Simmer

Cotton Row is full of local flavor. The restaurant, which is located on the city's courthouse square, is housed in a three-story brick building dating back to 1821. And chef James Boyce's menu keeps the local flavor coming, with dishes like this risotto made with butter beans, a southern staple. Crispy fried okra makes a fitting (and tasty) garnish.

At Menton, this dish is garnished with caviar and chive blossoms.

Preparing the pesto a day ahead makes this a quick supper.

Linguiça, a garlicky Portuguese sausage, and andouille, a smoky Cajun sausage, are both available at most supermarkets.

THIS SABBATH RICE DISH, typical of Provence, reveals the history both of pilau or pilaf, as it is called in French, and of Persian Jews who settled in the area near the Camargue, the rice-growing area of southwestern Provence located on the triangle of land between the two major tributaries of the Rhône River. Jews, first by barge and later by boat, used the river to bring goods here from the Mediterranean. The word and the dish pilau come from Persia, taking various forms as the dish traveled around the world. In India, it became pulao; in modern-day Iran, it is called polo; and in Provence, pelau or pilaf. Rice, and therefore pilaf, traveled with the Jews to Provence, where many Persian Jewish merchants and scholars settled and lived until the end of the fourteenth century or even later. These Jews, who traded rice, cooked it for the Sabbath with fragrant spices like nutmeg, garlic, cumin, cinnamon, and saffron. Some scholars believe that Jews brought saffron to Europe from Asia Minor for their Sabbath rice. The late Karen Hess, author of The Carolina Rice Kitchen, repeatedly told me that Jews first brought rice to the Camargue. In their Inventory of the Culinary Patrimony of France, Philip and Mary Hyman relate that emigrants from the Piedmont paid a dîme of rice to noblemen in the year 1497. And although pilau and riz au safran are no longer particularly Jewish dishes in Provence, they are clearly rooted in the Sabbath tradition. This simple recipe is typically eaten on Rosh Hashanah, alongside a symbolic whole roasted fish with a Sephardic sweet-and-sour greengage-plum sauce.

Chef Max Mackissock of The Squeaky Bean in Denver takes a back-to-nature approach to ingredients: He uses produce straight from the garden at his restaurant or the farmers’ market the eatery hosts weekly. With veggies like that, who needs meat? This tasty vegan dish has plenty of protein, plus healthy carbs, thanks to whole-grain, fiber-rich farro.

Escoffier codified the mother sauces of French cooking. In the Italian-American tradition, there is only one: tomato sauce. Call it marinara (we do), call it gravy (we don't), call it whatever your grandma called it. It's tomato sauce. There's almost nothing we won't cook in it or put it on. The real deal—what we grew up with and the way we would do it if we had our choice (and didn't have so many vegetarian friends and customers) would be to make that sauce, then simmer up a batch of braciola or meatballs in it, and then use the resulting meat-infused product as our "tomato sauce" in all its myriad applications. And if you're not catering to vegetarians, we advise doing just that: make a triple batch of sauce, use it to simmer up braciola or meatballs and then use that tomato sauce, fresh or from the freezer, whenever tomato sauce is called for in these pages. Use good Italian canned tomatoes and high quality olive oil when making this sauce, and take your time—there's no rushing it. When you're cooking the garlic, you want to very, very slowly convert the starches in it to sugars and then to caramelize those sugars. Slow and steady. Then get the tomatoes in and let them simmer. Not a ton happens over the four hours—no epic deepening of color or furious reduction—but it cooks as much water out of the tomatoes as possible without turning them into tomato paste.

If you prefer a spicier sauce, add two chipotles instead of one.

Kenna Jo created this recipe "to use a surplus of strawberries." She said it "brings a fresh and sweet take on traditional barbeque sauce." It's fantastic over pork or chicken, and it also makes a great sauce to serve with corn bread. Kenna Jo calls that "Strawberry BBQ Shortcake."

If the polenta is ready before the rest of the meal, keep it in the pan and press parchment or waxed paper directly on the surface to prevent a skin from forming; partially covering the pan with the lid will also work. Stir well before serving.

At Mesa Grill, this barbecue sauce is used as is, or as a base for some more complex sauces. The ancho and pasilla chile powders add Southwestern flavors to the traditional barbecue-sauce ingredients: tomatoes, onions, garlic, sweet molasses, and brown sugar.

Sweet crabmeat and sweet peas make a great match in this springlike risotto.

New Englanders find the very idea of tomatoes in clam chowder to be abhorrent; of course, by referring to the aberration as "Manhattan clam chowder" they're overlooking the fact that their own Rhode Islanders also add tomatoes to clam chowder. And let's not forget about the hundreds of ethnic cuisines around the world that combine tomatoes with shellfish in soups and stews. Unlike the New England purists, we just don't find an intrinsic problem with clams and tomatoes. We do find, however, that most Manhattan clam chowder served in restaurants is positively awful: thin, unclammy, often tasting like vegetable soup out of a can with a few canned clams thrown in. Try the following recipe, and you'll see how good this soup can be.

Bread pudding was originally created as a way to use up stale bread. Today, the dessert is a favorite in the U.K. and the U.S. Here, rich brioche is combined with a vanilla custard and pieces of tangy ginger-infused rhubarb.

The beloved ginger root, that ubiquitous Asian ingredient, is paired with Italian Arborio rice in this super-simple risotto. The most important thing to remember when making a risotto is to never let it rest while on the burner: stir, stir, stir! In Italy a risotto is usually served as a primo piatto, after the starter and before the main dish. I've included this recipe with the main courses because I think that risotto can hold its own as an entrée, rather than a starter. And it is a great main course option for vegetarians if you substitute vegetable broth for the chicken stock.

When a butcher eats a salad, it tends to contain lots of meat and few vegetables. At Chez Navarre Jerome Navarre serves a version he learned from his father, a butcher.

Carbonnade is the quintessential Belgian comfort food; this recipe’s caramelized onions, brown sugar, and brown beer make the sweet stew addictive. Chef Palombino also recommends making this carbonnade with any muscular cut of beef that's good for stewing, such as skirt and hanger steaks.