Alcohol

Try these baked apples topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Active time: 15 min Start to finish: 45 min

This can also be prepared with duck breasts, which is how it is often made in Tuscany. Either way, the dish is good with rosemary-flavored mashed potatoes and sautéed artichoke hearts.

Our food editors agree that this is one of the best-tasting and most elegant shepherd's pies they've ever had. The recipe is not as complicated as it appears at first glance—the different components all come together to make a complete meal in a single dish. The potatoes are stiffer than the average mash because they will be forming the crust for the pie.

"While visiting friends on Cape Cod, I had dinner at the Aqua Grille in Sandwich," says Corolyn Hampton of Saratoga Springs, New York. "The beer-marinated steak, served with a peppercorn sauce and mashed potatoes, was the centerpiece of a fabulous meal."

This venerable cold-weather dish has never looked so pretty or tasted so good. Partner it with a tossed green salad and French bread. Uncork a dry red wine.

Mark Taylor of West Hartford, Connecticut, writes: "I started cooking out of necessity when I first graduated from college, since I couldn't afford to eat out. Having grown up watching my mother cook for our large family, I used her recipes. She was always trying new dishes whenever we had guests and sharing her adventurous attitude toward eating. These days, even though my wife and I both work, we still cook several times a week. Now I tend to rely on recipes I've picked up from restaurants and friends. I enjoy experimenting with different ingredients and figuring out new ways to improve a recipe, as I've done with the one here." Serve the fish and sauce over couscous.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Chopped toffee candy gives orange-scented vanilla ice cream a surprise crunch in this easy and innovative dessert.

Pernod, the beloved French anise-flavored aperitif, adds an interesting twist to the sauce. Offer Champagne with the starters.

At the restaurant the chef garnishes this dish with fresh seasonal flowers, chervil, and chives.

Broccoli is called sparaceddi in Sicilian. In this side dish, it is "drowned" in a heady mixture of olive oil, onions, anchovies, olives, red wine and cheese. While there are variations of the basic preparation throughout Italy, food historians generally think it to be of Sicilian origin.

Have your butcher order the veal breast, then ask him to bone, butterfly, and pound it, forming a rectangle that has the dimensions described in the recipe.