Second because there are free prints in this post that you can download and print as a little gift from my studio to you; and the third because this is still a list of my favorite things.

This is the time of year for lists, not shopping lists, but lists of virtually everything else – lists of the most important world events, top fashion trends of the year, the biggest storms, the sexiest man, the best movies, the most popular celebrities, the most reviled despots, the biggest disasters, the best selling books, and even a list of  top time-wasters.

Print Winter Tree

With these lists as inspiration, I’ve compiled my top ten list of food favorites for 2010, and in a nod to Mr. Letterman, they are listed in reverse order of delight. To celebrate the New Year, I’ve created four prints that celebrate the seasons of the year. They can be downloaded and printed by clicking on the links below each image.

#10 Butter Poached Rhubarb – Combining the best of Julia Child, butter, and the best of James Beard, cream, I melted a stick of butter in a skillet, sprinkled in one cup of granulated sugar and cooked it for about five minutes. When the sugar had begun to caramelize and turned a light brown, I added four cups of rhubarb, cut in two inch slices, shook the pan vigorously to coat the rhubarb and cooked it until it was starting to fall apart. I took the pan off the heat, stirred in two tablespoons of dark rum, and transferred the rhubarb to a bowl set in an ice bath to stop the cooking. Topped with List Entry #4, whipped, it made a gorgeous dessert. This would be closer to #1 if fresh rhubarb were available from my garden year round and if this recipe were not loaded with sugar, butter and cream.

#9 Carrots – I’ve been eating lots of carrots this year, in soups, salads, in fritters, cakes and muffins. Organic carrots, scrubbed and slow roasted with salt, pepper and olive oil complement most any meal. Any leftovers can be mashed with a bit of mayo and garlic and spread on toast for lunch or a rustic hors d’oeuvre.

Print Spring Tree

#8 Cappuccino – Alas, this is one thing on my list that I don’t make in my kitchen; but, the adventure of searching for a café and finding a perfect cappuccino with just the right amount of foamy milk on top merits a place on my list.

#7 Recipe Police – When I wrote about the absence of fish in my pot of chowder I boldly proclaimed that the recipe police would not come to my kitchen to give me a ticket. Little did I know that a Recipe Policeman, in the form of a phone call from an anonymous reader, would phone me and issue a warning that I had neglected to add thyme to the pot. I got away with a warning but I have been careful to add thyme to chowder since then.

#6 Pasta with Raisins and Pine Nuts – So simple, so quick, so delicious! While I waited for the pasta water to come to a boil, I sauteed one clove of garlic in a large frying pan with one tablespoon of unsalted butter and one tablespoon of olive oil. When the garlic had softened but not browned, I added a quarter of a cup of pine nuts. When the nuts where toasted, and the pasta was al dente, I drained the pasta, reserved a quarter of a cup of pasta water, added the pasta, generous handfuls of chopped flat leaf parsley and raisins, and a splash of the pasta water to the pan. I topped the pasta with the mere suggestion of ground cinnamon. Finito!

#5 Chickpea Flour – I discovered that I could make a crisp flatbread by baking in a 450º oven a batter of one cup of chickpea flour, one and a half cups of water and a teaspoon of salt in a cast iron skillet with three tablespoons of oil. Seasoned with salt and a bit of curry powder, an ho-hum soup and toast dinner was transformed into a praise-worthy meal.

Print Summer Tree

#4 Heavy Cream – My favorite comes from local dairies and is not ultra-pasteurized. I like it on oatmeal with brown sugar, whipped, with no sugar added, as frosting on deep, dark, moist chocolate cake, and as a cold topper for broiled apricots, (a treat I learned from my dear friend Didi).

#3 The Open Air Market in Ortigia, Sicily – Chatting with Angelo Cappucio about fish for dinner, choosing blood oranges, smelling the smoky roasted artichokes, sampling wild strawberries, olives, salami and chocolate from Modica is the best way to figure out “What’s for dinner?”

