A CHORD OF nostalgia sounded for me recently when a friend wrote nostalgically of the baby back ribs his father grilled for him every year on his birthday – in the mid-winter Midwest, no less! I too have known the magic of birthday baby back ribs, slow-cooked and slathered in spicy sauce. I love everything about them except for the fact that they must be cooked slowly and over low heat lest they become tough and – more problematic – the fact that they come from pigs, which we some years ago agreed should not be eaten.

Of course this is not a rational position, and in some ways it is even less defensible than a purely irrational one, since it is consciously, deliberately irrational – and, in my case, spottily practiced. It is true that I no longer buy pork of any kind at any market, and I very rarely have it in restaurants, but I do not flinch from the occasional slice of pepperoni on pizza or linguiça in pasta or chorizo in paella.

The true pity of a porkless life, for a cook, is that pork is a fabulous raw material for many a meal. Baby back ribs are a joy; so is pork tenderloin, lean, tender, eminently grillable, adaptive to many seasoning schemes. Pork cutlets make excellent (and inexpensive) scallopini, while tougher cuts can be ground up and used in pastitsio or Szechuan noodles with spicy peanut sauce. Pork sausage in its innumerable guises is the making of many a dish.

To lose all these choices, then, is to be obliged to innovate. But it is surprising how many alternatives are available that one never noticed before because one had no need of looking. Poultry sausages, for example, are widely and inexpensively available; the local sausagemaker Schwarz turns out a fine chicken linguiça I always have on hand. Then there is turkey: breast slices fill in beautifully as scallopini, while butterflied breast tenderloins grill up quite as satisfyingly as do their porcine counterparts.

A caveat on the last point: if pork tenderloins are lean and in need of care on the grill so as not to dry out, turkey tenderloins are even more so. Marinades can help. Here is a good one: two or three tablespoons each of Dijon mustard, honey, and extra-virgin olive oil, along with a teaspoon or two of chopped fresh rosemary and one of mustard seeds (if you have them). Baste the tenderloins with the marinade and let them stand a half hour or so before grilling. The marinade should turn golden while keeping the meat juicy. It might not be quite hog heaven, but it's close.

Paul Reidinger