Chicken

Offer grilled zucchini slices and a deli pasta salad alongside. Dessert? Berry tartlets from the bakery.

What to drink: The menu's sweet-tart flavors call for a floral Riesling or spicy Syrah.

Active time: 45 min Start to finish: 4 hr

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Despite its name, this dish is not rice at all but noodles—and not even rice noodles but shimmering, transparent bean threads with lots of chicken flavor. Got that straight?

You can easily recreate this recipe with a wonderful free-range chicken. As for the candied chestnuts, I recommend using freshly cooked, shelled chestnuts which are still quite sweet!

This was a specialty of Marie's mother, Sylvia. Because the potatoes were always crowded around the edges of the pan and became crusty during baking, everyone in her family fought for those potatoes "by the wall."

Bottled vinaigrette adds a tangy twist to the chicken. This stylish dish goes well with couscous. Molasses cookies and vanilla ice cream sprinkled with chopped crystallized ginger would be a lovely finish.

Chicken stock is one of the great all-purpose kitchen preparations, and you’ll be surprised at how useful it is in chowder making. It is unsurpassed as a vehicle for soups and stews, providing nutrients, a luxuriant texture, and a delicious flavor. I am always amazed at how the flavor of chicken stock melts into other flavors and allows them to come through clearly. That’s why it is staple ingredient in most any culture’s soups. Chicken stock can be used in place of fish stock or clam broth in chowder or seafood recipes. It is a necessity in corn chowder or other farmhouse chowders. It is so useful, in fact, you may want to double the recipe and keep some in the freezer. Chicken stock is made with chicken bones, vegetables, herbs, and spices. Not all markets cut chicken as frequently as they once did, since the large processor companies have taken over the job, so it is a good idea to call your butcher or supermarket to be sure they will save them for you. Typically necks, backs, and wing tips are sold for stock and they work fine, but it helps the stock to have a few carcasses as well. Cut the carcasses into 3 or 4 pieces before using. My wife, Nancy, freezes carcasses from roast chicken dinners. When she gathers enough, she defrosts them and makes a very good stock. You can make stock from raw chicken bones, cooked chicken carcasses, or a combination of both.

A mildly sweet and pungent dish. No soy sauce is used in the sauce, so it is lighter in color than other sweet and pungent dishes.

This quick dish gets its flavor from fresh tangerine peel as well as the fruit's juice. To make easy work of grating the peel, choose tangerines with firm skin and store them in the refrigerator. Then use a hand grater or a Microplane grater-zester to grate the peel.

From Ristorante Chianti, Geneva, Illinois.

Bilko's spice mix is a closely guarded secret, but Donna King shared with us its fundamental ingredients as well as the basic technique—a long marination, at least 24 hours. This results in some of the juiciest chicken we've ever eaten. The chicken must also rest five or ten minutes after being dredged in the seasoned flour to, as King told us, "get doughy." The Bon Ton recipe calls for Ac'cent (monosodium glutamate) in both the marinade and the dredging mixture. We tested it with and without, and the chicken mainly tasted saltier with the Ac'cent, which some people preferred.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Ground almonds create texture and thicken the sauce of pollo almendrado—our homage to New York's large Mexican and Central American population.

Introduced to India by Portuguese settlers, this spicy stew can also be made with pork, beef or lamb. Serve over steamed basmati rice.