Beverages

Minestra di porri e castagne Piemonte

Savor these morsels with benefits: Each has nearly 20 percent of your calcium RDA.

One cute cocktail contains only 7 grams of sugar—including the candy cane. Sip and stay sleek!

In the early 1990s we hired a chef who loved to bake, and he came up with this pie. It became an instant classic. The fruit is only lightly sweetened, and its tartness combined with the sugar-crumb topping is a perfect pairing. Served warm with vanilla ice cream, it's heavenly. If you use frozen berries, increase them by 1/2 cup each and defrost slightly before tossing with the other ingredients.

Bodino Stifado Me Praso Braises like this are perfect for meat with tough muscle tissue and tendons (which come from the part of the animal that works hard), a great example of poverty cooking. This less expensive cut of meat develops its own natural and luscious sauce as it cooks. You want a little marbling in the meat, because it melts down as you cook and adds a lot of flavor to the sauce. You can use brisket, shanks, shoulder—all fairly tough meats—but save the filet mignon for the grill or a pan. It takes a little time to cook and become tender, but it's a relatively easy setup, and once you get it onto the stove you don't have to worry about it for about an hour. So you can do your laundry, or walk the dog, or make a salad. A couple of days later, if you have any leftovers, you can shred the meat, then return the meat to the sauce and add your favorite pasta. The resulting dish is a Greek version of beef Stroganoff. The herbs are very important to the flavor development here, since I'm using water instead of stock, so use fresh herbs if possible.

This is a mash-up of my French and Japanese influences, with a very American meat-and-pasta sensibility. "Scaloppini" refers, of course, to a thin cut of meat, which here is Gardein, a vegan substitute that's a great transitional food for meat-eaters. Instead of European wine, this sauce calls for sake, and shiitakes are swapped in for traditional button mushrooms. The udon noodle cakes and pea shoots are another Asian touch, but the overall complexity and lushness of the dish give it a French feel.

Orange-flavored liqueur and orange peel add a citrusy note to this very tender cake. Candied blood oranges keep the citrus theme going—and make for a lovely garnish.

Clementines provide the orange flavoring in this update of a classic cocktail. Chill the Martini glasses in the freezer for a few hours beforehand. Hendrick’s Gin, a smooth Scottish gin infused with cucumber and rose petals, is worth seeking out: It is the perfect choice for this drink.

Punch is one of the easiest ways to set the Halloween mood—all you need is a cauldron, perhaps, or a pointy black hat and ice block "hands."Not every blend of fruit juices takes well to the with-or-without option of alcohol, but the combination of sparkling cider and cranberry juice cocktail, subtly enhanced with a spice syrup, both support an optional dose of dark rum.

In name alone, a devil's food cake is an obvious choice for a Halloween dessert. This one will far exceed your expectations of deep chocolaty naughtiness hidden under a fluff of espresso-tinged frosting. (If your trick-or-treaters are too young to embrace the slightly adult bitterness the coffee flavor adds, feel free to substitute a couple of teaspoons of good old vanilla extract.) Have some fun with a very tasty spiderweb—you'll want to eat it rather than shriek and brush it off.

For many, Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie is unthinkable, but that doesn't mean you can't jazz up the old standby.

A roast turkey glazed with a buttery cider syrup is burnished outside and juicy within. You'll have more than enough gravy to ladle over the stuffing, the smashed potatoes, and tomorrow's leftovers.

Fans of milky coffee will go crazy for these softly set little coffee puddings adorned with whipped cream. Use decaffeinated instant coffee granules if you will be serving them to children or caffeine-wary adults.

We had lots of apple trees of many varieties in our orchards, and the supply would last for the whole winter. Mostly I had them for a snack or in a dessert, but here's one use in a main course that's a winner. It's incredibly easy yet nutritionally complete. I rather love mixing the sweet carb with the fat and protein in delicious defiance of current diet ideology.

Look no further for a go-to recipe when making vegetarian stews and gravies. The stock here gets its deep flavor and color from roasting the vegetables and then deglazing the pan with red wine.

This cheese course is one I frequently serve to guests at home, and every time it's enthusiastically received. Asiago is a little softer than aged Parm, with a nutty, sweet flavor that is gorgeous with glazed onions. I also find it's a fantastico red wine cheese, and goes quite nicely with a dessert Sauternes.

If you like regular pecan pie made with corn syrup, wait until you taste old-fashioned pecan pie made with cane syrup—the difference is astonishing!