workhorse of an orange. Valencias turn orange in cool weather, and very often a little warm weather at harvest time will prompt some re-greening. This does not affect the flavor, so don't worry if they look a little green. Sometimes, when more exotic varieties are not an option for cooking, I pick Valencias over navels in cooking because they tend to be a little stronger in flavor.

Navel oranges, according to the people at Sunkist, are "considered the finest eating orange in the world." And while this might sound like promotional hyperbole, it's true. Who could argue with an orange that is pretty, sweet and easy to peel and segment?

Sheer abundance might have robbed the navel of some of its mystique, but oranges, like melons and peas, are at their best when at their cheapest. And expensive out-of-season specimens are never as good as the affordable peak-of-the-season fruits.

This is not to say that the more exotic varieties should be ignored. As the navel season progresses, blood oranges arrive on the market, specifically the Moro, which happens to be the variety of red orange most commonly grown in the U.S. With its red-blushed skin and its often blood-red pulp, the Moro orange is more than just a novelty. It has a berry-like flavor quite distinct from regular oranges. Wedges of the ruby-red pulp resting on a plate with a few tender-cooked baby beets, leaves of bitter white endive and a sprinkling of toasted walnuts can make a person glad to be alive.

The cara cara orange, a fairly new, almost-red variety, is another welcome addition to the produce aisle this time of year. With flavor and color somewhere between a navel and a blood orange, the cara cara is simultaneously exotic and familiar. I use cara caras to make Frozen Souffléed Oranges. The pulp is removed and puréed with whipped cream and meringue, then piped back into the shells and frozen. I knew I had a hit on my hands when one of my son's 10-year-old friends liked the dish so much he reproduced it at home.

Perhaps the most flavorful oranges of all are the small, loose-skinned mandarins. A mandarin orange, like a clementine, is technically a tangerine (Citrus reticulata), but common parlance has deemed many of them oranges. Fairchild and Dancy tangerines appear at Christmastime; they are distinguished by their scent and intensely-colored skin. Mandarins, which include satsuma and honey mandarins, have pebbly skin that is somewhat thicker than that of other tangerines.

The royal mandarin, also known as the temple orange, is really a cross between a sweet orange and a tangerine. I find its spicy intensity irresistible, and throughout its short season, which usually doesn't kick in until after the holidays, it is my first choice for any dish with oranges. A skinless wedge on top of a just-shucked oyster, or a squeeze of the juice sizzled in a pan in which scallops have been seared, makes a perfect sauce.

Other tangerines to look for are "fall glow," sweet and easy to peel, and "emerald," with a skin that stays brilliant jade green even when it is perfectly ripe inside.

Waters says she likes to serve exotic oranges with fresh dates. Those who lean toward the Julia camp and consider cooking at least as much fun as shopping might want to actually make something out of them. And while orange recipes are even more diverse than orange varieties, I come back again and again to those Frozen Souffléed Oranges. One of my co-workers calls them "Creamsicles for grown-ups," and the beauty is they can be made with just about any orange. Some of the smaller varieties will not hold all the filling, and even the largest ones need to wear a paper collar, easily fashioned from baker's parchment and tape, to get it all in. You don't want any of this dreamy stuff to go to waste.

Greg Atkinson, Canlis executive chef, is the author of "The Northwest Essentials Cookbook" (Sasquatch Books, 1999). Barry Wong is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff photographer.