#2 Making Cheese in Sicily – Near the top of my list is the morning I spent in the cheese shop in Ortigia, making cheese with Andrea Borderi. I was welcomed into the small kitchen in the back of the shop, wrapped in an apron and put to work. I learned how to cut, ladle and knead curds as we made ricotta and mozzarella. I make a simple breakfast of a bowl of ricotta cheese, topped with a drizzle of Vermont honey and slices of orange when I’m wishing I were in Sicily.

Print Fall Tree

#1 Contact from Friends – I am cheered and delighted when I hear from friends, whether old or new, by email, telephone and even snail mail. It doesn’t matter if the message is lavish praise, a complaint, or a correction – you are there, reading what I write, cooking what I cook, improvising, improving recipes and sharing your discoveries. You bring me joy. Thank you and please stay in touch.

The unusually wet and humid September brought extraordinary fungal inhabitants to my garden — none of them edible. Most prolific were the freakish, foul-smelling, dog stinkhorns, good only as subjects for a photo or two before they withered. Not that I would trust myself to eat any mushroom that might poke up amongst the yellowing hostas and rambling morning glories. I’m no mycologist, nor have I been schooled in the ways of forest foraging like my friends in Eastern Europe.About ten years ago, I began what would turn out to be perennial work with an old Soviet era film studio in Vilnius, Lithuania. The former propaganda mill had been retooled to serve the needs of low-budget Hollywood movies and TV shows like the ones we were making for The History Channel. Whether filming re-creations of Viking battles or an enactment of Attila the Hun entertaining Pope Leo I, many of our locations were in pine forests. In autumn, mushrooms sprang up everywhere. At lunchtime, all of the Lithuanians on the film crew disappeared into the woods to forage for wild mushrooms. They returned with bags of boletes, chanterelles and other, more unfamiliar beauties. Everyone was completely confident in their mushroom identification skills that had been passed down for generations.

Still, my husband Rob insisted that I not take any mushrooms to cook for dinner. He changed his mind when we saw fresh chanterelles being sold for few Litas a pound  at the city farmers’ market. I prepared them in the local way – sauteed with onion and bacon. They were delicious.

Before we left Lithunaia to return to Baltimore, I stopped at a market stall for a string of dried mushrooms of an undetermined kind. I hung it as a decoration, next to antique baskets on a rack above my green Aga stove. All winter, their distinctive forest fragrance lingered in the kitchen as a reminder of Lithuania.

The following spring, two Lithuanians who had worked on our film crew called to take us up on our offer of a place to stay should they visit  the U.S. We had become especially fond of this young couple whose comical banter could have been the genesis for the characters Latka and Simca on the old TV series, Taxi.

While I roasted a chicken with potatoes and carrots for dinner, our young guests, let’s call them Latka and Simca, sat at the kitchen table sipping wine and entertaining us with their first impressions of America as seen from the windows of the Greyhound bus that had brought them from Newark airport to Baltimore. Suddenly, Latka looked around as if he had just realized that he was no longer on the bus. How surprising, he exclaimed, to see in our American kitchen a woodstove so like the one his grandmother had.

“It’s not a woodstove and it’s not even American,” I laughed. I had owned the Aga for less than a year — its novelty hadn’t worn off and it didn’t take much to get me boasting about its unique features – it was always on and there are no controls to adjust. To hear me tell it, the great cast iron Aga was an all but a human presence in my kitchen, producing the finest meals imaginable and requiring absolutely no effort on my part. “Why,” I went on, “it cooks bacon perfectly. I just throw it into the roasting oven. There are no messy splatters to clean up!”  Simca noticed the string of dried mushrooms and asked why we hadn’t eaten them.

During dinner, we reminisced about shooting battle scenes with Huns and Romans in the cold and mud of the previous autumn. We told our guests that we had to attend a meeting early the next morning and I showed them where to find bread, cereal, milk and jam and they assured us they’d be fine until our return. I offered to show Simca how to use the special Aga toaster but she assured me that she would have no need to cook anything.

Lithuanian Bacon

When we returned from the meeting, the smell of bacon wafted from the house. Our guests, who were watching television, jumped up as we came in. We knew by their long faces that something unfortunate had happened. “Latka is very sorry, Char, for the destroy of your fine stove,” whimpered Simca.  As we headed for the kitchen, I couldn’t imagine anything that would really damage the Aga. Then Latka began a dramatic reenactment, complete with hand motions, of what had happened.

