Holiday feast for four: Hens stuffed with polenta, chestnuts and dates.

Holiday feast for four: roasted duck with a bread-based fig stuffing.

Vegetarian gravy made with mushrooms and a homemade mushroom stock.

Shiitake mushrooms and Beluga lentils baked into a casserole. A lean, hearty main to keep ahead the winter fêtes.

Mushroom scented quinoa makes the perfect passenger for boats of squash.

Homemade caramel made with maple syrup has a smooth consistency that's thick enough to coat an apple without oozing away.

A dedicated to the last of the season's fresh, local tomatoes. Farewell, sweet friends. Farewell.

Spicy, sweet and savory all at once add a nice kick to the melty fatty, meaty goodness of smoked port spare ribs.

Yes. New England Style Fried Clams can be made at home.

The buffalo butter I found at a shop the other day begged to be turned into a compound butter and melted over a steak.

Tomatoey, olive-oily goodness on toast. Pan con Tomate is similar to bruschetta, except it's served as breakfast in Spain.

There are a lot of watermelon feta salad recipes out there. This one has a good balance of sweet watermelon, briny feta, slightly pickled red onion and mildly bitter greens.

When life gives you thin pastry cream, make smooth and creamy frozen chocolate custard.

I came to the original recipe for this by accident. Not wanting to waste two botched batches of pastry cream, I poured both into the ice cream maker with some cream. Turned out creamier than a pudding pop on a July afternoon...

Lentils form into a good vegetarian alternative to standard holiday roasts with a couple of apricots to jazz things up.

This lovely little nibble is always a big hit at parties. The spices and salt break down the meat as it marinates overnight, resulting in tender, delicious morsels. If you have any left over, count yourself lucky because these are totally snackable.

Little adzuki beans are sweet and offer a nice contrast to larger red kidney beans in both taste and size. Another interesting flavor kick is the use of ground lamb along with the beef.

Buttery, crisp and sweet, Snickerdoodles are perfect for snow storm baking.

Molasses, brown sugar and spices bring their loveliness and vinegar helps to break down the proteins for a meltingly sweet pulled pork that is divinity on a bulkie roll.

Fat free and packed with vitamin A, butternut squash deserves to be dolled up with a little pastry dough. Buttery shallots and tarragon complement the natural sweetness.

Chicken stock adds a nice layer of savory flavor to counter the kohlrabi's deep mellow sweetness. Carrots add color and turnips keep things honest.

A hearty, dense cake that's not too sweet. Fruit and fiber make this a less than sinful option for breakfast or brunch.

Sweet and juicy, roasting condenses the figs' sugars. I like them stuffed with a goat or blue cheese and drizzled with olive oil to add a little earthiness. Freshly chopped mint brings a subtle herbal snap to keep things from becoming too cloying.

Cucumber Salad is cool and refreshing and makes a great accompaniment to barbecued meats. It's also a good alternative to heavier mayonnaise-based side dishes.

Get Recipe

Chicken, stuffed with cheesy, jalapeno-studded rice is wrapped in bacon, roasted and accompanied by crisp fingerling potato coins. More

A spiral of bread, cheese and sausage—these buns take the shape of the classic sweet cinnamon bun and fill it with savory ingredients to make a portable, easy to eat brunch item that is perfect for a potluck. More

You only need to follow a recipe once or twice when making tzatziki before the process becomes almost automatic. Thick tangy yogurt; crisp, sweet cucumber; pungent garlic and dill; sunny lemon. The formula, a staging ground for countless dip platters and a condiment for the thousands of gyros dished up daily, is as familiar to us now as salsa and ketchup. And its preparation is about as intuitive—recipes matter less than solid ingredients and a willingness to dip a tasting finger along the way. More

A plain baked sweet potato is incredibly tasty, as far as I'm concerned, but Ina Garten's brown-sugared baked sweet potato fries are out of this world. Although I usually leave the peels on (out of laziness and a longstanding belief that the peels contain good stuff), they are even better peeled. With or without peeling, they come together very quickly and make a nice side for an easy and inexpensive meal of hot dogs or hamburgers. More

Bruce and Eric Bromberg, the brothers behind the now nine-restaurant Blue Ribbon phenomenon, have eaten their fair share of brisket. After many years of it at family holiday meals, they embarked on a personal quest to create an exceptional version that wasn't a dried-out, stringy mess. In this recipe (just in time for Passover) from their soon-to-be-published Blue Ribbon Cookbook, they turn the aromatic vegetables in the pot into a luscious, full-bodied sauce for the brisket (a special touch they learned from their mom). More

Most of the cauliflower I eat is roasted or sautéed until it's perilously close to looking burnt. It's hard to describe why it tastes so good when it looks so bad, but it really does a number on me and partly explains why it's one of my favorite things to cook. But this recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook retreats back to a time when cauliflower was treated gently and calmly. More

The chapter devoted to all things porcine in My New Orleans by John Besh is called Boucherie, and has several delicious-sounding pork-based charcuterie projects including these Pork Shoulder Rillettes. This version slow cooks pork butt with chicken stock, lard, wine, and a few other aromatics until it's tender enough to shred into a million tasty little pieces. More

This recipe packs two known umami-bombs into one sauce: the pungent anchovy and the common white mushroom. Together they deepen and enrich the sauce without a lot of simmering time. More

Note: Want to know all about homemade ricotta?: Check it out here.... More

[Photograph: Robyn Lee] Smoked haddock is very popular all over England. April Bloomfield is doing her part to raise its profile here in the U.S. That shouldn't be a problem with a chowder as good as this one, which is... More

View Slideshow

Chocolate master Larry Burdick, with shops in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, is now back in New York—and whether you're looking for chocolate cake or hot chocolate, here's your place. More

Get Recipe

Duck parts. [Photograph: Chichi Wang] According to chef and food activist Dan Barber, we don't know a lot of things. We don't know where our meat comes from, we don't know what the animal we're eating ate, and we sure don't know how to get behind the stove and take control of what we put in our mouths. In this article in The Nation, Barber writes about the "protein paradox," or the huge waste of edible animal parts such as liver, kidney, and tripe. Barber really wants us to like, or learn to like, organ meat—the bits and bobs typically saved for hot dogs, sausage links, and yes, dog food. He hopes that people will eat meat modestly, and... More

View Video

We follow Rick Bishop from his farm in Roscoe, New York, to a farmers' market in New York City. More

View Video

The first-ever Serious Eats-produced documentary about Colony Collapse Disorder. More

For a full step-by-step slideshow of the process, check out this post here. If you don't know how to carve a turkey, let Alton Brown show you the way. Start by cutting off the breast, then move on to the drum sticks, wings, and thighs. And then make a sandwich. Watch the video after the jump.... More

[Click me!] OK, this is awesome. The New York Times (whose infographics really are second to none) put together an index of searches from Allrecipes.com that maps out where queries for different Thanksgiving foods come from. Look at "green... More

[Photo: Robin Bellinger] Somehow I had never made or even eaten baked eggs until about a month ago. They're a new hit around here, even though I'm pretty sure I'm overcooking them. Sometimes the yolk seems almost like a hard-boiled... More