Herbs & Spices

This tender chuck roast makes two meals. Most of the meat is sliced and served with onion gravy, accompanied by egg noodles, and the rest gets shredded and saved for a warm beef salad . You might want to round out the first meal with a green salad or sautéed spinach.

Gnocchi à la Parisienne Parisienne gnocchi are made from pâte à choux, a versatile dough made by cooking flour and water together until the flour cooks, after which eggs are stirred in. It can then be piped into various shapes and baked for profiteroles and éclairs for dessert, or savory preparations such as gougères, or gently poached in water as gnocchi. Parisienne gnocchi are tasty, satisfying morsels that, like Italian gnocchi or any pasta, can be paired with all kinds of ingredients and transformed into countless dishes. They're excellent simply sautéed in butter. They can be additionally flavored with fines herbes, mustard, and cheese. At Bouchon, we don't serve much pasta or rice, so we use gnocchi as an interesting base for a number of our vegetarian dishes. They're not a classic bistro food, but the technique is a French one, dating back to before Escoffier. This recipe will make about 240 gnocchi, double what you'll need for the Gnocchi with Mushrooms and Butternut Squash . Once they've been poached, gnocchi can be frozen for a month to six weeks.

Salade de Laitue The word laitue comes from the Latin word for milk, from the milky juices some lettuces can exude. Hearty, buttery Bibb leaves are a good example of the rich, juicy quality lettuce can have. They're so big and rich, in fact, that this salad almost qualifies as a meal in itself. This salad is all about freshness. Use plenty of freshly picked fines herbes: parsley, chives, tarragon, and chervil; harder herbs, such as savory, rosemary, and marjoram, would be too strong. Finish it with a squeeze of lemon juice. Buy nice rounded, mature heads of Bibb lettuce, with good weight; these will have the greatest amount of tender yellow interior leaves. If the leaves have become at all soft and leathery, a rinse in cold water will refresh them.

Chunks of fresh cranberries and dark, milk, and white chocolate chips dress up oatmeal cookies for the holidays.

For best results, use fresh ricotta, which is sold at Italian delis and specialty cheese shops. Avoid packaged brands that include gelatin and preservatives, as these can be watery and have a grainy texture. Prepared cannoli shells are sold at Italian markets.

These soft ginger cookies are dipped in dark chocolate for sophisticated fun.

Fresh black truffles are worth the splurge. They are available at some specialty foods stores and from Urbani Truffles (215-699-8780; urbanitruffles.com). Black truffles in jars are sold at specialty foods stores and Italian markets; the most flavorful are European winter black truffles.

Baby beets simply roasted to bring out their sweetness need just the barest slip of butter and a sprinkling of fresh rosemary. Candy cane beets, if you can find them at a farmers' market, look especially festive, but so does a medley of red and yellow ones. If baby beets are unavailable, cut peeled roasted large beets into 1-inch cubes.

Top with pan juices from the Chicken with Olives, Caramelized Onions, and Sage .

Miso, a salty, earthy Japanese bean paste, is rich in vitamin B and protein. White miso, also known as shiro miso, has a more delicate flavor than darker miso pastes. Mirin is a sweet golden wine made from glutinous rice; it is essential to Japanese cooking. Both ingredients can be found in the Asian foods section of some supermarkets, at some natural foods stores, and at Japanese markets.

Lauren Beal of San Rafael, California, writes: "When it comes to making dinner, my husband, Stuart, and I have the perfect system. He's in charge of our backyard garden, and I'm in charge of cooking with what he harvests — things like basil, onions, lemons, and even apples. It's our favorite way to create a meal together."

Look for pomegranate juice in the juice aisle or fresh juice section of the supermarket.

Healthy bonus: Magnesium and folate from spinach; fiber from apples and buns; antioxidants from rosemary and sage

A splash of vodka or gin transforms this lively punch into a festive cocktail.

Yvonne M. Parnes of Batavia, Ohio, got the recipe for these rich, buttery cookies in an e-mail from the McCormick spice company. We like them plain, but drizzled with espresso icing and bittersweet chocolate, they are truly out of this world.