Herbs & Spices

Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 30 min

These creamy custards feature the flavors of chai, a spiced tea that's enhanced with cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and ginger.

Franklin serves this dish like a green salad, but it's also

We strongly recommend using light-colored metal (including nonstick) shallow baking pans (1 large or 2 small) for this recipe. When we used dark baking pans, the potatoes blackened before they were completely cooked through.

We used smoked bocconcini (small mozzarella balls) for this recipe, but you may substitute unsmoked bocconcini or smoked or unsmoked regular mozzarella, cut into slices and quartered.

A nice dish for a brunch buffet.

Make this at least one day and up to two days ahead for best flavor. This is a much simplified version of the classic smoked meat and bean cassoulet.

English Christmas "pudding" is really a dense, moist spiced cake. This gingerbread version is flavored with orange marmalade and topped with a traditional hard sauce — butter and sugar mixed with brandy.

If most of the coconut sauces you've encountered have been heavy and cloying, this one — light and frothy, with delicate flavor — will be a delicious surprise. It would also be perfect for spicing up poached skinless boneless chicken. This recipe is an accompaniment for Pistachio Sea Bass with Crab Salad and Coconut Sauce .

Cardamom pods can be found in the spice section of most supermarkets; 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom can be substituted.

Serve with: Orzo with parsley, and steamed carrots and green beans. Dessert: Pear tart.

Lorraine Stevenski of Clearwater, Florida, writes: "As a kid growing up in an Italian family, I loved being in the kitchen. But I didn't become serious about cooking until I got married and had my own kitchen to experiment in. My husband and I lived in Queens, New York, within walking distance of many Greek, Italian, and Spanish food shops. The new foods I discovered there inspired my passion for cooking." Panko is available in the Asian foods section of most supermarkets.

Brining ensures moist, succulent meat, and this recipe from Bruce Aidells, chef and founder of Aidells Sausage Company, could not be easier or more low-tech. The special equipment required? Two 30-gallon plastic bags and one very large (16-quart) bowl that will fit in the fridge. You'll want to get started a day ahead, because the turkey is brined for 18 to 20 hours. Stuffing this turkey is not recommended; the brine remaining in the meat may soak into the stuffing during roasting.

The deep garnet glaze, made with pomegranate molasses, adds a richly piquant, sweet-tart depth of flavor to the turkey.

"I'm from India," writes Hema Kundargi of Cupertino, California, "and I enjoy the foods of my homeland. My children are the opposite — they like 'American' food. But I haven't given up trying to make Indian meals that the whole family will like. This recipe pleases everyone."

A nod to what could arguably be the dish of the eighties, blackened redfish. The technique works equally well with halibut.

Accompany this colorful dish with rice pilaf and baby peas with pearl onions. The kicker: spice bars and orange slices.

Pair this with a crisp French Chablis, the Chardonnay-based white from Burgundy.

Jamie Davies and her late husband, Jack, were pioneers in the California wine industry. In 1965 they purchased and restored Schramsberg, a vineyard estate established in 1862, and they soon began producing the first American sparkling wine. When Davies thinks about comforting desserts, she remembers her childhood in Pasadena. "I was about eight when I started making upside-down cakes with my older sister, Dallas. We’d come home after school and mix up the recipe; I loved the sensual pleasure of making the batter. We'd put the cake in the oven, then go play croquet with our friends. Then we’d all come in and eat it up. We thought we had died and gone to heaven." The easy upside-downer here has wonderful spice flavors. Using canned pineapple chunks keeps the preparation simple.