Fry

Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 20 min I always use white cornmeal, as do many southerners — it has better flavor and tends to have a finer grind. When traveling, I look for cornmeal from specialty mills, but at home I stick with Kentucky Kernel or Nunn-Better, which I get at the local grocery. I urge people to buy cornmeal that has been grown and ground close to home — freshness is more important than brand.

These crisp turnovers are traditionally enclosed in pastry dough. Making and rolling out the dough can be quite time-consuming, so potsticker wrappers are used in this recipe instead.

Steamed spinach, mashed potatoes, and oatmeal cookies would fit the rustic theme.

Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 30 min

A blend of classic Spanish ingredients: white wine, olive oil, and Serrano ham.

This recipe is from Andalusia in the south. The North African touches of honey and mint come by way of the Moors, who ruled the region for centuries.

These fresh and pretty wraps fuse three different Asian influences: Chinese stir-fry, Japanese ingredients, and a Vietnamese dipping sauce.

Serve with: Steamed carrots and scalloped potatoes. Dessert: A bakery strawberry tart.

The origin of this dish is unknown, but it's a common menu feature of many Italo-American restaurants of the red-sauce variety. In kitchen lingo, a shoemaker is a shortcutting, skillful hack; a shoemaker cobbles things, a meal, together from the meager things on hand. In Italian, scarpa translates as "shoe" and scarpariella is slang for shoemaker. The actual name for one who plies this trade is calzolaio. In Chicken Scarpariella, a spring chicken is "hacked" up in to small pieces and quickly cooked with a few common ingredients.

Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 30 min

This version of blini—a tribute to the Russian communities throughout the New York metropolitan area—is fast because it does not require yeast. If buckwheat flour is unavailable, whole-wheat flour makes a good substitute.

This is the delicious savory cake served in dim sum houses throughout the year and, most auspiciously, on New Year's Day as a symbol of prosperity and rising fortunes. Turnip cake is made with Chinese turnip, law bock, which is a type of daikon radish. There is also a daikon radish called Japanese daikon radish, which is similar to the Chinese turnip in appearance. To make matters more confusing, law bock, translated into English, means turnip. Some produce vendors do not realize there is a distinction, but the Chinese turnip is more blemished looking than the Japanese daikon, which has a creamier white color. Although Chinese turnip is best for this recipe, whichever one you use, choose a firm heavy vegetable. The turnip should ideally be 8 to 12 inches long and about 4 inches wide. Some people remove only the rind of the Chinese bacon and finely chop the whole piece, using all the fat. But I find this too rich, so I discard the layer of fat under the rind. In recipes that call for Chinese bacon to be sliced, all that is required is a sturdy cook's knife or cleaver. However, when the bacon needs to be finely chopped, as in this recipe, the bacon should be steamed first to make it easier. Make sure to use rice flour and not glutinous rice flour. I've never met anyone who served the entire cake at once. During the first ten days of the New Year's celebration a few slices of all the different New Year's cakes are fried every morning for breakfast or when friends or family stop by. The cake will keep nicely in the refrigerator for ten days if wrapped in plastic wrap.

Although these are called fritters, they more closely resemble pancakes. Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.