Apple

I like Granny Smith apples for this particular recipe because of their low water content; they hold up really well when you cook them. Juicy apples, such as McIntosh, are not ideal for this because they fall apart and turn to mush. I developed this recipe at Cafeteria in New York City. The gooey caramel apples are amazing with the croissant French toast. This dish was written up in InStyle magazine.

One trick that I learned a long time ago about cooking pork is that you have to brine it. The brine for this recipe is a sugar-salt solution mixed with apple juice concentrate (you will need 2 cans of frozen juice) for the brine and spiced apples. With its sweet apple flavor, this is an intense marinade that works miracles on pork chops. Trust me—once you taste a thick pork chop that’s been flavored in a brine, you will never go back. Cozy up to your butcher to get the pork chops cut to your liking. Thin pork chops—no way! Serve this with Corn Pudding (page 236).

Sometimes it’s a case of “the simpler the better.” Here, you bake apples in a rich, buttery caramel sauce and it doesn’t take much time to get it all together, either.

An apple pie “made from scratch” has no competition from store-bought pies. Here’s the basic recipe with some favorite variations. To bake a frozen apple pie, see the chart. Convection-baked pies cook in about one-third less time.

Use flavorful, tart apples for this cake for the best flavor. Baked on the convection bake mode, it bakes considerably faster than in a conventional oven.

This old-time dessert is still a favorite today. It’s really a streusel apple pie baked without a crust.

I love this dish, and you will, too—and your guests will be impressed. Set the table for a special eating experience, including a few scissors to pass around and a bowl for the parchment paper. Then present guests with closed, tempting packets: when they cut open the parchment, the sight and bursting aroma of savory-stuffed quail will fill them with anticipation, and they will dive right in. As an accompaniment, I would serve a bowl of hot polenta, farro, or wild rice, or a bowl of beans and black kale. Serve family-style, putting the bowl in the middle of the table, so everyone can spoon some onto the plate next to the quail.

My friend Mario Piccozzi and I discovered this deluxe version of bread pudding on a winter visit to Merano, the historic resort town in the middle of the Alps, in Alto Adige. It was the perfect dessert on a cold day, served in its baking dish, still warm from the oven. Spooning the pudding onto plates, I was thrilled to find it loaded with apple chunks and walnuts, oozing rich custard and bubbling apricot jam. I make this at home now (it’s very easy) and serve it just as they do in Merano, family-style, setting the steaming, gold-topped pudding in the middle of the table, with a serving spoon and lots of plates. It disappears fast.

Baked apples are a favorite treat and comfort food in Trentino–Alto Adige as they are here. This recipe emphasizes the treat aspect, since the apples are draped with melted chocolate, chopped walnuts, and Amarena cherries. Many apple varieties are good bakers, including Cameo, Cortland, Empire, Jonagold, Northern Spy, and Rome. Granny Smith and Golden Delicious are always reliable, too.

In Trentino, this lively condiment of cooked apples and fresh horseradish is served with boiled beef, poached chicken, and all kinds of roasts. It’s great with many of the dishes in this chapter, especially the beer-braised chicken and beef and the fried and baked potato–celery root canederli. Since it is so easy to make in large volume, I serve it with roast turkey or ham at the holidays, and I hope you will, too. Cream is customary in the salsa (it counters the sharpness of the horseradish), but the flavor is good without it. And you can use more or less horseradish to suit your taste for its pungency.

Here’s another fine winter salad, pairing one of my favorite, underappreciated vegetables—celery root—with fresh apples. The mellow, tender cubes of cooked celery root and the crisp apple slices provide a delightful, unexpected combination of flavor and texture. To turn the salad into a light lunch, add a few slices of prosciutto and serve it with some crusty bread. A firm, crisp apple is what you want for salad, and fortunately there are many varieties in the market that have that essential crunch, with flavors ranging from sweet to tangy to tart. I like to use a few different apples, rather than just one type, for greater complexity of flavor and vivid color in the salad. In addition to the reliably crisp Granny Smith apple, I look for some of the old-time firm and tart apples, such as Gravenstein, Jonathan, and Rome, and a few newer strains, like Cameo, Gala, and Fuji.

Crunchy, flavorful, refreshing, nourishing, and colorful, this salad makes a fine meal by itself. Its assortment of vegetables, apples, nuts, and cheese should be fresh and well prepared. It is especially important to use a top-quality table cheese, because it is a major contributor of taste and texture. In Trentino–Alto Adige, this salad would always have a fresh local cheese, most likely an Asiago pressato, made with milk from farms in the province of Trento (and the neighboring Veneto region). Aged only 20 days, this young cheese has a sweetness and soft, chewy consistency that’s perfect in salad. If you can’t find genuine Italian Asiago, don’t buy the inferior cheeses called Asiago produced in other countries (including the United States). Choose instead Montasio—a favorite of mine from my home region, Friuli—similarly soft and sweet, though richer and more complex than Asiago. Cubes of fresh Grana Padano (which also is made in Trento) or even good American cheddar, younger and on the mild side, would be great here as well. You can dress this salad in advance and set it out on a buffet. In that case, though, I suggest you add the walnuts just before serving, so they remain crunchy.

Every region of Italy has a fagioli (bean) soup, often quite filling, with potatoes and pork and either pasta or rice. Interestingly, it was in Trentino–Alto Adige, renowned for the heartiness of its soups, that I had this unexpectedly light bean soup, cooked with fresh apples and delicately spiced. It is vegetarian (also unusual), nourishing, and quite scrumptious. The combination of apples and beans is marvelous, and one of the pleasing features of this recipe is that simply by using less water you can make a great bean-and-apple side dish, a perfect accompaniment to roast pork, duck, or ham.

Maple syrup adds a new layer of sweetness to this delicious twist on the classic French dessert.

Butter lettuce, grown hydroponically, is a great way to add green to your cold-weather menus. This quick and easy salad is so tasty that Mary-Frances Heck, Bon Appétit's Associate Food Editor, throws some leftover roast chicken on top and calls it a meal.

Made with canned beans and store-bought rotisserie chicken, this healthy dinner bowl goes from kitchen to table in less than 40 minutes.

I love apples. I have this recurring dream where I leave the stress of the restaurant world behind and start a cider house, making exquisite hard cider. I start at sunrise and I finish in the mid-afternoon and retire to the farmhouse to cook a dinner for Mary and the girls. Apple brown betty is like a crisp made with bread crumbs. It's a wonderful dessert that is so simple and so rewarding in results. This is a good one for roping the kids into helping. Those apples aren’t going to peel themselves. Zabaglione is also known in France as sabayon. It is a custard-based dessert, cooked with a dessert wine. I stabilize mine with whipped cream and serve it cold, whereas in Italy and France you often see them served warm. Kind of like an eggnog in heaven.

One rule of thumb governing utensil purchases is to consider the cost of the item in relation to how often you'll use it. Since cherry season is so short, a pitter scores pretty low on the price-use ratio. But the formula is badly flawed, not taking into account how this gadget affects your life when you put it to use. By that reckoning, if owning a cherry pitter moved you to make this soup just once a year, it'd be worth the ten dollars or so you can expect to pay for it.

My client and friend Jeff Valko, whose personal chef I've been for years, loves this French toast. Being health-conscious and an exercise nut (like me), he likes to start his day with a protein boost. The apple topping is also delicious served over ice cream or frozen yogurt.

A fruit-filled ice ring will melt more slowly than ice cubes, which means it won't water down your punch.