Buttermilk

The addition of buttermilk to a basic vinaigrette imparts creaminess and reduces the amount of oil needed for thickening. This dressing has a lighter body than the others, perfect for tender lettuces.

A simple buttermilk biscuit serves as the basis for fruit shortcake. As with many easy recipes, your success rate at making biscuits will most likely grow exponentially with each attempt. There’s nothing tricky about it; just be sure to work quickly and not to overwork the dough at all, which will cause the biscuits to become heavy and flat. In this recipe, a traditional strawberry shortcake is enhanced by a rhubarb compote to serve along with the macerated berries. You can use one fruit and not the other (by doubling the amount of either topping). Or substitute an equal amount of another fruit for the rhubarb, or macerate any other type of berry. An apricot compote would be lovely with macerated blackberries, for example, or nectarines with raspberries. The whipped cream, however, is not optional; it’s a fundamental part of the appeal of fruit shortcake. The biscuits, meanwhile, can be served on their own for breakfast, topped with a pat of butter and your favorite jam. (If you are planning to serve them with savory dishes like eggs and bacon, however, omit the sugar and vanilla bean.)

A simple butter cake is often referred to as yellow cake, but it’s not the butter that produces its distinctive color; most butter cakes also contain whole eggs, so the yolks contribute to the color (as well as the rich flavor). The creaming method is essential to many classic American layer cakes like this one, but here an electric mixer (fitted with the paddle attachment) is used, rather than a wooden spoon. Be sure to cream for the suggested amount of time to create the finest texture and a velvety crumb. Using a combination of flours is equally important; cake flour imparts tenderness and a delicate crumb, all-purpose flour lends structure.

Next time you want to welcome guests Southern-style, cook up a batch (or two) of crisp fried chicken. It’s hard to imagine anything else that exudes both down-home appeal and true culinary wizardry. The recipe here is for one chicken, but you can easily double the ingredients to fry two. Whenever you are preparing a mixture for dredging, start off by whisking together only half the amounts called for; then, if you find you need more, whisk together the rest. Many recipes call for more dredging ingredients than you’ll need, and the excess must be discarded because it came into contact with raw meat. Or, you can whisk everything together, transfer some to the bowl for dredging, and then freeze any unused (and untainted) portion in a resealable plastic bag. When pan-frying most foods, you do not want to crowd the pan. But fried chicken is an exception. Placing more pieces in the pan helps to stabilize the temperature of the oil during frying so that it does not spike as much or as quickly. The chicken can be soaked in ice water overnight in a covered dish in the refrigerator to remove any blood or impurities; be sure to change the water a few times. If you prefer a thicker crust, double dredge: coat the chicken in the flour mixture and let sit for 15 minutes, then dredge in the flour again, tapping off excess.

Perhaps the best known cold pureed soup, vichyssoise is a simple puree of potato and leeks that is traditionally enriched with cream; adding a bit of buttermilk along with the cream gives this version a pleasant tangy flavor. Here, leeks serve as both an aromatic, replacing the onion, as well as one of the base vegetables. Garlic is typically not used. The amount of stock or water called for is also reduced, since both cream and buttermilk are added. If making the soup for company, buy an extra leek to prepare the Leek Frisée (page 75) for the garnish.

Everyone loves doughnuts, so it didn’t surprise me when these bombolini, Italian for “little doughnuts,” turned out to be the most popular dessert at the Osteria. You’re likely to find some version of sweet fried dough in every Italian region. That said, ours is made with a brioche-style dough that’s fried to order and served with a berry marmellata, or compote, and lemon curd—not at all Italian, but reminiscent of jelly doughnut combinations that Americans know and love. For the marmellata, we use mountain huckleberries from Oregon; you can use blueberries, blackberries, or boysenberries, or a combination—as you like.

It’s impossible to walk into any bakery in Italy without seeing a lattice-covered jam-filled tart called a crostata, so when I penciled out a short list of the desserts I would want to make at Mozza, it was only natural that crostata was on that list. For the longest time, I just couldn’t decide how I wanted to serve it. An unadorned crostata seemed fine for a bakery, but it looked too naked on the plate to serve alone at the Pizzeria. At the same time, I was struggling with how to incorporate another Italian favorite, panna cotta, into our repertoire. Somehow, in the course of all of my experimenting, I got the idea to substitute the creaminess of gelato, the most obvious accompaniment to a fruit tart, with the creaminess of panna cotta, and I put the crostata and panna cotta together. It worked, solving both problems at the same time. We drizzle the panna cotta with saba, Sardinian grape must. What we created was a dessert built of all Italian elements that, though you would never see them together in Italy, somehow work. I’m proud of that. The recipe makes twelve crostate, four more than you will serve with the panna cotta. I based the yield on the number of crostate the dough would make—and I figured you could find someone to eat the extras. You will need twelve 1/2-cup miniature brioche molds to make the panna cotta, though you could use 2-ounce ramekins—your panna cotta will taste just as good, it just won’t look as pretty. The crostata dough is the same as the Pasta Frolla (page 276) with toasted sesame seeds added. Dahlia and I got the idea when she was working on a sesame-seed biscotti. We didn’t like the biscotti enough to include them in our repertoire, but we really liked the subtle flavor and crunch that the seeds added to the dough.

The batter for this cake is much like that for a biscuit; the chilled butter is cut in rather than creamed to produce a tender crumb. This recipe was developed by Emily Donahue for Rosey’s Coffee and Tea in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Yeast is used as part of the leavening to give these biscuits the light, airy texture that inspired their name.

Graham flour is coarser than regular whole-wheat flour, which also works. If you use the latter, substitute 1/2 cup wheat bran for 1/2 cup all-purpose flour.