Saute

Serve this with a basket of crusty bread.

Leave it to the Italians to come up with such a delectable, imaginative way to round out a meal. Literally "cooked bread," pancotto is the cold-weather counterpart of panzanella, Italy's summer bread salad. Use the pan drippings from the from beef tenderloin to add richness.

"When it's on the menu, I always order the sautéed veal with shrimp sauce at Kelsey's Restaurant here in New Orleans," writes Angela Stuck of Louisiana. "Can you get the recipe?"

Active time: 10 min Start to finish: 25 min

Offer either brown or white rice and Asian beer, like Tsingtao. The chicken is especially tender because of the egg white and cornstarch coating.

Raw sugar crystals (sold at natural foods stores and some supermarkets) are baked onto the edges of the free-form crust.

Spinach and Feta Phyllo Triangles

Use a mixture of green and black olives such as picholine, Niçois, and Kalamata. Soaking the olives in water for ten minutes removes excess salt.

Here, leftover cranberry sauce (or canned cranberry sauce) and boneless pork chops make a very contemporary little supper. Freshen up any leftover mashed white or sweet potatoes by stirring in chopped lemon and orange peel. A salad of bitter greens tossed with a cider vinaigrette, and a simple dessert of grape clusters and spiced bar cookies round things out.

"Whenever I visit my family in the Chicago area, my sister and I make a point of having lunch at Fresh Starts Restaurant in Flossmoor," says Carol De Biase-Ruffe of Arvada, Colorado. "They serve delicious, healthful food — and we're never disappointed. The last time we went there, I ordered a fish entrée topped with tomato salsa." The restaurant uses tilapia for this dish; we substituted the easier-to-find orange roughy.

Most supermarkets have at least one type of spiced sausage. If you don't have the time to make cornbread, it usually is sold at BBQ restaurants and diners. This recipe is an accompaniment for Maple Ginger Roasted Turkey.

Here's a hearty and satisfying pasta that makes an easy entrée for a dinner party.

Serve rice with this dish from Le Colonial, a Vietnamese restaurant in West Hollywood.