Thanksgiving

This subtly spiced, sweet potato-based marvel borrows from the Basque cheesecake tradition. It's baked until its exterior is a deep copper, with a pale interior.

This dish would be just as welcome on the brunch table as on the dinner table, and I wouldn’t fault you for adding a little maple syrup.

Buttery brown sugar caramel flavors this ice cream, with an added boost from bourbon.

It’s a shame you don't often spot people grilling carrots, because they also grill beautifully, developing a char that balances out their sweetness.

With a simple sweet onion dressing, roasted peanuts, and crunchy potato chips, this salad is an easy favorite. As the salad sits, it becomes even more flavorful.

There is a way to have your macaroni fix in the freezer: a custard-style baked mac ’n’ cheese. Instead of a cream-based sauce, this one uses eggs and béchamel to help bind a very cheesy filling with the noodles. The pimentos help to cut the richness with a little bit of acidity.

Béchamel, a cream sauce bound by a roux of flour and butter, holds up well in the freezer, maintaining the same gooey, melty texture that the freezer too often destroys in other dairy. It’s pivotal for casseroles, such as lasagna (page 126) or the green bean dish (page 125) that falls on so many Thanksgiving menus. It’s the halfway point to sausage gravy (page 122) or cheese sauce. Long story short, béchamel helps bridge the gap when thinking about foods that freeze well. Just like duct tape, you should never be without it.

Carrot cake, but with beets—and the dreamiest frosting of all.

This bourbon cocktail brings warming spices into a crisp cooler. For the cinnamon apple spice tea, steep one cinnamon apple spice tea bag (such as Celestial Seasonings) in six ounces hot water for 2 minutes. Let cool to room temperature before using.

This rum cocktail is a tropical riff on a gingery mule. Pomegranate gives it a lovely tartness, and there’s a refreshing bubble from the soda.

Layers of creamy potato, three cheeses, and savory kale and leeks mean that this is one dish that's here for a good time, not a long time.

This very stable Italian meringue is incredibly versatile—it makes magnificent billowy white peaks to brown as you wish. It is a large recipe—6 egg whites—so that you have an abundance of this great meringue. Of course, you can easily halve this recipe.

These pillowy biscuits are stuffed with spinach and cheese, but they work equally well with any other vegetable you care to throw at them. Swap the spinach for up to a cup of roasted squash, charred poblanos, or other cooked vegetable, and sub the Gruyère with any other cheese you like (if you choose a more intense cheese like feta or blue cheese, use ¾ cup instead of the full cup). 

Dairy free, rustic and easy to make, this fruit-layered cake works equally well with stone fruit in summer or firm pears in winter.

Simmer duck legs in a chile-infused, maramalade-based braise until tender, then reduce the sauce to a sticky-rich lacquer to glaze over the crisp skin.

This winter cocktail is bright and fizzy, spicy with ginger, and smoky with Scotch. Think of it as a Penicillin, gone extra-festive.

Poach quince in rosé with a dash of cocktail bitters and a few warm spices, then assemble into a tart with almond paste using an upside-down, Tatin-style method.