Side

We love using kohlrabi in salads. The light green or purple veggie looks like a cross between a turnip and a fennel bulb and tastes like celery root or a mild turnip.

Omnivores can sprinkle the risotto with shaved Parmesan cheese and crispy pancetta for a salty, crunchy, meaty finish.

Local island vegetables are used in this colorful dish offered at Jake's in Jamaica. Serve with brown rice or as a side dish with fish or chicken.

Giving foods that glorious crispy- crunchy texture without a deep fryer isn't easy. The best way to healthfully approximate the deep- fried experience is to use panko breadcrumbs, a mist of cooking spray, and a hot oven. Panko is a Japanese ingredient that used to be found only in Asian supermarkets and health- food stores but is now available everywhere. The crumbs are made from crustless bread, so they're lighter and crunchier than traditional breadcrumbs.

This is a nice variation on regular sweet potatoes for a Thanksgiving side dish. It's almost a dessert, it's so sweet!

Roasted potatoes are good and all, but a roasted root vegetable medley is just as easy to make and a little bit fancy too. Substitute any root vegetable, including starchy potatoes, turnip, parsnip, celery root, or rutabaga. While the veggies are roasting, toss a garlic bulb or two into the pan at about the 30-minute mark—the result: easy, creamy garlic! Yum.

This classic French bread is rich and slightly sweet, with a soft, golden crust and a yellow, buttery, cakey crumb. It is widely eaten in France – with coffee for breakfast, as a roll with dinner, or as a base for any number of desserts. At River Cottage, we like to toast brioche and serve it with a smooth chicken liver pâté and a little fruit jelly. Contrary to popular belief, as bread goes, brioche is pretty straightforward. The dough is very soft to handle though, so kneading in a stand mixer is easier. You can make and bake brioche all in one day, but it benefits from sitting overnight in the fridge – the very soft dough stiffens as it chills, making it easier to shape.

Of course you can put what you like on your scones, but I'll usually opt for a traditional cream tea of jam and clotted cream. Cream tea etiquette is fiercely disputed in the West Country. The Cornish put strawberry jam on their scones first, then the clotted cream; in Devon and Dorset, it is customary to do it the other way around. Personally, I prefer raspberry jam and I always put jam on first, even though I live on the Devon-Dorset border.

I thrive on discovering new flavor combinations, and Sea is a great example of a totally thrown together idea that worked out beautifully. That day I was really in the mood for some crab salad, but I wanted to do something untraditional. One of my purveyors had sent me some Tuscan cantaloupe to try, so I first made a melon emulsion. Then I tossed the crabmeat with my Colvin Vinaigrette (which is basically good on anything). I thought that avocado would be great with the melon, so I started with a little melon on the plate, then I layered sliced ripe avocado and the crab mixture with a huge quenelle of caviar I had on hand to top it all off. Honestly, it was like heaven. I had so much crab that I made two mini ones for my two friends downstairs, and they were like, "What the hell is this flavor combination? This is amazing!" Give it a try—it's elegant and just incredibly good.

Stuffed peppers come out well on the grill if you don't make them too big. I like to mix ground meats and season the stuffed peppers heavily. Be sure to cook a little of the meat mixture to test the seasonings before you stuff the peppers, since the salt and spice levels of the various sausage meats and seasoning mixes vary widely.

David makes these pickles to be enjoyed right after seasoning, while they are still vibrant and crunchy.

All the vibrant, sun-drenched brilliance of the tropics is captured in this salsa that evolves in your mouth—first sweet, then hot. Luscious ripe pineapple is a perfect partner to the fiery, fragrant habanero chile. Not only is the habanero the hottest chile readily available fresh, when cut open it releases an intense perfume of ripe tropical fruits—mango, pineapple, citrus. As a finishing touch, a squeeze of fresh lime adds a pop of flavor and brightens the sometimes cloying sweetness of a really ripe pineapple. This salsa pairs well with dishes that are tropical in origin or spirit, that have bright, fresh flavors, or that have been simply marinated or grilled, whether fish or meat. It’s delicious with almost all fish and seafood tacos and grilled chicken dishes. If you cannot find fresh habaneros, substitute one tablespoon of a fruity hot or extra-hot habanero sauce with a mango base (Melinda’s makes a good one) for the habanero chile.

Salads need not focus on the lettuce. Here the greens take a back seat to vibrant golden beets. The salty, creamy blue cheese and the crunchy walnuts complement the sweet beets. Roasting the beets in water prevents them from drying out.