Rosemary

This dish, inspired by a recipe from Gray Kunz's Elements of Taste, is a great alternative to roasting a whole chicken. To ensure that the bird lies flat and cooks evenly in the pan, we've used the spatchcock technique, which entails simply removing the backbone of the chicken and tucking the legs up and out of the way. Don't worry if the instructions seem a bit confusing when you're reading through the recipe — the steps become obvious once you have a chicken in front of you.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from Ted Allen's The Food You Want to Eat. For Allen's tips on throwing a Thanksgiving party, click here. A simple, terrific fall or winter side dish.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from Ted Allen's The Food You Want to Eat. For Allen's tips on throwing a Thanksgiving party, click here. I can't have cocktail hour without great, fresh olives — and
I don't mean the rubbery, tasteless black ones from a can.
I mean the real deal: kalamatas, niçoises, gaetas, picholines— the more variety, the better. Most good supermarkets these days feature an olive bar—that is, a variety of loose olives available in bulk. And that is a very, very good thing. Some of these places include among the selection a batch of olives that have been seasoned with herbs and other flavors, too. But it's more fun to do it yourself; you can buy different kinds of olives (be sure to get different sizes and colors, which looks great in the bowl), select the flavors you like the best — say, thyme, cayenne, garlic, grapefruit zest, whatever — and you can control the spiciness. You'll have a great collection of olives for your next impromptu get together, or an excellent addition to an antipasto platter. And they're almost no work at all to make. When you serve, remember to put out a small dish so guests have some place to put the pits.

Although this dish may sound unusual, it turns out that the sweetness of grapes and caramelized onions makes for a delicious alliance with aromatic rosemary and rich chicken livers.

A little fresh rosemary adds a lot of flavor to this simple but festive roast.

This is the ideal way to prepare young chickens, since there are two safeguards against their drying out (always a risk with small birds). The herbed butter slipped beneath the skin melts, basting and flavoring the meat as it cooks; the gentle, indirect heat lightly chars the skin without toughening the meat. As a result, every bite is juicy and perfectly seasoned.

Splashes of lemon add a bright note to this simple chicken dish seasoned in the Provençal tradition with rosemary and garlic.

The turbot is roasted on a thin cake of overlapping potato slices and then sauced with a simple pan sauce, garnished with tomatoes and black olives. Turbot is rarely available in the United States, but another flatfish such as a fluke or flounder makes a good substitute. You will need a mandoline or other vegetable slicer to slide the potatoes very thin. Ovenproof nonstick frying pans work best here, so the potato cakes don't stick, but if necessary you can use other 8-inch frying pans or cake pans; line them with rounds of parchment paper.

There's not much cheese in this gratin — the better to let the perfectly ripe summer peppers and tomatoes, cooked just enough to intensify their flavors, sing.

Goat cheese makes a lovely base for fresh herbs, carrying their flavor and punctuating their brightness with its gentle tang; in this spread, it tastes particularly mild because of the little bit of whipped cream folded in. Take the cheese out to soften before heading for the farmers market, and by the time you get back, it will be ready to mix with whatever herbs you've found there.

Editor's note: The recipe below is excerpted from Katie Brown Entertains. To read more about Katie Brown and to get her tips on throwing a headache-free cocktail party, click here

Editor's note: The recipe below is excerpted from Katie Brown Entertains. To read more about Katie Brown and to get her tips on throwing a headache-free cocktail party, click here. Focaccia is a porous, nonflaky but crusty bread from Italy. It is very "in" now due to the relative ease of preparation—and you can really put anything you want on it...it can be a whole meal!

Crumbly and melting, easy and irresistible, at the catering company, we keep the dough for this shortbread on hand in the freezer for in-house treats and for extra hors d'oeuvres or snacks for a party that balloons at the last minute. I first tasted this shortbread when my friend Gail Monaghan passed it around in a silver basket before a dinner party at her house. I took one bite and said, "OK, where's the pen? Hand over the recipe (there was a "please" implied): this is amazing and I need to put this in my book." She very angelically wrote it out nicely, and here it is.

Kebabs are not only fun to eat, they also save time: It takes less than 10 minutes for these lamb cubes to cook up medium-rare. The marinade, made with fresh thyme and rosemary, infuses both the meat and the vegetables with south-of-France flavor.

The chicken needs to marinate for at least four hours (or overnight), so be sure to start in advance. What to drink: Crisp, full-bodied white wine like Chablis or unoaked Chardonnay from California.