It had begun with the discovery of his favorite food, bacon, in the refrigerator. Recalling my comments from the night before, he had thrown the entire pound of it onto the cast iron floor of the roasting oven. Then he went to help Simca with the TV remote. When he returned to the kitchen, bacon fat was flowing like a river down the front of the Aga and across the floor.  He managed to remove the bacon, consume some of it, (very tasty he said), and clean up the fat that had oozed out of the Aga. He paused before he nervously opened the roasting oven door and showed me a huge greasy, black stain. He said, “Is very bad, no?” I reassured him that it would burn off eventually even though I wasn’t sure that it would.

I remembered their visit on a rainy Saturday a few weeks ago as I was cleaning the pantry, organizing drawers and preparing the kitchen for autumn cooking.  I used the wire brush that came with the Aga to sweep out the roasting oven. The grease was gone – it had taken a few months but it finally did disappear. I removed all the utensils from the rack above the stove and loaded them into the dishwasher. Then I gave the rack a good scrubbing. After re-arranging my collection of old biscuit tins and dusting the antique baskets, I took down the equally dusty decade-old string of dried mushrooms and gave it a quick swish in warm water. Restored to pride of place, they again filled the kitchen with the dusky scent of the forest. All is in readiness for my favorite cooking season.

If you should be lucky enough to have some chanterelles, here is how they are prepared in Lithuania and on my lovely green Aga.

For one pound of mushrooms: gently wash and dry them and  trim the ends and remove any soft spots. Drop them into boiling salted water and cook for twelve minutes. Dice three ounces of bacon and fry it. Add a diced, medium yellow onion to the pan. Drain the mushrooms and add them to the bacon and onion along with a pinch of salt and a grind of pepper. Cover the frying pan and continue cooking over low heat for seven minutes, stirring several times. Serve for lunch with hot potatoes.

Char sent me this timely link from Saturday’s New York Times.

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Watercolor painting by Carol Egbert

Saturday, white puffy clouds danced across the cobalt blue sky, the grass was freshly mowed and my Kindle was giving me that ‘come hither’ look. It was a day to make one of my favorite (nearly) no-cook, (almost) zero effort dinners. This dinner has four steps:

• Determine menu
• See what’s in the pantry and fridge
• Go to market for what isn’t
• Pull dinner together

Charles and I decided to split the tasks. I decided we would have roasted chicken with pink ginger sauce, sesame noodles and a nectarine salad. I found soy sauce, cayenne pepper, vinegar, canola oil, garlic, honey, sesame seeds and sesame oil in the pantry and mayonnaise, sour cream, catsup and pickled ginger in the fridge. Charles went to the market to get a rotisserie cooked chicken, a box of pasta, scallions, fresh ginger and some nectarines. I got lost in my book and snoozed a bit.

When I woke up, I put a large pot of water on the stove over medium heat. In less than half an hour after Charles returned from the market, we sat down to an Asian inspired summer dinner. Here’s how we did it:

Sesame Noodles

I salted the pasta water, turned up the heat and, when the water was boiling, stirred in half a pound of linguini. I made the sauce for the noodles and Charles carved the chicken while the noodles cooked. For the sesame sauce, I used a wire whisk to combine a quarter of a cup of soy sauce, one tablespoon of sugar, one teaspoon of minced garlic, one teaspoon of minced fresh ginger, one tablespoon of red wine vinegar, two tablespoons of toasted sesame oil, a wee pinch of cayenne and three tablespoons of canola oil. After cooking for seven minutes the pasta was tender, a bit softer than the usual al dente, but just right for a salad eaten at room temperature. I put the drained pasta into a large serving bowl, poured the sesame sauce in and tossed the noodles until they were coated with the sauce. I cut three scallions into thin slices and sprinkled them on top.

Download and print sesame noodle recipe with an ingredients list here.

When he had finished carving the chicken, Charles made the Pink Ginger Sauce.

