Tarragon

This recipe can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

An elegant entrée in about 15 minutes — using ingredients you are likely to have on hand. Serve the chicken with mashed potatoes and baby peas or a Bibb lettuce salad for a balanced weeknight meal. Finish with a raspberry tart from the bakery.

Both fresh fennel and fennel seeds flavor this creamy mash of Yukon Golds. It can be made eight hours ahead and rewarmed.

Orzo pilaf and stewed tomatoes simmered with sliced fennel bulb are nice side dishes. Classic chocolate mousse is the perfect finish.

Pour a nice Gamay to enjoy alongside.

This simple but sophisticated preparation is the star of the Thanksgiving table. Watch how to prepare and carve your bird with our streaming video demonstration.

In the book American Gourmet, Jane and Michael Stern describe beef Wellington as a "lardaceous dish" that is "rich beyond reason." The pastry-wrapped beef was the ultimate in dinner-party fare in the sixties. In our re-creation, salmon fillets cook in frozen puff pastry sheets, which arrived in the seventies.

This recipe was given to me by one of my favorite farmers at my local market in Louviers, Normandy.

For a pretty decorative touch, snip a V at one end of each snow pea.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

I find that littlenecks or tiny cockles are the best shellfish for this dish, because they are delicate. Tarragon complements them, as does parsley or dill.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less but requires additional unattended time.