Winter

This gorgeous dessert features crisp peppermint meringues layered with tender chocolate cake and rich chocolate frosting.

Fresh ginger amps up the flavor of the sorbet.

These thin, elegant cookies get their flavor from dried cranberries and homemade candied lemon peel. Because the lemon peel needs to dry overnight, be sure to begin this recipe one day ahead.

This nutty, satisfying puree— enriched with chicken fat for tradition's sake or pareve margarine—makes a nice bed for the roast duck.

Clementines provide the orange flavoring in this update of a classic cocktail. Chill the Martini glasses in the freezer for a few hours beforehand. Hendrick’s Gin, a smooth Scottish gin infused with cucumber and rose petals, is worth seeking out: It is the perfect choice for this drink.

In this festive treat, the shortbread base is topped with dark chocolate, chopped peppermint candies, and a drizzle of white chocolate. Cutting the cookies into irregular pieces makes for a fun presentation.

Roasting the pork at a low temperature in a spiced salt mixture amps up the flavor of the meat and makes it extra-tender. After cooking the pork, the rack of bones is cut off and used to hold the roast for easy carving.

A silky-smooth panna cotta with the tang of buttermilk, this dessert is wonderfully easy to pull off. Any leftover sauce would be great spooned over ice cream.

Rajas (strips) of crisp corn tortillas and sweet mini bell peppers make a colorful garnish.

Look for carrots and parsnips that are about two inches in diameter at their thickest point; you don't want them to be too big or too slender.

Paper-thin slices of fennel, juicy grapefruit segments, and fresh parsley and mint make a beautiful winter salad. Using a V-slicer to cut the fennel helps the easy side dish come together even more quickly.

I met twelve-year-old Frank Liranzo when I was teaching a kids' cooking class at the YMCA's environmental camp in Huguenot, New York. The kids learned how to tap trees to make maple syrup, a process I'd read about but never seen in action. Frank was one of the campers, and he got to experience firsthand the old art of making maple syrup. "You put tubes into the trees so the sap flows out," he says. "When it first comes out of the tree, it tastes like sugary water. Then we went to the sugar shack where we saw the sap boiled down until it tasted like syrup." At the camp, I made this Maple-Glazed Tuna with Pear-Potato Salad for the kids. "I thought it would taste really sugary, but it didn't," Frank told me. "First I tasted the fish, then a hint of mustard, and then an aftertaste of the maple syrup." I love how the syrup adds sweetness and a beautiful caramelized crust to the meaty tuna steaks, while the sweetness of the pears in the accompanying potato salad balances nicely with the glazed tuna.

Editor's note: Serve this salad with Marcus Samuelsson's Maple-Glazed Tuna .

Aim to get your fully thawed turkey into the turkey brine 12 hours before cooking.

One of the delights of making tiramisù is its versatility. This recipe makes a family-style dessert in a large dish, but you can easily compose single servings in dessert glasses, wine goblets, or even elegant teacups for a more impressive presentation, in the style of Signora Garatti's original "coppa imperiale." And while the conventional version of tiramisù calls for espresso soaked savoiardi, I've found that other flavors can be incorporated into the dessert with great success. Here, the brightness of fresh lemons and limoncello liqueur lace the cream and soaking syrup to make for a tiramisù that is refreshing and irresistible.

Lightly caramelized slices of roasted squash make a tasty and pretty salad, dressed up with toasted almonds, crumbled cheese, and glistening swirls of Reduced Balsamic Vinegar (recipe follows), one of my favorite condiments. Serve this as an antipasto, a first course, or a side dish. With roast meat or poultry, it can be a main course salad too. How about a Thanksgiving leftover salad of roast squash and my roast turkey (page 332) with balsamic reduction and Quince Chutney (page 368)? Any sweet-fleshed winter squash is suitable, but I find the scalloped edges of acorn squash slices look especially nice.

For many, Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie is unthinkable, but that doesn't mean you can't jazz up the old standby.

Spicy, sharp turnip greens, braised gently with a smoked ham hock, are a time-honored accompaniment on southern tables at any time of the year. This version, with the ivory turnips, golden apple, and pink ham nestled among the dark greens, is especially pretty.

Food editor Andrea Albin, who developed this menu, says that her mom, Veronica, who lives in Houston, should get all the glory here. Raw celery and toasted almonds lace cooked cranberries with terrific crunch.

This is not the cloying, candylike sweet potato side dish that is so often topped with marshmallows. Here, the vegetable's distinctive, mellow sweetness (as well as that of the acorn squash) is augmented by hints of brown sugar and nutmeg, so that the ingredients speak for themselves. Slicing the vegetables rather than puréeing them also imparts a lovely presence—the squash looks like happy smiles, the sweet potatoes like shining coins.