Pink Ginger Sauce

He combined one tablespoon of finely minced, pickled ginger with two tablespoons of mayonnaise, two tablespoons of sour cream, one teaspoon of catsup, a pinch of cayenne and one teaspoon of fresh lime juice. He put a generous puddle of sauce on two dinner plates.

In twenty minutes, we had everything ready but the nectarine salad. Charles cut two nectarines into thin slices and I mixed up a simple sauce of a tablespoon of olive oil, a teaspoon of honey, a teaspoon of lime juice and a pinch of salt. He poured the sauce on the nectarines, gave them a quick toss and put a serving on each plate. I added a serving of sesame noodles to each plate, Charles added a drumstick and a thigh to his plate and I choose a wing and a breast for mine.

We made dinner in less than thirty minutes and there were enough leftovers for lunch in less than five minutes on Sunday. It was fun, quick and collaborative. There is lots of room for substitution in these recipes – pasta can be any shape you like, I used linguini fini; lemons can be substituted for limes; leftover roast beef or pork can stand in for the chicken; apricots, peaches or melon alone or in combination would make a lovely salad; and, maple syrup is a wonderful substitute for honey. Pickled ginger is found in the sushi cooler, if you can’t find it, use a teaspoons of minced fresh ginger root. The absolutely essential ingredient, not to be omitted, is a snooze – either before, during or after dinner.

Download and print pink ginger sauce recipe with an ingredients list here. 

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No need to worry - Soe is in charge.

We met Michelle and her husband Burmese husband, Soe, at the Cafe Minerva. I invited them to sit with us and in less time that it takes to figure out how many c’s there are in cappuccino, Soe and I were talking about food. We finished our coffees and decided to walk to the market together.Michelle and Charles walked together and talked about the challenges of speaking Italian and as I shopped, Soe talked about what he would cook if he had a kitchen in Ortigia. I had a kitchen. He had a menu in mind. We decided to have dinner together. It would be a Burmese dinner with shrimp, orange salad and green beans and Soe would be in charge.

Red onion, garlic mint & citrus leaves

When Soe and Michelle arrived, he began by trimming and slicing.

Celery leaves, ginger, red chili, citrus & mint leaves

He cooked like a classically trained French chef. I tried to stay out of his way as I watched him assemble a tray of ingredients for each dish.

We made the savory orange salad first. Here’s how we did it:

Orange Onion Salad

I cut the peel and pith from six blood oranges, cut each orange into eight pieces and put the pieces into a shallow bowl. In Burma, this salad would be flavored with fish sauce and kaffir lime leaves. Instead of fish sauce, we used a tablespoon of chopped salted anchovy that had been rinsed and soaked in cold water for ten minutes and then drained. Instead of kaffir lime leaves, we used a tender leaf from a branch of oranges. I stirred in the anchovy and finely minced orange leaf, Soe added a couple of teaspoons of fresh mint leaves, half a small red onion that had been thinly sliced, and poured on three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.  A quick toss and it was ready and we moved on to the green beans.

Download and print orange onion salad recipe with an ingredients list here.

Spicy Green Beans

I blanched the green beans in a large pot of rapidly boiling salt water until they were barely tender, shocked them with cold water and drained them. Soe sauteed the shrimp heads in a tablespoon of olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. After they had cooked for three minutes, he lowered the heat, added a tablespoon of sweet paprika and two tablespoons of white wine and continued cooking it for two more minutes. He poured the mixture into a strainer and used a spoon to force the liquid into a small bowl. He wiped out the pan with a paper towel, put a tablespoon of oil into it and when the oil was hot he added two cloves of thinly sliced garlic and half of a thinly sliced red onion. When the garlic and onion were cooked, he added the pre-cooked green beans, stirred in the paprika-wine sauce and cooked the mixture until the beans were hot and covered with the sauce.

Download and print spicy green bean recipe with an ingredients list here.

It was time to cook the shrimp. Soe had bought a kilo, about two pounds, of large, nearly five inches long, whole shrimp at the market. He cleaned them by removing the heads, splitting the shell with scissors in order to removing the dark vein but he did not remove the shells from the shrimp.

