Seed

There are only five employees at The Little Rooster Cafe, a small breakfast and lunch spot, but its terrific food and friendly service make it popular with locals and tourists (especially those who come to browse the town's outlet stores). Chef and co-owner Hub Poelmann features a different waffle every day. "We have an open kitchen," he says. "People smell the waffles cooking, and then order them." Poelmann credits his cooks with this lemon-poppy seed recipe, which was the happy result of "playing around in the kitchen." These light waffles would also be good with maple syrup, if you prefer.

As the story goes, the Maya served this dish to the Spaniards, calling it papadzules, which means "food for the lords."

Steaming couscous may be a bit more time-consuming than the usual boiling method, but we feel the results are well worth it. Steaming makes the grains fluffier and much more tender. You'll need a bowl-shaped steamer, such as a basket steamer, or you could set a metal sieve into the saucepan.

"During a vacation in Scottsdale, Arizona, my brother-in-law took me to his favorite restaurant, Cowboy Ciao," writes Linden Avery of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. "It serves a very colorful, delicious chopped salad called a Stetson. Could you get the recipe so I can re-create it at home?" This main-course salad is presented with the ingredients lined up in rows. For convenience, you could just toss the salad instead.

You'll need six baby loaf pans for this recipe. Look for disposable ones at the market.

To maximize the flavor of this salad, toss the beets with the dressing while they're still warm, so they'll absorb more of it. Sunflower seeds turn rancid fairly quickly, so it's important to purchase them from a place with high turnover, such as a natural foods store. Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 1 1/4 hr

Party alert: This spicy snack is perfect with chilled sparkling wine or ice-cold beer.

These little cakes can be put in the center of a gift basket filled with other goodies, or wrapped in foil and festive holiday paper to be given on their own.

Most kids will like the dressing, but you might want to put it on the side just in case. Serve pink lemonade to the kids; the grown-ups might prefer iced tea or sangria.

Pan-roasting or toasting in a dry cast-iron skillet is a cooking technique used often in Mexican cuisine. We use it here to bring up the flavors of corn, onion, and pumpkin seeds. We created this salad as a main course, but it's also a terrific side dish. Active time: 50 min Start to finish: 1 hr

We loved L.A. chef Mary Sue Milliken's crisp baked-tortilla crackers in her pool-party menu (August 2000). Here, we invent our own version of them.

Pesto is, of course, a great sauce for pasta, and this topping is also good on steamed vegetables and grilled meats. Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

This Parisian version of a Bialystoker tsibele (onion) pletzel, also called onion zemmel, onion pampalik, or onion board, is very similar to an Italian focaccia. Try this flat bread sprinkled with rosemary, and you will see how very close it is.

These fresh-from-the-oven rolls are made with frozen bread dough.