Oven Bake

This way of cooking eggplant makes the flesh soft and creamy. The miso glaze sweetens it with a Japanese flair.

These egg rolls made with filo dough bake in the oven, so there’s no deep-frying. Crisp and delicious, they are a fine supper. They can be assembled a day ahead, wrapped in plastic, and refrigerated until they go into the oven.

These burritos, with their creamy spinach filling, are one of the dishes that always elicit customer requests for the recipe when we serve them in the restaurant.

In about 10 minutes, this simple supper is in the oven, and just when you’re tempted by the aroma, it’s ready.

This golden pudding sends out a wonderfully appetizing aroma as it bakes. You can keep it unbaked in the refrigerator for up to a day—just allow for more baking time.

This delightfully tangy tofu pairs especially well with Greek or Italian dishes.

We think that this may be the most useful recipe in the book. Baked tofu is a reliable standby and can be dressed up to suit almost any menu. Whip up a marinade, pop the tofu in the oven, start cooking rice or pasta, and decide on a vegetable or salad. Baked tofu is also a nice addition to stews, sautés, sandwiches, and salads.

Is this really dinner? It is casual, messy finger food, but it has beans, grain, and cheese, it’s quite filling, and kids love it. We like Cheddar, Monterey Jack, or Mexican cheeses such asadero and queso quesadilla for this recipe.

This creamy, cold-weather casserole with a golden, crunchy topping can be assembled ahead and baked when you’re ready.

What a versatile dish! You can use almost any kind of cheese (or go vegan—see our suggestions below), and you can add leftover vegetables to the filling. Stuff the tomatoes one day and bake them the next—they’re just as tasty!

For a nice balance of color and flavor, use white potatoes and sweet potatoes in roughly equal amounts.

While we provide a meatloaf recipe here, we know how particular people are about their meatloaf recipes, so feel free to use your own. You’ll often want to make this sandwich with cold, leftover meatloaf, which is perfect because it’s easier to slice. But how to heat it up without drying it out? This is where the liquid from the tomato relish comes in: Put the meatloaf slices into the sauce and pop them into the microwave or oven. The meatloaf is gently heated, absorbing all the flavor and moisture of the sauce. Now just layer on some aged Cheddar, bacon, if you like, and the tomato relish, and you have a hearty sandwich—the ultimate comfort food.

There are so many uses for this preserve, which captures the zing of the citrus. Chop it up and use it as a garnish for sweet sorbets or as a marmalade on buttered Brioche (page 194). Or wrap a strawberry or a piece of melon with a slice of this lemon, stick a toothpick through it, and you’ve got a fruit canapé. I’m not giving a yield or amounts here, because you can make as much of this classic preserve as you wish. If they’re in season, Meyer lemons are what you want.

This dessert is a delicate balancing act showcasing the diversity of citrus. Each element supplies a different taste and texture: the creamy ice cream, the chewy grapefruit, the crispy sticks, and the airy curd.

Calamansi is a limelike citrus from the Philippines with a distinct flavor. It’s sweeter than a lime, but it retains that tartness you expect. For this dessert, I turn calamansi puree into “noodles” by setting it with gelatin and then weave the tangy, slippery noodles in and out of a salad made with blood oranges and clementines.

In this dessert, you get the same flavor twice but with different textures: creamy ice cream and slightly chewy strawberry leather. Fruit leathers are an ideal way to incorporate secondary flavors, like herbs, and making leathers is really easy.