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Leg of lamb cooks well either on the bone or boned. The price per pound will be more when boned, but the advantage is that it makes it very easy to slice and carve for serving. Have it tied by the butcher, or do it yourself at home. Roast lamb is traditionally served with beans, such as green flageolet or cannellini, and for a very good reason: They are a perfect combination.

A shoulder roast of pork, lamb, or beef is ideal for braising; the shoulder is an economical cut with lots of flavor, and long, slow cooking yields succulent meat and a deep savory sauce. A braised shoulder is delicious accompanied by soft polenta, mashed potatoes, egg noodles, or creamy beans to soak up the tasty juices. A roast with the bone in will hold together better during cooking and have more flavor. If the meat is boneless, it is helpful to tie it after seasoning. The braise will taste even better if seasoned a day before cooking and braised a day before serving.

This is a spicy and aromatic stew of chickpeas and tender vegetables. It is delicious served with pita bread, Buttered Couscous (page 79) or Saffron Rice (page 62), and spicy harissa sauce.

I like to roast a chicken with nothing more than a few herbs and seasonings. It is always satisfying, and the pan juices make a perfect sauce for the cooked bird.

Thomas likes to roast chicken and vegetables together in what he calls one-pot cooking. The vegetables make a bed for the chicken and prop it up so that it browns nicely, and the juices from the roasting bird permeate through the vegetables that caramelize on the bottom of the pot. He also removes the wishbone before cooking to make carving the roasted bird easier.

Tangy and crunchy fresh vegetable pickles are a perfect foil to fried fish. They cut the richness of the buttery breadcrumbs and make a beautiful and colorful plate. This method of breading and cooking the fish is also excellent for chicken breasts.

This dish of Lidia’s is what I make for supper when I return home tired and hungry after traveling. I like it very plain, with lots of parsley, but you could spice it up by adding a pinch of dried chile flakes or chopped anchovy, and serving it with grated cheese.

When using smaller clams such as Manila and littleneck, make this pasta with the clams in their shells. When using larger clams, cook them first, remove from their shells, and chop, returning them to the pot with the tasty clam liquor.

Kale is a strong-flavored green that is both bitter and sweet—Red Russian and lacinato varieties are especially good—and combined with garlic, dried chile flakes, and nutty wheat spaghetti, kale makes a bold and satisfying pasta dish.

A boiled dinner, which to be more precise might be called a simmered dinner, is an assortment of meats and vegetables simmered slowly and gently until tender. The resulting broth is clear and full of flavor and the meat is fork-tender and moist, comfort food at its best, restorative to body and soul. A variety of meats can be put into the pot; among them is usually a gelatinous cut to add a bit of body to the broth and a bony one to enrich the flavor. Some favorites are short ribs, brisket, beef cheeks, shanks, oxtail, chuck, beef tongue, chicken (either legs or a whole chicken), and sausage, or sausage-stuffed cabbage leaves. A boiled dinner is often served with the broth as a first course followed by the meats and vegetables, but I prefer to serve it all at once, with the meat and vegetables arranged in deep soup plates, moistened with a generous ladle of broth. Typical accompaniments for the meat are coarse sea salt, pickles, and a piquant sauce such as salsa verde, Dijon mustard, horseradish cream (grated horseradish, heavy cream, a pinch of salt, and a splash of white wine vinegar), or a tomato sauce spiked with capers. It is worthwhile to get the meat a couple of days ahead and to season it generously with salt and pepper. This will make it even more succulent and tasty. When a beef tongue is included (and I am quite partial to tongue in a boiled dinner), it should be soaked in salted water for at least eight hours to purge and season it. When deciding how much meat to buy, plan for ample leftovers. The broth makes fabulous soups and risottos and the meat is great sliced and served hot or cold with salsa verde, or in sandwiches, or chopped for hash. Classically, a boiled dinner is made with water. For a richer, sweeter broth, I like to use chicken broth instead, or half chicken broth and half water. This dish is easy to make, but it does take a while to cook, so plan for a few hours of simmering. Keep the pot at a bare simmer, with bubbles breaking the surface only now and then. Cooking meat at a boil will make it dry and stringy. Because their flavors can dominate the broth’s, beef tongue, sausage, and cabbage should be cooked separately from the beef and chicken. As an option to cabbage and sausage, or as a lovely further addition, consider preparing stuffed cabbage leaves. Add vegetables to be served with the meats towards the end of the cooking so that they leave a fresh, sweet taste in the broth. Here is a recipe for a complete boiled dinner—a classic Italian bollito misto—that includes different cuts of beef, a beef tongue, chicken legs, sausage, and stuffed cabbage. This is a bountiful dish that can easily be pared back all the way to the simplicity of boiled beef with carrots alone. Although this is a long recipe, some parts can be prepared in advance. The meats and tongue can be cooked ahead and stored in their broth. The sausage, stuffed cabbage, and vegetables are best prepared and cooked close to serving time. Timing is not critical; once everything is cooked and ready to eat, all the meats and vegetables can be reheated together in the broth and served.

Roast pork, with its tender interior and crusty juicy exterior, is superb eating. Pork loin can be roasted boneless or as a standing rib roast. When requesting a bone-in roast, ask your butcher to cut it from the rib end and to remove the chine (or spinal) bone. A bone-in roast can be carved into thick chops with rib bones attached or it can be completely boned after roasting and sliced thin. In that case, cut apart the bones and serve them along with the meat.

You can make your own mild chile powder for this recipe by lightly toasting and grinding whole dried sweet chiles such as Anaheim or ancho.

Sausage is quite easy to make. This recipe is for sausage meat that won’t be stuffed into a casing. It is good for making patties and meatballs, and for stuffings and pasta sauces. In general, for sausage to have a good texture it should contain 25 to 30 percent fat. Much of this fat is rendered while the sausage cooks, but without it the meat will be dry and lack flavor. It follows that the best ground pork to use is ground from the shoulder, which has more fat than the leg or loin. When made with fresh meat, sausage will keep in the refrigerator for up to a week.