5 Ingredients or Fewer

The Trident cocktail is a riff on a negroni that uses Spain’s sherry, Italy’s Cynar, and Scandinavia’s aquavit.

The Americano cocktail is a classic Italian drink that dates back to Milan’s Caffè Camparino in the 1860s, where it was known as the Milano-Torino.

These jammy eggs are a quick and beautiful addition to any cocktail party.

One of the oldest and most perfect of three-ingredient cocktails, the Japanese Cocktail first saw print in 1862 but remains stubbornly unknown and underappreciated.

The Manhattan/Brooklyn cocktail riff that birthed a dozen others, Vincenzo Errico’s Red Hook was first served at the original Milk & Honey, the influential bar in New York.

If you love the taste of ginger, this simple dessert is for you. It requires no baking or steaming and has only three ingredients: milk, sugar and ginger juice.

This easy peanut butter cookie recipe is streamlined for minimal fuss and they’re flourless, so those on a gluten-free diet can enjoy them too.

An easy spreadable blend of fresh goat cheese, horseradish, and heavy cream.

Chunky apples, plus onion, thyme, and cider make this comforting dish especially appropriate for the holidays.

Don't throw away your watermelon rinds. Turn them into these sweetly sour preserves, which are a perfect accompaniment to roasted meats, cheese plates, and more.

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.

Chewy, flaky, rich paratha is always a crowd-pleaser.

This smoky chipotle and tomatillo salsa is an excellent dipping sauce for crudités or tortilla chips, or you can spoon it on top of tamales. You can use more chiles for a spicier sauce.

The double-flip method makes the tortillas puff beautifully once you get the rhythm.

Barley flour, cornmeal, and a hint of grapefruit juice make this easy pie crust extra flavorful. Try it with this Blueberry-Nectarine Lattice Pie.

Requesón is a salty, spreadable Mexican cheese that tastes like a creamier, more acidic version of ricotta. Making it from scratch is easy: You curdle milk with vinegar or another acid such as lime juice, and then warm it and watch the curds form. Most street vendors use it as a tlacoyo filling, but you can use requesón for all sorts of things—stirred into scrambled eggs and tomatoes, smeared into a corn tortilla with salsa, or spread onto a piece of toast with honey or mixed in a dip of fresh herbs and olive oil.

Avocado leaves are the aroma of Oaxaca, and they are the main flavor in this indispensable staple. So many things can be created out of this little bean paste flavored with anise-y avocado tree leaves. It is the base for memelas, tlayudas, molletes, enfrijoladas, and so much more. Growing up, we stopped at the market in Tlacolula—a small village located near Oaxaca City—just to buy the paste, already made, in little plastic bags. You buy some tasajo, you grill it, you get some fresh tlayudas, some salsa, and then you spread some of this paste all over your tortilla like it is a savory cake frosting.

Chances are, if you're not Oaxaqueño and grew up in this last generation in Mexico or the United States, you’ve probably been taught to think that pork fat like aciento—Oaxacan-style chicharrón paste—is not good for you, and that you should always cook and eat things made with a plant-based oil instead. It’s normal to think this way. That is, until you go to Oaxaca and see that aciento is a way of life and that a lot of elders live to be more than one hundred years old eating the stuff on a daily basis. You’ll also realize that it is amazingly flavorful and really completes a lot of masa-based Oaxacan dishes such as tlayudas, memelas, empanadas, and chochoyotes. Think of it as a Oaxacan brown butter. If you do it right, it should taste nutty and toasty, not like lard or like fat. I also understand that a lot of people may not have the time to properly render chicharrón into a paste, so this shortcut version using olive oil is much quicker and tastes almost as good. If you can’t find or don’t have access to fresh chicharrón, American-style pork rinds also work well.

Instant potatoes turn gnocchi-making into a breezy, 15-minute affair rather than an hours-long commitment.

This makes enough strawberry glaze for one full recipe of gem cakes; you can halve the recipe if you’d like an assortment of flavors.