Garlic

This sophisticated soup and salad combination makes a cozy winter lunch for friends.

A nice hors d'oeuvre teaming fresh vegetables with a simplified version of rouille, the spicy red pepper and garlic sauce that typically accompanies French fish soups.

From Jane Butel's cooking school in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Debbie uses whatever cheese she has on hand, and she's always happy with the results. This could be a meatless main course or a rich side dish.

A crisp white wine, such as Sauvignon Blanc, would be nice with this dish.

This is a terrific version of osso buco alla Milanese. To bring out the flavors, the veal is sprinkled with gremolata, a snappy mixture of chopped parsley, garlic and grated lemon peel. Uncork a bottle of Nebbiolo d'Alba or Nebbiolo delle Langhe to go with this classic do-ahead entrée.

Here we've adapted the classic Chinese dish "squab in jade," in which the meat is minced, stir-fried, and served in "cups" of lettuce.

Offer some crusty bread with this lovely main-course salad.

"As my kids have gotten older, their taste buds have become more sophisticated, and now they're willing to try dishes they wouldn't have touched just a few years ago," says Ken Haedrich, cookbook author. "So I've started serving this blend of mashed roots for Thanksgiving. It brings a bit of diversity to the table, and I also happen to love rutabagas and carrots. There was some dissension at first, especially from my youngest, Sam, whose fondness for mashed potatoes is the stuff of family legend. But now he dives right into this with the rest of us."

At many places in Italy, roasted peppers are dressed with bagna cauda, the classic warm anchovy and garlic sauce, but our cooks especially enjoyed it at La Contea, a restaurant in Neive, a village in the Piedmont. In this variation, potato slices have been added.

We loved these tomatoes after they were cooked for 6 hours. We served them on crusty bread with a little olive oil and thought they'd also work well as a side dish. But to toss with pasta, we wanted a more intense flavor, so we cooked them an additional 2 hours. They were perfect.

Leaping off the backs of onion-soup-mix boxes and showing up at cocktail parties everywhere, Lipton’s sour cream-and-onion dip took the country by storm. Convenient and quick, the dip also tasted great on potato chips, without which, in the fifties anyway, it wasn’t a party. These days it isn’t a party without little toasts topped by something Mediterranean-hence this zesty update.

This delicate savory version of the frothy dessert sauce is a lovely accompaniment to almost every kind of fish. Market tip: Farmed bay scallops are the most sustainable choice; if not available, choose wild-caught Atlantic sea scallops.

Here's a centerpiece dish that really lives up to the name. Uncork a Cabernet Sauvignon, red Bordeaux or red Super-Tuscan.