Roast

Roasting skin-on pork belly that's been wrapped around a pork loin gives you the best of both worlds: crackling mahogany crust and juicy meat seasoned with fennel, chile, and orange. Start at least 24 hours ahead. First, ask your butcher for a skin-on pork belly that's just long and wide enough to wrap around a trimmed, center-cut pork loin.

This herb-scented, brined bird packs more flavor than a basic roast chicken.

For as long as I can remember, my mom has been cooking chicken in oven bags, those oven-safe plastic bags. So when I recently started roasting chicken in a brown paper bag, I felt sort of like I was going back to my roots. It works great because the paper bag traps just enough steam to make the chicken supermoist and tender, while at the same time letting enough steam escape to allow the skin to get golden brown. It always amazes me that the bag doesn’t catch on fire—so much so that I think of this as half recipe and half magic trick. Just make sure your broiler is turned off and the bag is not touching the top of the oven.

Our lighter take on the Gilroy Garlic Fries at the San Francisco Giants' AT&T Park forgoes the deep fryer in favor of a hot oven.

"This is a play on English cucumber finger sandwiches," says Kinch, who roasts the cucumbers to deepen their flavor. "It also works fantastically on the grill." Use any cucumber, such as Japanese, Persian, or English hothouse, available at supermarkets and farmers' markets.

Editor's note: Use these roasted cherries to make Jeni Britton Bauer's Goat Cheese Ice Cream with Roasted Red Cherries . Roasting cherries concentrates the flavors and natural fruit sugars. Roasted cherries are great for putting in ice cream, for adding on top of it while serving, or even in a pie à la mode sundae.

You need to start making this dish the day before you serve it, but the crispy, succulent result is well worth the effort.

This classic St. John dish uses veal bones for a more delicate texture and flavor. ("They've got youth on their side," says Fergus.) Ask your butcher for center-cut bones: You don't want the ends. When it comes to salt, Fergus uses coarse gray sea salt here because it maintains its crunch atop the succulent marrow.

A generous sprinkling of gray sea salt provides a genuine crust. Slicing the meat against the grain keeps it juicy.

"I make this dish almost once a week during high carrot season. Dill brings out carrots' earthy sweetness, and I can work on the rest of the meal while this cooks." —Eva Worden, Worden Farm, Punta Gorda, FL

"Add a little Parmesan to peppers and they go so quickly you can't keep them on the table." —Richard Andres, Tantré Farms, Chelsea, MI

Because sometimes the simplest side dishes are the best side dishes.

This vibrant sauce makes good use of an over abundance of chives. It's an ideal accompaniment to classic roasted potatoes.

I can't think of a more rustically elegant (is that a contradiction in terms?) starter. Serve with some robust white bread or pita and you are, literally, in food heaven. In the recipe you'll find Sami Tamimi's technique for getting the seeds out of the pomegranate, which I am afraid is now a very well-known secret.

Here it is: the recipe that started it all. And once you've made it, you'll know why. It serves up the kind of home-cooked goodness that no restaurant meal can top. The chicken's crispy skin is drenched in herb-infused juices (don't forget to pour the pan dripping back over the chicken before serving or, alternately, to drizzle them over individual pieces on the plate), and the trick of turning the chicken 15 minutes into cooking keeps the meat uniquely moist. Any simple sides will work with a main course this splendid. You can go with either white wine (in which case a Riesling would be nice) or red (try pinot noir). Happy cooking-and an even happier future to you and the lucky person you've deemed worthy of this dish.

I just ate a meal of some meltingly tender pork, butternut squash, and toasted walnuts. No, this isn't my food journal. I'm sharing this information with you because the above foods are supposed to reduce the incidence of many diseases that might come my way. Okay, maybe you're not interested in your arteries working at peak capacity; maybe what you want is to enjoy food to the maximum and not have to force it down your throat because it's good for you. That said, you'll love this dish, whether or not its health benefits ever cross your mind.