Dutch Oven

This zesty soup is based on a chicken and curry stew popular in the South. The origin of its name is unclear, but according to one account, it was brought to Savannah in the early 1800s by a sea captain who traveled the spice route from India.

This Mediterranean-style treatment of lamb shanks is delicious over orzo.

If you have cooked lamb, beef, or turkey on hand, use it instead of the chicken.

This version of colcannon, usually a combination of buttery mashed potatoes and cabbage, is a wonderful accompaniment to grilled sausages or Beef Stew with Stout .

Scaffata This is a wonderful Roman spring dish that can be made when peas and favas in their shells are young and sweet. The name comes from the word scaffare — "to shell" in Roman dialect. It is especially good when served with roasted spring lamb or goat. The outermost, less tender leaves of a head of romaine, which you may not want to use in a salad, are perfect for this dish.

Chef Jean-Charles Bredas has this entrée on the menu at Habitation Lagrange in Martinique. Have the butcher cut the lamb neck bones for you.

(Garlic Roast Beef) My husband's Aunt Enza has played an important role in my life as a born-again Tuscan. We often dine at her home on Sundays for a traditional family lunch. The main course is usually what Enza calls magro, which can actually mean meatless but in Enza's lexicon signifies merely a lean or fatless choice cut of beef, sliced thin, lightly sauced with meat juices, and topped with golden brown cloves of garlic. Because Italian home cooks in cities rarely had ovens until the postwar period, meats were often cooked on top of the stove, as is Enza's. It's faster than oven-roasting and a perfect technique for people who love rare "roast" beef.

Use on your favorite toast for breakfast or spoon over vanilla ice cream for dessert.

Use any leftover sauce as an omelet filling.

Curry powder, cumin, and cinnamon give this dish a hint of the exotic.

The following tsimmes with beets, turnips, carrots, and meat came from Vilna to Brooklyn earlier in this century. When I make this for my family I do not tell the children that it includes beets and turnips. For some unknown reason they never ask me how the dish became so red. They love it.

Serve with warm corn bread or spoon over steamed rice. What to drink: Pale ale or Mexican lager or dark ale, such as Bohemia or Negra Modelo.