5 Ingredients or Fewer

Editor's note: The recipe below is from Feast: Food to Celebrate Life, by Nigella Lawson.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from Feast: Food to Celebrate Life, _by Nigella Lawson._I'm not really one for cocktails and pitchers of funny drinks, but I came up with this a few years back and it was so good and the color so festive, I just had to go with it.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from Feast: Food to Celebrate Life, by Nigella Lawson. Strictly speaking, I don't think of this as a casserole, but I know that this is the traditional nomenclature; and, besides, I do sometimes serve the beans in one so it seems silly to quibble. This is another recipe I'd never have thought of adding to my Christmas till I started cooking for Thanksgiving, but I love its fresh, citrussy crunch. Actually, all I've done is bring on board an amplification of the way my mother always cooked green beans: just plenty of butter, plenty of pepper, and vicious amounts of lemon.

A good roast potato isn't about showing off or about striving desperately to impress. Nor is it a difficult thing to achieve, but I can't pretend it isn't a high pressure zone. You either get it right or you don't, and anything less than perfect is a disappointment. It's brutal but it's the truth.

This recipe is part of a menu Chef Ming Tsai created for Epicurious's Wine.Dine.Donate program. Use this syrup to make his Blue Ginger Gimlet.

Chunks of bacon give this English classic newfound appeal.

This yields enough broth for the gravy and the stuffing . Use heavy large rimmed baking sheets; regular ones may buckle.

Start this at least one day before serving.

Fresh, sprightly — and so easy to make.

This simple sauce is delicious drizzled over the poppy-seed sweet bread or the rum raisin apple pie.

This simple yet sophisticated relish has depth and tang that store-bought cranberry sauce just can't match.

Roasting a whole head of cauliflower at high heat creates beautifully caramelized florets. It's perfectly offset by fresh parsley and a drizzle of a quick lemon dressing.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from Ted Allen's The Food You Want to Eat. For Allen's tips on throwing a Thanksgiving party, click here. Mashed potatoes really serve primarily as a silky, textural vehicle for butter, cream, and salt, in my view. Cauliflower does an excellent job as well — and considering all the other carb sources on your table today, there's no harm in a whipped white dish that contains few of them. Steaming works better than boiling for this purée because boiling leaches flavor out of the cauliflower. You can get a big pot with a steamer insert anywhere for about $20.00. But go ahead and boil if you need to; just use less liquid to thin the purée. (The cauliflower will have absorbed a lot of water in boiling.) There's no law that says you can't purée other quick-cooking vegetables as well; imagine whirled peas, as the Phish fans used to exhort on their Volvo bumpers. The bright green color looks fantastic on a plate.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from Ted Allen's The Food You Want to Eat. For Allen's tips on throwing a Thanksgiving party, click here. I can't have cocktail hour without great, fresh olives — and
I don't mean the rubbery, tasteless black ones from a can.
I mean the real deal: kalamatas, niçoises, gaetas, picholines— the more variety, the better. Most good supermarkets these days feature an olive bar—that is, a variety of loose olives available in bulk. And that is a very, very good thing. Some of these places include among the selection a batch of olives that have been seasoned with herbs and other flavors, too. But it's more fun to do it yourself; you can buy different kinds of olives (be sure to get different sizes and colors, which looks great in the bowl), select the flavors you like the best — say, thyme, cayenne, garlic, grapefruit zest, whatever — and you can control the spiciness. You'll have a great collection of olives for your next impromptu get together, or an excellent addition to an antipasto platter. And they're almost no work at all to make. When you serve, remember to put out a small dish so guests have some place to put the pits.

This syrup is an ingredient in Audrey Saunder's Madeira Martinezand Tim Lacey's mint limeade. It may be used in place of simple syrup in many cocktails.

This super-easy, no-cook dessert tastes like the ultimate Creamsicle.