European

Cara Brunetti Hillyard of Hamilton, Virginia, writes: "I come from a long line of great cooks. My father owns an Italian market in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where my mother gets a lot of the ingredients she uses in her wonderful dishes. My mother-in-law is a recipe developer, and I've been known to sit next to my great-aunt Stella with a pen and paper as she details her amazing recipes. I live far from home now, but I reconnect with my family traditions every evening when I make dinner."

Get the freshest ground star anise by making your own. It's as easy as grinding a few star anise pods in a spice mill or a coffee grinder.

A drink that can also stand in for dessert.

Tender, faintly bitter escarole gives a unique, delicious earthiness to this double-crust pizza, which stands apart from its traditional saucy brethren.

For this lighter-than-air Austrian soufflé, we've added tart lingonberry sauce, but any preserves or jam will work.

This speedy version of the long-cooked classic is light and brothy, but it's still substantial and flavorful enough — thanks to lamb, kale, and barley — to be a great winter meal.

Meyer lemons are so special — more naturally sweet and floral than regular lemons — and we think using them in a soufflé is a nice way to highlight their uniqueness. Getting a hot soufflé to the dining room is like walking a tightrope; you find yourself mumbling, "Don't fall, don't fall." Which is exactly what makes this the perfect dessert to serve in the kitchen — just bake it and get it on the table immediately for everyone to dig in.

Homemade ravioli are well worth the effort, and making them is the perfect task to share with a kitchen full of cooks (even novices can get in on the fun). Mixing the pasta dough is a breeze in the food processor, but if you don't have one, don't worry — we've given the method for making the dough by hand as well. A brown-butter pine-nut sauce is light enough to let your efforts on the pasta really shine through.

Palmer wanders out behind the Dry Creek Kitchen to pick the apples for this tart. He generally goes for a combination of Macouns, Pippins, and/or Gravensteins, but we used easy-to-find Golden Delicious and were very pleased with the results. Palmer likes to serve this French classic warm, with a scoop of chestnut ice cream and crisp strips of candied bacon alongside. The three elements make for a textural symphony, but this caramelized beauty is also fantastic paired with a humble scoop of store-bought vanilla — or even by itself.

In Italy, thin slices of bresaola are typically served as an antipasto. In this recipe, the thinly sliced meat is topped with a crunchy brussels sprout salad.

This dish is great alongside the Lemony Chicken Milanese .

The filling: rich chunks of leftover brasato and vegetables . The topping: mashed parsnips and potatoes.

Brasato (which means "braised" in Italian) is the ultimate pot roast.

Use shaved Parmesan in place of the goat cheese, if you like.

Pastry chef Gale Gand found this family-favorite recipe in her Hungarian grandmother's recipe file.