Easy

My elementary school grapefruit, all grown up. I like the low notes of the dried chiles and rosemary against the sweet-tart citrus.

Editor's note: Use this recipe to make Chef David Chang's Bo Ssäm. Japanese short-grain white rice is the only rice we make. We, like all restaurants and many home cooks, use a rice cooker to prepare it—it's just that much easier and more reliable than cooking rice on the stove. Here are directions for both methods.

Approach the clafoutis batter as if you're making waffles! It's no more complicated than that. This recipe resonates with me because it is so simple and versatile and, at the same time, elegant. Most often I make a clafoutis in a black cast iron skillet or heavy pie pan because they retain the heat well. You can certainly use individual ramekins, a tart mold, or even a crêpe pan. When you bake a clafoutis, it will puff up like a little soufflé, browned on the edges, but creamy within. I try to serve it immediately, because it will inevitably fall and deflate—but not to worry: This will happen and it's just as delicious anyway. If you understand this basic batter, the sky's the limit: it's a perfect blank canvas for almost any fruit you can think of: from choppable fruits like mango and banana, to cherries preserved in brandy. It's a recipe to draw upon all the year long. Variations follow, but here's the basic batter.

Trout cooked this way is called müllerin, "the miller's wife's" fish, because it's made from filets of mountain trout fished from the stream that powers the flour mill. It is precisely the same preparation and derivation as the French meunière. Don't be fooled by its apparent simplicity: layers of flavor are built by each ingredient in its turn—it is elegant in its simplicity. The trout filets are lightly coated with flour, browned in a pan with good butter, and by the time the fish is cooked, the butter has turned nutty brown and the fish is crisp and tender. Just before serving, a squeeze of lemon and freshly chopped parsley turn the butter in the pan into bubbly foam which is then spooned over each filet.

Gravy is pure comfort for me, and if I can make a gravy into a meal, so much the better. This is one of my favorite ways to have a rich, comforting, and filling dinner in less than half an hour. It also contains one of my favorite methods to get a toasty gravy base with lots of depth—toasting bread crumbs. After caramelizing the onions, you sprinkle in the bread crumbs and toss them around a bit until golden brown. Then, when you add the liquid ingredients, the bread crumbs thicken and flavor the gravy. It's wonderful served with grilled or sautéed kale, and over mashed potatoes.

If you have a fetish for dark chocolate, this will fuel your flame. It will also energize your body with antioxidants that boost blood flow to the brain (and a few other vital organs). Cocoa, kale, and cherries, three beloved and sexy superfoods, contain flavonoids and antioxidants that fight heart disease and diabetes and even promote brain growth.

There is so much folate in this pesto, you'll make a pound of serotonin before bedtime, which means a night of great sleep and a smile in the morning. Both kale and walnuts feed your lover's brain with the omega-3 ALA , which is converted into molecules that protect your brain cells and are linked to a lower risk of depression. The pesto is equally delicious on pasta or brushed on grilled chicken.

Like most recipes in this book, this salad can be altered endlessly and tweaked to your liking. Have a cup of kale left over from dinner? Dice it and mix into your fish salad for an added boost of flavor, fiber, and vitamin K. Or try adding some of your favorite hot sauce to this recipe and serve it on whole grain crackers as a snack or hors d'oeuvre. The options are endless.

I love the crimson glow of juicy little pomegranate morsels. Mix with fresh winter lettuces, serve it European style after the entreé, and enjoy.

**Editor's note:**Use this recipe to make Ali Larter's Winter Lettuces with Pomegranate Seeds . This is an everyday dressing that is wonderful on all variations of lettuces and vegetables. It's a welcome change from bottled dressing and so easy to make.

Watch out: These crispy, spicy avocado fries are addictive! Especially when dunked in a yogurty dipping sauce.

These are made with sweet potatoes, a superfood that helps you slim and energize. The sticks have kick, so dunk 'em in our cooling dip to put out the fire.

This is one of the simplest and yet tastiest preparations of eggs I've ever had. One afternoon, a friend and I unexpectedly dropped in on my friend Mario in Trieste. It was lunchtime, and he had a big basket full of fresh eggs he had brought down from the Carso, the high plateau surrounding Trieste. Eggs it was for lunch, served with a bowl of radicchio salad. We were just a few people that day, but this recipe is so very easy to modify for smaller or larger groups.

This salty-sweet phenomenon is well established, and salted caramels are now everywhere. Fleur de sel is a fancy sea salt, hand harvested from evaporating pools along the coast of Brittany in France. Similar "gourmet" salts can be found from just about everywhere on the planet, and they are definitely worth a few taste tests. You may discover something wonderful! If you don't have sea salt caramel candies on hand, it's fine to use generic caramel candies.

Just about everyone loves chicken breast. It is one of the most Googled terms in recipe searches. I also love this recipe when it's done with drumsticks. If you decide to do that, make sure to double the wine and increase the cooking time until the chicken is done.

Crunch-crunch-crunch will end up as munch-munch-munch when this salad is served. Flavor is obviously crucial in food, and certainly this salad has flavor, but tactile sensation is also a very important factor in our food perception and appreciation. We want pasta al dente, celery crunchy, bread grilled. This salad has a lot of texture to enjoy.

Visually speaking, these are very cool cookies, which resemble candy canes by twisting red and white strands together like a barber-shop pole. When the holidays roll around every year, Lisa and the kids whip up a huge batch of these, then invite all the cousins over for a last-second party. These taste even better the day after you bake them, and will keep for about a week and a half in an airtight container.

Spices may not be seasonal, but the spices in these cookies—cinnamon, cloves, and allspice—always put me in mind of fall because they are important ingredients in so many recipes of that season. Usually, the scent of sugar rules the air at the Carlo's Bake Shop factory, but in the fall, the factory smells of those spices, which always gets me excited for the holidays.