Citrus

To save yourself some chopping, look for bags of mixed, pre-cut braising greens, available at some supermarkets. (Buy spinach separately for the gremolata.) Serve with warm bread for a filling main course.

Using a culinary torch is the best way to caramelize the sugar into a candy shell, but you can also make this old-school breakfast treat using your broiler.

I stepped up on a cinder block to enter the open kitchen and realized then just how short the cook was; he flicked on the burner and the flame shot up as high as his chin. His broom closet-size kitchen swelled with heat and even with my average height, I towered over him awkwardly as he wielded the wok with beef and soy sauce. "You must play basketball!" he suggested. On his kitchen wall and out of reach of the blazing flame, plastic bags of spices hung from low-set rusty hooks, and his windowsill nearby lay scattered with tangerine peels set out to dry in the sun. Cooks in China are in the habit of keeping the peels of the tangerines they eat and spreading them out to dry in the sun for later use. Then they just rehydrate a few pieces whenever they want to add a nutty, slightly bitter note to a stir-fry or stew. Tangerine Beef is a Sichuan specialty and tall on flavor.

Clementine Sauce is a flavorful accompaniment to ice cream, fruit, or our favorite Bomboloni.

One-pot dishes are all about planning well and laying out your prep in a smart sequential order. The beauty of this dish is the vinegar, which is malty, nutty, and nuanced. I love a Philippine cane vinegar called Datu Puti. Great stuff, super-inexpensive, and readily available at most Asian grocery stores.

Berries and orange juice are top sources for vitamin C, which may help you blast up to 30 percent more fat during exercise. Suh-weet!

Radishes and breadcrumbs give this greens-packed vegetarian pasta its crunchy texture.

Forgo the old-school crown roast by arranging two pork rib roasts with the bones crisscrossed like a military honor-guard salute. Ask your butcher to french the bones by removing excess fat and muscle for a more elegant presentation.

Here is one of the restaurant's all-time favorites. We have been known to ship these appetizers to friends and customers on the West Coast who have called in need of a fix. These seitan skewers are wonderful when well charred and served with refreshing Chimichurri Citrus-­Herb Sauce. They freeze very well and are great to have on hand to serve as appetizers, snacks, or an entrée.

This punch was originally inspired by a sangria recipe I learned from my friend David Hanna. More flavorful and higher in alcohol than your average sangria, this punch uses inexpensive wine from Spain. My two favorite brands are Protocolo and Borsao, both of which provide a juicy, full-flavored foundation for spiced juice and liquors. The punch has a tendency to be rather tannic tasting, so I add simple syrup cup by cup until the sweetness is just right. One of the most tragic downfalls of a party punch is overdilution, which happens when the punch is chilled with fast-melting ice cubes. I serve this punch either prechilled with ice on the side, or with one large piece of block ice in the bowl and ice on the side.

Family: Punches—A very similar recipe for this punch was detailed in 1958 by David Embury, and following his instructions I use [simple syrup—without it, it's far too dry.](<epi:recipeLink id=)

We found this recipe in Jerry Thomas's 1862 How to Mix Drinks or the Bon Vivant's Companion, in a recipe for a single serving. It called for Holland gin—or genever, as we know it today—and was probably a very popular drink. The back story is that when planning our first End of Prohibition party we were searching for punch recipes that could be served in teacups. So we started going through books and shot a few ideas back and forth until we found papa Jerry's recipe. We replaced the genever with Plymouth gin, and with a few more tweaks we got it perfect. The decorative ice block adds a great visual effect.

This is one of our End of Prohibition party special punch recipes and it was adapted from the Philadelphia Fish House punch, which was a favorite of Generals Washington and Lafayette. We replaced the original cognac with our local Laird’s AppleJack and got something fantastic as a result. We use all seasonal fruits for this—a beautiful feature that also makes it extra tasty.

Candy corn may be synonymous with Halloween, but come on, how many of us really love the chewy little tooth-shaped candies with a flavor that is indistinguishable beyond sweet? However, if you borrow their iconic shape and colors and transform those into creamy lemon-and-orange frozen pops, we predict everyone will be clamoring for their fair share.

This one is Italy, pure and simple. Which is precisely what Italian cuisine is all about: Get yourself fresh, pure ingredients in season, plus some fine, real condiments and seasonings, and put it all together without a lot of fuss, and ecco! A simply superb meal, as healthy as they come and as good as eating gets. It's also beautiful on the plate. Note that scampi does not, in fact, mean shrimp, as many people think, but rather refers to the popular lemon, garlic, and oil preparation for shrimp in so many red-sauce Italian joints.

Lo's take on cranberry sauce makes citrus the star by soaking mandarins in fragrant elderflower syrup before caramelizing them. You can use any of your favorites: tangerines, clementines, satsumas, honeys, or Minneolas. Begin this recipe 1 day ahead.