Spicy Burmese Prawns

And then, he turned into a Burmese whirlwind. I couldn’t keep up. I know he used a large, frying pan to stir-fry thinly sliced red onion, garlic, fresh ginger and a few small, dried hot peppers. I think he added a splash of white wine after he added the shrimp.  It seemed as if the shrimp were cooked in less than three minutes. To finish them, he turned off the heat, added a tablespoon of water, (a Burmese technique to keep the shrimp from overcooking and becoming rubbery, he said), added a generous handful of tender celery leaves and there may have been some fresh basil in the mix. Perhaps some mint, maybe orange leaf, I don’t know – I lost track of what he was doing.

Dinner by Soe!

Dinner was amazing, the food was perfect, the conversation non-stop. It was unimaginable serendipity. After Soe and Michelle had gone back to their hotel, I tried to remember how he had cooked the shrimp, I tried Googling Burmese Shrimp but couldn’t find anything that resembled what he had cooked.  I’ll have to invite them to come to Vermont and ask Soe for another cooking lesson.  Even though I can’t tell you how he made the shrimp, I promise that the orange salad recipe works and I hope you will try it. Don’t worry if you don’t have a fresh citrus leaf you can use the zest from one orange instead.

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Blood Orange Juice and the Ionian Sea

The glass of blood orange juice that Charles makes for me with four fresh Tarocco oranges is my favorite way to start the day. Tarocco oranges grow in the fertile soil surrounding Mount Etna. They are sweet, less acidic than other oranges and have the highest vitamin C content of any orange variety grown. The juice is orange in name only, it varies in color from peachy pink to rose dore to nearly garnet red. I love it freshly squeezed and thick with pulp. Although there are  blood oranges in the markets in Vermont, I’ll miss watching the sun shimmer on the Ionian sea as I sip the sweet juice.  Unfortunately, blood orange juice at the edge of the Ionian Sea must be put into the impossible to recreate category.

Salt cured capers are sold by weight at the market. They are about the size of lentils and have a sharp and sour taste that is lovely with chicken or fish and are a crucial ingredient in the tomato/potato salad I tasted on a recent trip to Marsala. Although it isn’t easy to find salt-cured capers in Vermont, there are jars of vinegar-cured capers in the pickle aisle of every grocery store. Here’s how I made the tomato/potato salad when we got back to Ortigia.

Tomato/Potato Salad

I peeled and cut into one-inch chunks, five new potatoes that had been steamed until they were tender. I added three medium tomatoes that had been seeded and cut into chunks, two thinly sliced green onions, one tablespoon of roughly chopped, salt-cured capers that had been soaked in cold water, rinsed and drained, two tablespoons of chopped flat leaf parsley, three tablespoons of olive oil, two tablespoons of red wine vinegar, three grinds of sea salt and five grinds of black pepper to the still warm potatoes. With a jar of vinegar cured capers from the market this souvenir goes into the can be recreated category.

I don’t remember when Italian flat leaf parsley won a place in my heart and kitchen. It might have been when I planted my first herb garden or perhaps it was when Fiorina Paci, my older son’s Italian great-grandmother, combined it with garlic and green beans from her garden. However it happened, the good news is that this tasty herb is available year round, in the produce department of nearly every grocery store, generally next to its curly leafed cousin. I use it in Sicily and in Vermont to flavor vegetables, chicken, fish, beans, and grain and rice salads. Seasoning with Italian flat leaf parsley definitely has a place in the can be recreated category.

Download and print tomato potato recipe with an ingredients list here.

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Even if Etna is sleeping or we are sitting on the wrong side of the plane, we will see groves of citrus trees as the plane makes its approach to the airport in Catania. The trees are filled with either orange or yellow spheres. The blood oranges, spattered with garnet red, are perfect eaten out of hand or used to make peachy-pink orange juice. The lemons offer endless possibilities. When I have played the ‘dessert island’ ingredient game with friends, lemons are what I want on my raft as I head to shore. I need lemons to brighten hot or cold tea, for salad dressings and marinades, to flavor chicken, seafood, vegetables, pasta, cookies, pies and cakes.

