Tomato

Featuring olive oil and the combined herbs and produce of the south of France, this one-dish country dinner will transport you to a café table in Aix in a heartbeat.

With golden cheese that yields to an abundance of roasted vegetables, this gratin is an ideal side dish, but it really doesn't need anything more than a green salad to make it a satisfying dinner.

Obviously, those who devote their lives to pork are going to have the best recipes for it, which explains why porc charcutière—named after pork butchers—is such a time-honored preparation. This version is lighter and a lot quicker than a traditional one, but its flavors are no less fine-tuned.

You don't need to get fancy with bouillabaisse. This version of the French fisherman's stew liberates you from having to buy up the entire fish counter—just choose any two or three of the fish and shellfish options listed below.

You can make the veggie filling a day ahead and refrigerate. Simply reheat 1 1/2 hours before filling the tacos.

Using lamb slashes fat; mixing a milk-soaked pita into the patty keeps it moist.

The tangy sweetness of cherry tomatoes contrasts nicely with the plump, smoky chops, while green-olive paste gives a briny edge to the white beans.

This filling meatless meal satisfies nearly a quarter of your daily fiber needs.

Food editor Lillian Chou, who is also gourmet's resident runner of marathons, swears by quinoa: "I have so much more energy if I eat it before a race!" And transforming this power grain into crisp cakes topped with a substantial rustic sauce and gooey softened mozzarella creates another compelling reason to love it—it just tastes so good.

We found ourselves craving this sun-dried tomato butter, not just spreading it on lamb chops but also tossing it with orzo and smearing it onto slices of toast.

Debi Mazar shared this recipe exclusively with Epicurious. When making this rich dish, Mazar likes to multiply the recipe by one and a half. Leftovers can be quickly heated and served over pasta for an easy, delicious weeknight dinner.

Browning the lamb shanks helps seal in the juices when they braise.

Residents of Brunswick, Georgia, and Brunswick County, Virginia, are both fiercely protective of the provenance of this dish, but let's face it—hunters have lived off this sort of thing forever. Like all stews, this tastes even better the next day.

The brown sugar in the ingredients list below is there to mellow the acidity of the tomatoes, not to make this a sweet dish. Use a sturdy bakery loaf of white sandwich bread, not the packaged sliced stuff, for the topping. You will get enormous pleasure from serving people this dish.

For most people, the word gumbo immediately conjures the Cajun and Creole cooking of Louisiana. But okra (ngombo in Bantu), for which the soup-stew is named, reached South Carolina with the slave trade some years before Europeans settled in Louisiana, and the Creole world, where African, European, and indigenous cultures meet, actually extends up the southern Atlantic coast. There are many different gumbo recipes, all taking advantage of local ingredients and served with rice. This one is a heady, fragrant slurry thick with seafood. If desired, add filé powder (ground dried sassafras leaves), a Choctaw thickening agent with an almost lemony flavor, just before eating.

One of the most popular items on Peacock's menu at his Watershed restaurant, in Decatur, Georgia, these tomatoes are concentrated and soft, and sugar plays up their sweetness, making for a homemade flavor riff on ketchup that you'll want to serve with everything. The tomatoes shrink quite a bit—but a little definitely goes a long way.

This rustic, satisfying spiced soup—a perfect dish to make ahead and reheat on busy weeknights—will help stave off even the fiercest midwinter chill.