European

Also great layered with some sweetened mixed berries or other fruit and presented in parfait glasses.

Buttered potatoes accompany this simple, sophisticated dish at Gugelhof restaurant.

This attractive and flavorful main course is perfect for weeknight entertaining.

This is the soup everyone enjoyed in Louviers for Carnaval. Quick to make, deliciously satisfying and alluring, you will find it hits the spot on a cool late winter to spring evening.

O.K., it's time to think about dinner, but in the summer, just the idea of turning on the stove — let alone the oven — leaves you less than enthusiastic. That probably means using the grill, but you've had your share of hot dogs, kebabs and barbecued chicken. Our solution? Something unexpected grilled pizzas. The dough is a snap to make; the pizzas are small and easy to manage; and since the sausages and colorful summer vegetables are also grilled, there's almost nothing to clean up. Plus, we splurged and added three kinds of cheese. After you try this recipe once, you'll erase the local pizza joint's number from your speed dial. And who knows? You might just forget about your stove.

Active time: 40 min Start to finish: 40 min

Cook: Nancy Harmon Jenkins
Source: Cucinaamore.com It's difficult to imagine a more mundane-sounding dish than Pasta with Baked Tomato Sauce — and yet this extremely simple pasta is a breakthrough, not like any other you've ever eaten. And so good you'll make it again and again. The sauce is made from roasted cherry tomatoes, very ripe ones. These diminutive tomatoes with the big taste are then covered with a cheesey-garlicky-bread crumb mixture and set in the oven. Just before serving, you tear some basil leaves into the roasted tomato mixture and that's your sauce, right in the oven dish: add some corkscrew or butterfly pasta and you have dinner. Italian cookbook author Nancy Harmon Jenkins points out that the ony trick to this dish is using really ripe cherry tomatoes'which are easy to find all year long. If they're not available, use any red, ripe tomatoes and quarter them.

(Cacciucco) This seafood soup, called cacciucco (meaning "mixture"), is a specialty of Livorno, a fishing port that is Tuscany's second-largest city. It has been made for hundreds of years, and variations of it appear all along the Tuscan coast. Traditionally, at least five types of fish and shellfish are included (one for each "c" in the name). If you like, do as the Italians do, and place a slice of toasted bread in each bowl before ladling the soup over.

Dried porcini are sold at Italian delis and in many supermarkets.

"To celebrate my birthday, my husband took me to Assaggio, one of my favorite restaurants here," writes Christy Wall of Portland, Oregon. "As I always do, I ordered the bow-tie pasta with wild mushrooms, butternut squash, spinach, garlic and olive oil."

A delicious treat from Aspa Herrgård. If you don't want to caramelize the top in brûlée style, just sift powdered sugar over the tart before serving.

Poulet aux Quarante Gousses d'Ail Active time: 15 min Start to finish: 50 min Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic was a recipe that allowed us to be provocative without being downright offensive. It presents the softer side of garlic — the "stinking rose" — mellowed by long, slow cooking.

As in all of Italy, pasta is served as a first course (primo) in Tuscany.

Churrasco is Spanish for grilled steak. This is Douglas Rodriguez's Argentine interpretation made with pork. He takes slices of tenderloin and pounds them to approximate the thickness of a skirt steak. Marinate the tenderloin strips for two to six hours before grilling.

This is the best clafouti I have ever tasted, for it is short on flour, long on custard, and the butter gives it an added depth of flavor. Remove the pits if you like. If you leave the pits in the cherries, be sure to warn your guests so they don't crack their teeth!

This traditional French dessert combines all the best qualities of custard, pudding, and cake.