Walnut

We're convinced that red trout is well worth looking for. We love its firm texture, its delicate flavor, and its gorgeous pink flesh, which here contrasts beautifully with the green pesto—an all-purpose sauce that would taste great with just about any type of fish or pasta.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from Dinner After Dark: Sexy, Sumptuous Supper Soirées by Colin Cowie. For more about Cowie, click here. I can't remember a Christmas back at home when we didn't sit around the family table and enjoy my sister Anne's wonderful tart at the end of the meal. It's heartwarming and incredibly convenient: It can be made days in advance and frozen, with no effect on the delicious result. For Christmastime, add 1/2 cup glacéed cherries to the batter; these holiday treats are the red and green cherries, preserved in jars.

Beets are high in folate, a vitamin that may help ward off heart disease; this dish delivers 1/3 of your daily requirement.

Lamb shoulder chops are widely available and are less expensive than lamb rib chops.

Serve alongside the seafood. Leftovers would be great with chicken or lamb.

Turkish cooking might sound exotic, but it's easy. Most of the ingredients are familiar, and combining them in new ways makes for an exciting and different way to eat. This is an excellent side salad for lamb chops. For a great small-plates dinner party menu that's modern Turkish cooking at its best, pick up the May issue of Bon Appétit.

A semifreddo is a frozen, molded mousse. Here, we combine it with a walnut-shortbread crust for a tart that celebrates the coming of spring fruit.

Editor's note: This recipe was created by chef Einat Admony for an Israeli Passover menu. These fragrant birds, glazed with a Persian-inspired sauce, are delicious paired with the Swiss potato pancakes called rösti. However, if you're not making them for Passover (or if you're Sephardic and don't avoid rice on this holiday), you could go a more traditional route and serve them over basmati rice flavored with nuts and dried fruit.

Editor's note: This recipe was created by chef Einat Admony for an Israeli Passover menu. This is one of those desserts that magically improves as it sits — you could serve it after one day, but it's even better on the third day, as the matzoh soaks up the lemony syrup. To avoid a cloying rose flavor, be sure to use rose water (available at Middle Eastern markets and adrianascaravan.com), not rose syrup.

This recipe makes more than enough pesto for Chef Ryan Hardy's Artichoke and green garlic soup . Leftovers, which freeze wonderfully, are great with pasta.

This recipe was created by chef Ryan Hardy of the Little Nell in Aspen, Colorado. It's part of a special menu he created for Epicurious's Wine.Dine.Donate program.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from The Gourmet Slow Cooker: Simple and Sophisticated Meals from Around the World by Lynn Alley. For more on slow cooking, click here. . Who would have thought you could make chocolate chip cookies in a slow cooker? Though they'll certainly look different from what you're used to, the flavor is great and they're easier and less labor-intensive to make. The cookie slices are delicious topped with ice cream, or simply served with a tall glass of cold milk.

This gorgeous winter salad would go well with the Mediterranean Supper Omelet. The seasoned rice vinegar takes candied walnuts from ubiquitous to inspired.

The garlic-nut sauce known as tarator, which sometimes also includes tahini, is a classic Turkish accompaniment to mussels and fried fish as well as vegetables. Here, it's used with cauliflower that is sliced — rather than separated into florets — so that it can be more easily browned, which gives it a nutty flavor that complements the tarator perfectly.