Cookbooks

Less is more when it comes to adding ingredients to this simple sauce and meatballs. Do make sure, however, that you're using the proper salt and pepper for seasoning, as you should with all of these recipes. You should be using a high quality kosher salt, if not sea salt.. The bigger and more intense the grains of salt, the less you'll need to season. If you want to experiment with these meatballs, try tweaking one or two spices at a time. Another twist is doing a 50/50 mix of ground pork with ground beef. You'll have a much juicer meatball.

Pork chops can get pretty dried out. This recipe fixes that age-old problem. It's also a great main course for a family-style dinner. Just slice the pork after it's done cooking, place in a serving dish, and then top with the savory mustard sauce. These pork chops make wonderful leftovers and serve as a nice addition to a breakfast or atop a salad for lunch. Perfect Pork Chops also depend on getting the right pork. Pasture-raised pork will contain a healthier mix of fats and vitamin D. Pork also contains high concentrations of thiamine, which is used by all cells to make energy and is particularly important to the brain, and B6, which helps make several key neurotransmitters.

I love the crimson glow of juicy little pomegranate morsels. Mix with fresh winter lettuces, serve it European style after the entreé, and enjoy.

Kosher Status: Meat
Prep: 10 Minutes
Cook: 4 Hours
Rest: 15 Minutes
Total: 4 Hours, 25 Minutes

**Editor's note:**Use this recipe to make Ali Larter's Winter Lettuces with Pomegranate Seeds . This is an everyday dressing that is wonderful on all variations of lettuces and vegetables. It's a welcome change from bottled dressing and so easy to make.

Kosher Status: Meat
Prep: 10 Minutes
Cook: 2 Hours, 20 Minutes
Total: 2 1/2 Hours

Kosher Status: Pareve
Prep: 35 Minutes
Rise: 2 Hours, 15 Minutes
Bake: 45 to 55 Minutes
Cool: 15 Minutes
Total: About 4 Hours

"Creamy squash and cheese crisps only make you think you're off the diet cliff!" says James Beard award winner Laura Werlin, author of Mac & Cheese, Please! and The All American Cheese and Wine Book.

This is one of the simplest and yet tastiest preparations of eggs I've ever had. One afternoon, a friend and I unexpectedly dropped in on my friend Mario in Trieste. It was lunchtime, and he had a big basket full of fresh eggs he had brought down from the Carso, the high plateau surrounding Trieste. Eggs it was for lunch, served with a bowl of radicchio salad. We were just a few people that day, but this recipe is so very easy to modify for smaller or larger groups.

This salty-sweet phenomenon is well established, and salted caramels are now everywhere. Fleur de sel is a fancy sea salt, hand harvested from evaporating pools along the coast of Brittany in France. Similar "gourmet" salts can be found from just about everywhere on the planet, and they are definitely worth a few taste tests. You may discover something wonderful! If you don't have sea salt caramel candies on hand, it's fine to use generic caramel candies.

Just about everyone loves chicken breast. It is one of the most Googled terms in recipe searches. I also love this recipe when it's done with drumsticks. If you decide to do that, make sure to double the wine and increase the cooking time until the chicken is done.

Crunch-crunch-crunch will end up as munch-munch-munch when this salad is served. Flavor is obviously crucial in food, and certainly this salad has flavor, but tactile sensation is also a very important factor in our food perception and appreciation. We want pasta al dente, celery crunchy, bread grilled. This salad has a lot of texture to enjoy.

Visually speaking, these are very cool cookies, which resemble candy canes by twisting red and white strands together like a barber-shop pole. When the holidays roll around every year, Lisa and the kids whip up a huge batch of these, then invite all the cousins over for a last-second party. These taste even better the day after you bake them, and will keep for about a week and a half in an airtight container.

Spices may not be seasonal, but the spices in these cookies—cinnamon, cloves, and allspice—always put me in mind of fall because they are important ingredients in so many recipes of that season. Usually, the scent of sugar rules the air at the Carlo's Bake Shop factory, but in the fall, the factory smells of those spices, which always gets me excited for the holidays.

If you don't know what a Sno-Ball is, you should probably move on to the next chapter. Those round, fuzzy pink flavor wads are a staple of childhood (and a guilty pleasure of adulthood). Food coloring is optional here, but without it, this recipe looks much too grown-up.

This über-trendy cake is actually a vintage recipe from the Deep South. It is as red as Scarlet O'Hara's dress thanks to the combination of cocoa powder and cheap liquid red food coloring. Be sure to use the cheap stuff! Fancy food coloring pastes and gels don't work nearly as well. The vinegar was traditionally added to the baking soda as a leavener. With self-rising flour, it's not necessary, but it's added here for its classic zippy flavor.

All the kids in our family used to get together and make these cookies at our house every year; now we do it at the Carlo's factory.

We use sparkling rosé wine here mostly for its color. Any decent bubbly will work as a substitute.

NOTE You will probably have some brisket left over (unless your friends eat like mine!). It reheats beautifully and is also great for sandwiches and hash.