Kosher

Eggs are a staple of the Turkish diet. An ingredient in many dishes, they are also prepared on their own as a main course for lunch or as an appetizer for dinner. Here they are poached, set on a bed of yogurt (another staple) and drizzled with a red pepper-sage butter. The red pepper that fires up Turkish cooking - a cross between paprika and dried crushed red pepper - is much more popular than black pepper, especially outside the large cities.

Try these for both dessert and breakfast. They're great with their pan juices or the Apple Custard Sauce.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Tender, biscuit-like dough is formed into a lattice atop this easy treat.

When selecting persimmons for the following recipe, be sure to get the acorn-shaped Hachiya variety and not the flatter, wider type called Fuyu. Look for very ripe specimens, which should feel quite soft and have glossy, translucent skin.

This recipe originally accompanied Peach and Blueberry Shortcakes. . They are also great on their own with coffee or tea.

You may have had pappadams — light, crisp wafers made of lentil flour — at Indian restaurants. Here we use them as a stand-in for croutons.

Turn-of-the-century cooks thought the original of this dense, chocolaty cake was so wickedly rich and sinfully delicious that it just had to be bad. So they named it after the devil himself. The first recipe for it appeared in 1905, and it's been around ever since. We've freshened up the devil with a little lift of mint.

More confections than cookies, really, meringues accompany ice cream well and add a festive dimension to the table. They are best baked on a cool, dry day.

Kalmi Shaak Following Bengali tradition, Chitrita Banerji's mother presented this vegetable dish as a first course — delicate yet spicy, it gets the appetite going. But you could serve it as a side dish with the mung beans and the eggplant fritters. The original recipe called for mustard oil, but because it's so hard to find an FDA-approved brand — many bottles are labeled "for massage only," though Indians find that they're fine to cook with — we have substituted vegetable oil.

Aioli, the garlicky Provençal mayonnaise, is accented with chives and Dijon mustard.

Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 20 min

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Potato salad gets perked up with herbs, vegetables and a terrific dressing. Serve the salad warm or at room temperature.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.