American

The Reid family crumbles blue cheese on top to add a salty bite.

Use this fresh blend of spices and herbs to add pep to the Cajun-Spiced Turkey and Crawfish Gravy , or to season blackened redfish or gumbo.

This easy-to-cook bird shows off the traditional flavors of the holiday; it's one of our favorites.

Herbaceous, nutty, and bright, this rendition of the Prohibition-era classic doubles the gin for a more robust cocktail.

Plan at least one day ahead to let the turkey—seasoned with the homemade Cajun Spice Mix—cure overnight.

This classic Cajun cake uses Steen's cane syrup, a deep caramel sweetener of reduced sugar cane. Look for it at better supermarkets, at specialty foods stores, and at steensyrup.com.

The Pacific Northwest is the birthplace of America's specialty coffee culture, and beyond the coffee shops that dot every street corner of the region, bars have gotten in on the action, mixing locally roasted coffee into cocktails like this one from Seattle bartender Andrew Friedman, which features espresso from Stumptown Coffee Roasters. "Their Hair Bender espresso is so expressive that I thought it deserved to be in a cocktail," says Friedman. Taking inspiration from the classic froth of a flip cocktail, this velvety concoction harmonizes the rich, chocolaty notes of the espresso with vanilla-flecked Navan liqueur. Mandarine Napoléon adds the perfect splash of orangey sweetness.

Wassail is a deeply rooted tradition in the Midwest and a popular regional staple throughout the cold-weather season. Every winter as the holidays approach, many Wisconsinites still take part in the age-old "wassailing of apple trees," a ritual dating back to the fifteenth century that involves sprinkling wassail on apple trees to ensure a strong, healthy harvest and to keep the trees safe from evil spirits. Wassail always blends apples and winter holiday spices, but the sweeteners and spirits often change from recipe to recipe. This version comes from the Rittenhouse Inn in Bayfield, an area that leads apple production in Wisconsin. The cranberry juice is a perfectly tart counterpart to the sweetness of the apple cider and brown sugar, and the bourbon lends a full, rich quality, and the ginger, pepper, and spices offer a final kick of flavor.

Editor's note: This recipe appears as part of our editors' Christmas Cookie Swap, 10 beloved holiday recipes from the editors of Epicurious and Gourmet Live. These bite-sized cookie balls are made of all the best things: ground vanilla wafers, ground pecans, confectioner's sugar, white Karo syrup, and good bourbon whiskey.

There's a special place in the lexicon of American layer cakes for the classic yellow cake with chocolate frosting. It's practically the standard for birthdays and anniversaries, so it was my top choice when creating a cake to celebrate the first year of publication of Gourmet Live. And if ever there was a version that will elicit either a string of excited OMG's or the low-humming purr of rapturous mmmm's, this is it. Tender, buttery cake layers sandwich a creamy frosting so light and airy it's as if you're nibbling a chocolate cloud. (No offense to dense, fudgy ganache-style icings—of which I'm also very fond—but they don't lend themselves to the kind of exuberant flourishes and swirls of frosting that convey the excitement of a first birthday.) Even a strong-willed soul won't be able to resist a second slice.

Are you flush with folate? Too-low levels are linked with osteoporosis, depression and more. Black-eyed peas are a top source of the vitamin.

This buttery yet crisp New England cracker is a close cousin of the oyster cracker. Here's our delicious version.

Serve this smoky soup with plenty of homemade Common Crackers . If substituting smoked whitefish for haddock, add 2 thick-cut slices of smoked bacon; see instructions below.

Texas is proud of its peaches. They're soft, juicy, floral, and sweet, and the best I've ever tasted. During the season, when you travel through lush Hill Country Texas towns such as Fredericksburg, or Central Texas towns such as Fairfield, you won't be able to go a mile without seeing a roadside stand or pickup truck filled with baskets of this cherished summertime treat. We also have a peach tree at my grandma's North Texas farm, and every July it delivers a bounty of peaches that she'll put up for later in the year. Pickling fruit is a common method of fruit preservation in Texas. Yes, there's vinegar involved, as with other types of pickles. But you also add enough sugar and warm spices to give the fruit a balance of both acidity and sweetness. If you've never tried pickled fruit, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Pickled peaches are perhaps my favorite fruit to preserve, as I love how the peaches' sweet juice combines with the piquant brine. Of course, I've added a bit of heat to my peaches, which is decidedly not traditional, but I find that the habanero's flowery notes go very well with the peaches' floral tones. These go well with a bowl of ice cream, on top of your morning oatmeal, with a freshly baked biscuit, or yes, simply eaten straight out of the jar.

