Dried Currant

I first made this delicious, super-crunchy granola while consulting for Edge of the Woods, a great natural foods market, bakery, and vegetarian café in New Haven, Connecticut. At the time, I was developing lots of agave nectar desserts and goodies for diabetics and clients concerned with sugar when it occurred to me that there were no good-tasting, sugar-free granolas available. Hence the birth of Orange Pecan Granola, a staple in our household! Great on its own as a snack, or sprinkle it over yogurt, fresh fruit, or even frozen yogurt for dessert.

Gingerbread muffins are perfect for a decadent holiday breakfast or a healthy snack all year round. These muffins get extremely hot during baking, so it’s best to let some of the steam escape before eating them. They’re moist, like banana bread or cake, and are best once they’ve cooled and set a bit. (You don’t have to wait, but they do reach peak yumminess after resting for 30 minutes.)

Cream Cheese Frosting (page 95) pairs naturally with these cupcakes. If you can’t have dairy, try them with Vegan Coconut Whip (page 94), which accents their nutty flavor quite nicely. I make these cupcakes every August; they’re a great way to deal with the massive influx of zucchini during peak harvest.

If you’d like an accompaniment to summer fruit soups but don’t want to turn on the oven, these slightly sweet scones are just the thing to make.

My brothers and sisters cringed when I told them I was including Irish soda bread in this cookbook. I can’t really blame them. Grandma McKenna used to force it on us when we’d pop by her house after church, as if it were punishment for interrupting her Sunday afternoon cleaning spree. My brother Bill pointed out that Grandma would ask him if he wanted some candy and when he said yes she’d sit him down with a thick slice of Irish soda bread. My brother Frank noted that her solution to gripes was, “Put some butter on it!” Instead, I decided I’d simply update this old-world snack so that it stands a fighting chance against the evolution of tender tastebuds.

This is my favorite fish dish in the book. Try it and you’ll taste why.

Once, while visiting Le Monde des Épices (see page 26), I asked the owner which Jewish cookbook in his large selection he especially liked. His favorite one at the time was 150 Recettes et Mille et Un Souvenirs d’une Juive d’Algérie (150 Recipes and 1,001 Memories of an Algerian Jewish Woman) by Léone Jaffin, one of the steady stream of North African Jewish cookbooks since the 1970s. This book includes such unusual recipes as these Swiss-chard bestels, traditionally eaten on Rosh Hashanah. North African Jews frequently use the bright-green leaves of beets or Swiss chard, called blette. A prayer is recited over the vegetable, called salek in Hebrew, meaning to remove or throw out, with the hope that in the coming year enemies will be removed from the community’s midst. I have added curry powder, pine nuts, and currants to this tasty turnover, which I sometimes serve with salad as a first course.

Many dishes standardized in the courtly kitchens of Constantinople during Ottoman rule spread throughout the Empire. This is one of the classics that you find in all the cities that were once outposts of the Empire. It is good to serve with meat or chicken.

This is the classic Turkish rice filling for vegetables to be served cold. Choose plump bell peppers that can stand on their base. I prefer to use red peppers because they are sweeter and for the color, but in Turkey green ones are more often used.

Stuffed grape leaves were served at the court of King Khusrow II in Persia in the early seventh century. Their popularity spread through the Muslim world when the caliphs of Baghdad adopted Persian cooking traditions, while the Ottomans introduced them throughout their empire. There are numerous versions of this delicacy today, which is popular in every country throughout the Middle East. The following, with raisins and pine nuts, is a Turkish version. It is served cold. Short-grain or risotto rice is used because the grains stick together. Grape leaves can be bought preserved in brine and vacuum-packed, but if you can get hold of young fresh tender ones, do use them. They freeze well raw, wrapped in foil.

This is a cold pilaf to serve as a first course. It has an exciting combination of ingredients and flavors, while a mix of cinnamon and all spice lend a beautiful light brown color.

These individual pies are tasty, elegant, and very easy to prepare. They make a perfect light meal, accompanied by a salad.

There isn’t much difference in baking time between convection and regular ovens when you bake scones, only 5 to 10 minutes. The difference is in the wonderful texture, moist tender crumb, and golden, delicate crust that you can expect from the convection oven.

Capers give these burgers zing—and cancer protection, too: They help prevent the formation of carcinogens that can occur when meat gets charred.

This crumbly shortbread is studded with dried currants, which are tiny raisins made from Zante grapes. The currants must be soaked overnight, so you'll need to plan your craving a day in advance.

A spiedo is a kitchen spit over an open fire that is most often used for cooking whole animals, particularly chicken. Spiedino—;literally "little spit"—refers to food cooked on skewers, which is how we like to prepare pork loin. Grilled briefly over a smoky fire, the meat takes on an addictive char that counterbalances the sweet, mellow soffritto of pine nuts, garlic, and currants.

Whether they're freshly baked or toasted, I love these buns and bake a batch whenever it takes my fancy, leaving off the crosses if it isn't Easter. I also like to vary the dried fruit – a mix of chopped dates, cranberries, apricots, and cherries is particularly good.

In Britain, these are teatime favorites, but in the States, we like them for breakfast, too. You'll get tall, flaky, buttery scones that are excellent partners with your finest jams.

If you're lucky enough to have a persimmon tree, you're guaranteed to have plenty of gorgeous persimmons come autumn. Or, if you have a neighbor with one, you're bound to find a bag of persimmons on your doorstep one fall day. The prolific trees are especially striking when the leaves drop and the traffic-stopping bright-orange orbs are still clinging to the bare, gnarled branches, silhouetted against a clear autumn sky. Even if you don't have a tree, or a neighboring one that you can benefit from, you might have seen persimmons at the market. Most likely they were Hachiya persimmons, the most common, elongated-shape variety. It's the one I recommend for this cake. They must be squishy soft before they can be used. If you buy them rock-hard, leave them at room temperature until they feel like water balloons ready to burst. When ready, yank off the stem, slice each persimmon in half, then scoop out the jellylike pulp and purée it in a blender or food processor.

When it comes to dessert, I am a chocoholic first and fruit-pie lover second; but after several test batches to perfect this cake, I am completely won over, and so is everyone who has tasted it. This is simply a spectacular cake—moist and light with spiced pumpkin flavor and sweet bites of coconut and pineapple. In addition, it is a snap to make. It requires two 9-inch cake pans to make the layers, but the cake itself can be mixed together with a rubber spatula and bowl. If all the cake ingredients are pre-measured and the cake pans prepared, this can be a fun kitchen project to do with children, especially since it can be made ahead and frozen.

Dripping with snowy-white icing and paired with fresh berries and a ruby-red currant and raspberry sauce, this sheet cake is a charming way to end a dinner party.