Herbs & Spices

Serve any leftover sauce with fresh berries.

This is a good one for potato salad, too.

Here's a terrific salad with the bold tastes of cilantro and cumin. Cold beer is the ideal beverage go-with.

This rich, slightly smoky sauce is cooked for only ten minutes.

Robust ingredients and an elegant presentation: This dish captures all the romance of winter fireside dining. Break out a bottle of good Chianti to pour with supper.

This is equally good served warm or cold. If you prefer it cold, begin preparing the dessert well ahead so that it has time to chill.

Dijon mustard, brown sugar, marjoram, garlic and orange juice make a flavorful coating for this simple-to-prepare ham. The pan juices become a delicious sauce. Pour a Merlot with the meal.

(Cake aux Olives) This version of cake originated in Provence, where olives, basil, and garlic create a harmonious triumvirate. Here they combine with roasted red bell peppers and Parmesan cheese to create a bread that is gutsy, aromatic, and lovely to look at. Serve this as an appetizer, in tandem with fresh goat’s- or cow’s- milk cheese, or even lightly toasted with a poached egg on top.

Serve the curry with steamed white rice and Indian beer, and make a stop at an Indian restaurant to get some samosas — savory filled pastries — to pass as appetizers, and the flatbread called naan to sop up the curry sauce. For dessert, how about assorted teas and a carrot cake?

Anywhere you go in Laos, you will find women patiently preparing papaya for this salad. Using a small machete-like knife, they make repeated shallow parallel cuts, each about 1/8 inch deep, in a section of the papaya. Then they scrape the papaya from top to bottom so they end up with very nice julienne. A food processor fitted with the julienne disk or a manual slicer such as a mandoline works equally well.

We ordered our lamb chops ahead to allow time for the butcher to french them to the eye (to trim them of all fat and scrape the rib bone clean). This not only makes for a nice presentation but also makes it much easier for guests to pick them up. Our chops, purchased from a fancy Manhattan butcher, cost $400 and were by far the most expensive part of this wedding menu. Sounds like a lot, we know, but just think what a caterer would charge. Charmoula is a fragrant, spicy Moroccan marinade and sauce often used with fish and seafood.

A growing interest in Middle Eastern food, spurred most likely by the vegetarian movement, brought tabbouleh to the attention of many Americans. It was often served as a side dish at health food restaurants.

Nixon's re-establishment of relations with China led Americans to discover, among other things, that there was more to Chinese cooking than the Cantonese dishes we had all grown up with.

Jennifer Martin of Portland, Oregon, writes: "I am not formally trained in cooking but grew up working in food service, from chopping vegetables at food festivals to catering parties for a little extra income. Today I own Epicure Custom Cooking, a gourmet takeout shop and catering company with a few tables for dining. Our specials change weekly and are geared toward what I like to cook and eat. I simply love the business, even with my 12-hour days."