Ginger

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less. Makes use of the microwave oven.

Perfect at the end of a fall meal. Top the dessert with sweetened whipped cream, or team it with scoops of vanilla ice cream.

There's an extra hit of flavor from crystallized ginger in this scrumptious layer cake.

Look for rice vinegar in the Asian foods section of your market.

Orange roughy or red snapper would also be delicious in this recipe.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

The roulade is particularly stunning when accompanied by a glistening array of the Glacéed Fruits .

Serve the curry with steamed white rice and Indian beer, and make a stop at an Indian restaurant to get some samosas — savory filled pastries — to pass as appetizers, and the flatbread called naan to sop up the curry sauce. For dessert, how about assorted teas and a carrot cake?

Nixon's re-establishment of relations with China led Americans to discover, among other things, that there was more to Chinese cooking than the Cantonese dishes we had all grown up with.

Miso soup — a fermented-soybean broth — is not difficult to make at home. Freeze the ginger and thaw it before squeezing; that way, extracting the juice will be easy. Chilled sake goes well with the meal.