We have been looking forward to returning to Sicily since New Year’s Day. These two months of anticipation have inspired me to use lots of lemons to bring the scent and flavor of Sicily to wintry Vermont. A couple of weeks ago, when I wanted a very simple dinner, I made a bowl of steamed winter vegetables topped with lemon butter. Here’s how I did it:

Winter Vegetables with Lemon Butter

I steamed four scrubbed and quartered, small red skinned potatoes, three peeled carrots cut in chunks, and eight Brussels sprouts until they were tender. I heated two tablespoons of butter, the juice from half a lemon and a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper in a saucepan over medium heat. When the butter had melted, I added the vegetables and stirred until they were coated with the lemon butter. I served the vegetable on a bed of peppery arugula leaves and dusted the vegetables with freshly grated lemon zest.

The simplicity of wintery vegetables coated with sunny lemon flavor was a perfect complement to my state of mind.

Last week, as we gathered warm weather clothes, a few kitchen tools, computer necessities, transformers, cables, cameras and Kindles, I wanted a lemon fix to chase the morning cold. I though of the pancakes topped with butter, sugar and lemon juice that my mother made.

English Pancakes

I blended two large eggs and one and a half cups of milk in a blender. While the blender whirled the eggs and milk for three minutes, I sifted together one and a half cups of flour, three quarters of a teaspoon of kosher salt, two teaspoons of baking soda and a teaspoon of sugar into a mixing bowl. I used a  spatula to combine the egg milk mixture with the flour mixture and then stirred two tablespoons of melted, unsalted butter into the batter.

I let the batter rest for fifteen minutes so that the flour could absorb the liquid. I used a small ladle to form fairly thin, three-inch diameter pancakes in a preheated and oiled, cast-iron frying pan. I cooked them over medium low heat, until bubbles formed and broke on the surface and then turned them to cook until golden.

Charles preheated plates in the microwave and we took turns minding the cooking. I topped each pancake with a sliver of unsalted butter, a dusting of granulated sugar and enough lemon juice to moisten it. Served with steamy cups of hot tea, made with loose tea that Matthew and Alison had sent from London at Christmas, breakfast was perfection and we were one morning closer to the lemon groves of Sicily.

English pancakes have a higher ratio of liquid to dry ingredients and are more delicate than traditional American pancakes. They are a welcome breakfast treat in that wintry span when the supply of last winter’s maple syrup is gone and sugaring hasn’t begun.

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Pre-game activities begin after lunch, the game, liberally dotted with commercials, starts at six, is interrupted by the half-time show, then more of the game, and finally the wrap-up. It’s no wonder that most hotels offering Super Bowl packages have a four-day minimum stay – it must take at least two days to recover.

I’m not a football fan. My mind wanders with the interminable delays. I worry about mortal injuries to the referees and camera operators when I see enormous bodies, protected by even more enormous plastic helmets and shoulder pads flying through the air and landing in heaps. I’ve been told that the creative commercials that debut on Super Bowl Sunday are enough reason to watch but I’d rather be putting finishing touches on Super Bowls, Super Platters and Super Sweets to sustain Super Friends who are eating and drinking, cheering and booing in front of the television.

One Super Bowl party website suggested, “serve everyone’s favorite high fat, finger-licking snack foods. After all, your television set is the focal point, not the food.” (Those are fighting words to a cook.) Another site suggested serving “salami, pepperoni, cheese whiz, chips and dips, beer and hot sauce, zingers like salami & cheese stuffed pepperochini.” (I wonder if beer and hot sauce is new mixed drink?) Tailgate classics like Buffalo wings, chili, and layered dips are all possibilities, but I want Super Food, healthy food that is not fussy to prepare and has enough flavor to be a bit of a distraction from the game.

Chickpeas and chickpea flour, also called besan and gram flour, are on the Super Food team I’m inviting to be part of my Super Bowl menu. They taste good and are an excellent source of protein, fiber, iron, potassium and B vitamins. It takes only a minute to make the batter for Besan flatbread that can be served either hot from the oven or at room temperature. It meets my requirements for a super finger food.

