5 Ingredients or Fewer

Alone, I am happy to eat butter cookies dipped in honey for dessert. This recipe is not quite as fast but is worth the time. It has the texture of perfect soft-serve ice cream, and since it’s not actually a proper custard, no cooking is required.

Crème fraîche is just homemade sour cream and is simple to make.

Billy Cotter devised this delicious meaty sandwich for his vegetarian wife, Kelli, at their restaurant Toast, in downtown Durham.

This cure also works well for duck confit and to flavor roast pork. It keeps in a sealed container for several weeks. Homemade dried tangerine peel can be made in a few days by leaving fresh peel in a warm, dry spot.

There are chestnut roasting devices—long-handled iron skillets or perforated baskets that allow the flames direct contact with the nuts—but they are not necessary; any way you can get the chestnuts in a hot fire and close to the flames works well. Chestnuts are high in moisture—more like a fruit than a nut—and fairly perishable. Look for nuts that are dark brown, shiny, and heavy and store them in the refrigerator.

Sorghum is a rich, earthy syrup produced mostly in the South and Midwest from a naturally sweet and juicy grass of the same name. So nutritious that doctors used to recommend a daily dose, it is similar to molasses but a little less sweet and with a deeper flavor.

If you are using larger carrots, cut them into 2- to 3-inch batons.

A jar of rendered golden chicken fat, or schmaltz, is a faithful friend in the kitchen—tossed with noodles and toasted bread crumbs, added to dumplings in chicken broth, or smeared on flatbread with herbs before baking. These livers are a good companion to a hearty vegetable dish like the Warm Mushroom Salad (page 198).

In a good oyster stew, the oyster liquor is as important as the meat itself: the point is to surround the warm, barely cooked oysters with a rich, briny cream. Use only very fresh, tasty oysters; since the only other ingredients are cream and butter, the stew will only be as flavorful as the oysters themselves. Serve with a stack of crisp hot buttered toast.

In restaurants, raw oysters tend to be disappointing and expensive. At home they are a slightly messy but relatively cheap treat. Skip the sweet cocktail sauce and serve them with a bottle of good hot sauce—classic and delicious.

Browning butter is one of the fastest, simplest ways of creating deep, satisfying flavor. Removing the leaves from Brussels sprouts allows them to cook quickly and evenly, avoiding the overcooking and resulting mushiness that many associate with the vegetable.