5 Ingredients or Fewer

In The All American Wine & Cheese Book, food writer Laura Werlin named Lively Run’s fresh goat cheese as one of the two best chèvres in the country. A concentrated burst of blue cheese flavor adds zest to an appetizer created by Steve and Suzanne Messmer of Lively Run.

The delicious sauce has its roots at Cornell University, where legendary Professor Robert Baker developed this recipe for the Poultry Science Department. First, split young dressed chickens and marinate in the barbecue blend, then grill at a low temperature (about 350°F). Finger Lakes classicists contend that this is the only way to fix barbecue. Local volunteer fire departments support themselves with fundraisers featuring succulent “Cornell Barbecue Chicken.”

Tapioca pudding is an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy of a dessert. But substitute the rich, distinctive flavor of Concord grape juice for milk in real homemade pudding, and the result is a neighborly Finger Lakes version of the classic. You’ll never look at tapioca the same way again. Eileen Farnum prepares this dish for visitors to Barrington Cellars during Keuka Wine Trail holiday events.

Pretzels are probably the best snack to enjoy with beer, and if you’re a fan of stout, these pretzels are an especially winning partner. The Pennsylvania Dutch brought their love of pretzels to Penn Yan, where Birkett Mills still turns out the dark, gritty buckwheat flour that gives handrolled pretzels a distinctive, nutty flavor. Since these pretzels don’t require yeast or rising time they can be made very quickly, so start this recipe when hunger strikes. Caution: Baskets of these pretzels served with a peppy horseradish mustard will make you drink more than you may have bargained for.

Mama Colaruotolo traces this dish back to her ancestral home in Italy. While it originally called for Italian white wine, she substitutes her family’s Finger Lakes Chardonnay to create a New World masterpiece. The Finger Lakes wine adds distinctive fruitiness to the dish, even better the next day, allowing the flavors to integrate even more.

To accompany the fine and fancy food at Holloway House, there has always been Sally Lunn bread. The recipe dates back to Colonial America, although history tells us there was actually no one named Sally. The words may be a corruption of sol et lune, French for sun and moon, probably used by French immigrants to describe the round shape of the buns, similar to brioche. Sunday suppers in Bloomfield wouldn’t be the same without it.

This tangy herring pickle somehow made its way from northern Europe to Nova Scotia, where you can find it in every grocery store. It’s like roll mops but less sweet. Here the classic preparation is done not with salted herring but with fresh salmon, which we salt the living daylights out of, then desalt and pickle in jars. It screams saltines and mustard. The Nova Scotians will tell you that the name Gundy is Nova Scotian, but the Brits, the French, and the Jamaicans all claim it for their own, too.

You will need a smoker that can be controlled or a grill and a chip box for this recipe and a supply of maple wood or maple wood chips.

Here is another great dish from the repertoire of Nicolas Jongleux. We used to scoff at people who said they knew how to make a great dessert that wasn’t too sweet. But as you get older and the espresso and the social cigarillos have started to erode your taste buds, you find yourself liking bourbon, lemon, and dandelion. This is a perfect little dessert in that fashion. It’s zingy and alive. We burn it with a blowtorch. If you don’t have one, just use your broiler. Heat it to the max and put whatever is holding the grapefruit right under it. Don’t forget dry rags or oven mitts and an ovenproof vessel.

Here is the dessert we served on opening day at Joe Beef. You can use small foil molds or teacups for serving.

When we first started cooking, beef was like tuna is today: incorrect to buy and incorrect to sell. But over the last couple of years, beef is finding its place again, especially with the burger courant sweeping the continent. We’ve used sirloins from large companies, but doing so feels a bit like cheating on my wife with a lady boy: part guilty, part disgusting, and yet I still buy it. Since we began purchasing more carefully aged and selected strip loins, this is now one of our favorite cuts. It is tasty, the perfect size, monolithic. The method here is specific to this strip loin, cooked medium-rare. Check the temperature chart (see page 242) for different levels of doneness. Remember that dry-aged meat tends to cook much faster because of its lower moisture content, so act accordingly. And when it comes to cooking, the weight of the steak does not matter as much as the thickness (our steaks each weigh about 21 to 22 ounces/610 to 640 grams), which is why you see only the thickness here. Also, the middle of the steak is where you can see doneness, not on the tip, so insert an instant-read thermometer through the side to the center to verify it is ready. If you must, you can also cut the steak in two to check doneness. Remember, though, you can always cook longer, but not “de-cook.”

When we opened Joe Beef, we didn’t have a patio. We had a patch of wasteland where only burdock grew. Not many people know what burdock is, though they may have seen or eaten the roots in vegan or Japanese restaurants. Its Latin name is Arctium lappa and it is a biennial plant, which means that the first year it makes a long taproot and hairy rhubarblike leaves. It survives the winter because of its reserve of food, and then the second year, it bears flowers, then fruits. These itchy little clingers stick to your pants. It’s a treasure chest of medicinal virtue for lungs, hair, and bowels. We didn’t know what to do with it. But the four leathery-skinned Italian men who came to lay our concrete slab knew what to do with it. In fact, it took them four hours to lay the slab, half of which was spent carefully pulling and collecting the burdock roots. They said they would wash it when they got home, then steep it in red wine and consume it as a tonic. So now every year, we send the newbies to dig for burdock in the fertile grounds of the Liverpool House backyard and make a few bottles of that tonic.

This drink started as a vinaigrette for razor clams, and it still is. But with scotch, really cold, it’s awesome. If you have a juicer, it’s the best. If you don’t, a blender and a sieve will do. Chervil is one of those herbs that you can’t cook, and if you buzz it in syrup, for example, you will end up with something more akin to soup Florentine than a cocktail component. Serve in a lowball glass.