Canned Tomato

Healthy bonus: Fiber from tomatoes; calcium from basil and fennel

We used a food mill to coarsely purée the tomatoes, but you could use a blender.

Eli Gorelick of West Orange, New Jersey, writes: "As a kid growing up in Cuba, I worked alongside my mother every day in the kitchen, learning how to make specialties like picadillo and fried bananas. I still think Havana has the best Cuban food in the world, and I continue to love the recipes I learned during my childhood." Picadillo is a traditional dish in many Latin American countries; it's made with ground meat, tomatoes, and regional ingredients. The Cuban version includes olives and is usually served with black beans and rice.

I grew up in a household where we didn't eat meat on Friday, which presented a problem because when I was a child, I didn't like most fish or shellfish. My mother solved this dilemma by making me pasta with canned tuna and tomato sauce. This is my adult version of that recipe, made with high-quality preserved tuna with capers and anchovies added to hit the notes one expects in such a classic seafood pasta.

Fideos, pasta nests that are often toasted in oil, are popular on the eastern coast of Spain. Here, the sauce is enhanced with a sofrito, a concentrated mixture that imparts a deep tomato flavor. The browned fideos slowly absorb the seafood-based sauce as they cook.

The Spanish eat salt cod often and, given the excellence of their cod, it's no wonder — the dried fish is snowy white, delicate, and, once rehydrated, tender enough to eat raw. Though you can't get the same thing here, the salt cod from the Spanish specialty store La Tienda is very good (they sell lomo — the center cut — which we prefer over the chewy, skinny end pieces), and its turnover is high, so there's no concern that the fish has been sitting on the shelves too long.

These mussels are a snap to prepare, and make a hearty meal when paired with a loaf of crusty bread to mop up the rich tomato broth. Be sure to buy your mussels the day you make this dish, as they don't keep well at home.

This quick and easy tomato sauce is the base for two meals: spaghetti marinara and steamed mussels with tomato broth. We call for canned tomatoes because most of the fresh ones available in the wintertime have a bland flavor and mealy texture. Sugar will help round out the flavor if your tomatoes are too acidic. You can also add a pinch of red pepper flakes if you like your sauce to have a bit of heat. The leftover sauce also freezes well for future meals.

A steaming plate of al dente spaghetti with homemade sauce and a sprinkle of cheese is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

Erin Rutherford of Charlotte, North Carolina, writes: "This sauce was a hit with my supper club — I served it with filet mignon encrusted in black pepper, cumin, and sea salt, and it was killer. It would also pair well with swordfish."

Espagnole is a classic brown sauce, typically made from brown stock, mirepoix, and tomatoes, and thickened with roux. Given that the sauce is French in origin, where did the name come from? According to Alan Davidson, in The Oxford Companion to Food, "The name has nothing to do with Spain, any more than the counterpart term allemande has anything to do with Germany. It is generally believed that the terms were chosen because in French eyes Germans are blond and Spaniards are brown."

We prefer the taste of organic canned tomatoes in this particular recipe, as they tend to be sweeter. If using other canned tomatoes, you might want to add a bit more sugar to balance their acidity.

Inspired by Big Night Set in New Jersey in the 1950s, this 1996 film revolves around the conflict between two immigrant brothers who decide to open a restaurant. Primo defends his purist Italian cooking to Secondo, his brother, who is more concerned with the bottom line. Frustrated with customers who want simple plates of spaghetti and meatballs, Primo prepares timpano, a complex, drum-shaped dish of pasta-filled pastry. We've taken the timpano and simplified it into a timballo, a molded casserole without a pastry crust. For added flair, arrange the ziti in a decorative pattern as you make the first layer of the timballo.

It's very important not to use all white meat in this recipe — dark meat, which is higher in fat, has far more flavor, so look for ground turkey with at least 7 percent fat.