Hummus, a party regular at my house, is also a Super Snack. This blend of ancient ingredients – chickpeas, sesame seeds, lemon juice, garlic and olive oil is readily available at the market but when made at home it is absolutely fresh, with a minimum number of ingredients and is preservative free. When combined with warm pita bread, it is a complete protein that will build muscles so necessary for passing and blocking on the gridiron. (Not bad for a non-sports writer!) Best of all, homemade hummus costs half as much and is at least twice as good as store bought. I took a bowl of hummus, surrounded with carrot sticks to a potluck lunch last Sunday and it disappeared before the chocolate chip cookies.

Here’s how I made Besan Flat Bread and Hummus:

Besan Flat Bread

I put one cup of besan and one teaspoon of salt into a bowl and stirred constantly with a whisk, as I slowly added water, about one and half cups, to make a slurry with the consistency of thin pancake batter. I made it in the morning, covered with a cloth and left on the counter to ‘rest’ for several hours. The batter can be baked immediately but the texture will be better and the bread will have a more complex flavor if the batter sits at room temperature for several hours before it is baked.

I set the oven at 450 degrees, peeled and thinly sliced two medium shallots and a handful of cauliflower florets. I put the shallots, cauliflower and three tablespoons of grape seed oil into a ten-inch cast iron skillet. After two minutes in the oven, I gave the vegetables a quick stir, poured the batter in and returned the skillet to the oven. In 30 minutes, the bread was brown and the crisp edge had pulled away from the pan. I used a spatula to lift it out onto a cutting board, sprinkled it with a pinch of sea salt, and let it cool for a couple of minutes before I cut it into twelve wedges. It disappeared in less time than it takes a football team to figure out the next play.

Onions, scallions or chives can be substituted for the shallots and olive or canola oil can replace the grape seed oil. I sometimes add either a tablespoon of fresh rosemary or a teaspoon of black mustard seeds or ground cumin along with the sliced vegetables to vary the flavor.

Hummus

I drained one 19-ounce can of chickpeas and reserved the liquid. I used a food processor to chop one small garlic clove and then added the chickpeas and two tablespoons of tahini. When the mixture was coarsely chopped, I added the juice of one lemon and slowly added the reserved liquid until the mixture was creamy, about five tablespoons. I put the hummus into a shallow bowl and topped it with a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.

If you want to add color, a pinch of paprika is all you need. You could present the hummus in grand style by putting the warmed pita bread into the Super Bowl XLIV Snack Helmet that I saw on the internet for a mere $64.99.

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Besan Flat Bread List

• 1 c besan/chickpea flour
• 1 t salt
• 2 shallots
• 3/4 c cauliflower florets

Hummus List

• 1 19-ounce can chickpeas
• 1 small garlic clove
• 2 T tahini
• 1 lemon
• olive oil

I don’t mean the kind that involves a cream pie in the face, champagne sprayed around the table or peas slingshot across the room. I mean friendly, family disagreements about the best cranberry sauce. Should dessert be apple or pumpkin pie? Are creamed onions or a green bean casserole mandatory? Will there be chestnuts in the stuffing? Most picture perfect holiday meals exist only in magazines and movies, with a group of strangers presented as family, dressed by stylists, sitting at a perfectly decorated holiday table. Real holiday meals are an opportunity to share a favorite recipe and no one will complain that the second version of cranberry sauce has spoiled the symmetry of the table.

My favorite cranberry relish was inspired by a recipe from my friend Lynda. I added a chili pepper when I made it last year. Here’s how I did it:

Roasted Cranberry Relish

I sorted, washed and drained one bag of fresh cranberries and then combined the berries with the zest of one lemon, one cup of sugar, two tablespoons of olive oil, one teaspoon of kosher salt, one seeded and diced jalapeno pepper and the crushed seeds from four cardamom pods.

I transferred the mixture to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. After baking for ten minutes in a 450-degree oven, the cranberries released their juice and were ready to be transferred to a bowl. To finish the sauce I stirred in the juice of half an orange and two tablespoons of Marsala wine. I let this sauce sit for an hour before serving so that the flavors could meld.Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.