In most parts of Texas, enchiladas are rolled tortillas stuffed with a filling and covered in sauce. But often in West Texas (and also New Mexico) the filling and sauce are instead layered between flat tortillas. They look a bit different, but the end taste is the same, not to mention stacked enchiladas are a heck of a lot easier to make. Another feature of stacked enchiladas is the inclusion of a fried egg on top. I don't know how this tradition came about, but it's a brilliant addition. When the yolk mixes with the sauce, its creamy transformation takes the sauce from merely delicious to truly decadent. I was born and raised a rolled-enchilada girl, but I can appreciate a plate of stacked ones, especially those made with an ancho chile sauce. And if I squint, I can see in the stack the rugged terrain of West Texas, with the egg standing in for clouds and the sun. It's West Texas on a plate.

The novelist Julia Alvarez grew up in the Dominican Republic; her husband, Bill Eichner, is the son of tenant farmers in Nebraska. Dinner at the couple's Vermont home is a study in how far-flung flavors have enriched the simple sturdy fare of America. Dr. Eichner spent hours coaxing Alcarez's mother, her aunts, and her cousins (not to mention, Ana, the family cook) into giving him the broad outlines of their family's dishes—sweet-and-sour carrots, spicy Caribbean chicken, red beans and rice, and bread pudding. He tested the recipes on his parents, Ruth and John, who now live a couple of minutes away. Ruth, herself an accomplished cook, really liked the recipe for sweet-and-sour carrots.

Francis Butler grew up on the family ranch and continues to preside over the dry, windy land. The lonesomeness of ranch life, she says, was offset by "group cooks" such as the annual Thanksgiving tamale making: "Wild turkey hunting has been a West Texas sport for as long as anybody remembers, and tamale-stuffed turkey may have been an early tip of the hat to the Mexican ranch hands who've been around for at least as long as the turkey. This recipe dates back to the early 1900s. I got it from a family whose grandmother was German but had been raised in Mexico. I make it most often in the cold months, but I've been known to put a tamale-stuffed turkey in the roasting pit in my time, as well. You can use commercial tamales, of course, but I like the two-day ritual of making tamales and then making the turkey. I always double or triple the tamales and freeze the extra. These days people use more barnyard turkey than they do wild. Before you go thinking that's a sorry thing, let me tell you this. You feed your chickens or turkey some chile peppers before you decide. That spicy sweet flavor gets into the meat and you know what they mean when they say it doesn't get any better." This stuffing is also delicious in chicken and squab. Serve with high-quality corn chips, salsa, and sour cream.

Definitely decadent, this sweet potato gratin is destined to become a do-or-die part of your family's holiday spread. Cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg perfume the cream with their warm flavors and seep their rich taste of fall into each layer. A mandoline makes quick work of slicing the potatoes and is worth the investment for the time it will save you in prep work. Don't forget to remove the cover for the last portion of baking time—the browned and bubbling crust is not to be missed!

Highway 84 runs from Santa Fe to Colorado. About forty minutes north of Santa Fe, the highway cuts a paved path through Ohkay Owingeh, a Native American reservation, and the roadside becomes dense with fast-food outlets, outposts of national grocery chains, Walmart, and billboards for Ohkay Casino, Hutch and Norma Naranjo's sprawling midcentury home is set about fifty years back from the road, a shrine to the tug-of-war between new ways and traditional ones. In the backyward Mr. Naranjo built two hornos (behive-shaped adobe ovens). Inside the house, a handmade wreath of dried chiles hangs on one wall and a string of made-for-tourists ceramic peppers on another. A naïve painting of St. Francis hangs not far from a cluster of the dream catchers that the couple and their two grown children fashion from string, feathers, and yarn, just as their Pueblo ancestors did. "We go to church one Sunday and dance the traditional dances the next," said Mrs. Naranjo. A retired social worker, she gives cooking classes and does a little catering. But she spends most of her mornings working the two-acre minifarm where she grows vegetables from seeds that have been passed from one Pueblo generation to another for at least a thousand years. "The history of our people is in those seeds," she says. In the evenings, when her husband builds hornos on the terraces of hotels and McMansions, Mrs. Naranjo visits the elderly women in Ohkay Owingeh, who remember life and cooking when it was closer to the land, and collects their recipes and food stories. "Our history lives in our hands as well," she says. Mrs. Naranjo moves with the efficiency of a modern professional as she smooths cornmeal paste on damp cornhusks. Tiny white kernels from several ears of heirloom corn, and diced green chiles and squash, along with a thick, bloodred chile sauce and shredded fresh cheese, are lined up in small stainless-steel bowls at the head of her tamale assembly line. She notes that tamales were stuffed with rabbit, venison, pork—whatever people had. Vegetable tamales were a fine way to make use of the gardens' overflowing crops. She swathes the dough, sprinkles filling, folds, ties, and places the tamale bundles on a rack set over water in a big enameled pot. From time to time, she glances out the window to the backyard, where her husband is feeding small, dry sticks into this new four-by-four horno. Her smaller tamales are, she says, her only concession to modernity: "People love the little ones as snacks, and Hutch and I love them in these green chile stews we make in the horno."