British

This ginger beer is very spicy. Adjust the amount of lime juice and sugar to your taste.

We brined our turkey for 24 hours, so leave plenty of time for this recipe. If you don’t brine yours, skip steps 1 and 2. The USDA recommends cooking the turkey until the thickest part of the thigh registers 180°F. For a moister bird, we cooked ours to 165°F; it continues to cook outside the oven as it rests.

This recipe yields excess chicken stock. The excess can be kept in plastic containers and frozen for several months.

This traditional Scottish soup is made with chicken stock, leeks, and potatoes. If you make this soup ahead, you may need to add a bit of water or stock when reheating it.

The stated purpose of my junior year abroad was to study at the famous London School of Economics, but the first thing I did when I got to England was land a part-time job at the Roux brothers’ (also famous) restaurant, Le Mazarin. Of all the challenges of living abroad, I never thought I’d have a problem finding something decent to eat. Boy, was I wrong. While the food we served guests at Le Mazarin was topnotch, staff meals were a different story. Stripped chicken carcasses, limp vegetable trimmings, and, if we were lucky, a box of just-add-water mashed-potato flakes were the components of just about every meal. The rest of London wasn’t offering many great options either at that time. Fish and chips and heavy pub fare dominated the food scene in the late eighties, before Britain’s culinary renaissance. The one thing I found worth eating (and could afford on the £10 a week my job paid) was scones with clotted cream and strawberries. And that’s exactly what I ate, for 6 straight months. After so many meals of strawberries and cream, it’s a wonder that I still love that combination. Panna cotta (“cooked cream”), a silken, eggless Italian custard, is an easy-to-make complement to perfectly ripe berries. I’ve added crème fraîche to the traditional recipe to balance the strawberries’ sweetness with some tang. You can make the panna cotta in individual ramekins and unmold them just before serving or make it in a large gratin dish and spoon it out at the table family-style.

Pimm’s is as British as cricket or a cup of tea and has gained in recognition with the general rebirth of the classic cocktail. The original recipe for the Pimm’s Cup is a very simple affair of Pimm’s No. 1 and lemon-lime soda served over ice with slices of cucumber. The Brits refer to this simply as Pimm’s and Lemonade (“lemonade” being the UK term for lemon-lime soda). What is fantastic about this recipe is the simplicity of ingredients. Add some cucumber and even a little mint and you have already elevated the cocktail. Try substituting champagne in the cocktail or even adding seasonal fruits to the mix, and you are light years beyond a simple highball.

The combination of cocoa and ground cinnamon is commonly found in Mexican chocolate and hot drinks; we’ve used it here to flavor a traditional Scottish cookie.

These are best the same day they are baked, when they’re still nice and crisp,especially around the edges. After that, they will be softer but still delicious.

With scalloped pastry edges and a fruit-streaked, creamy filling, these tarts are almost too pretty to eat, but they’re too delicious not to. The filling is similar to a British spoon dessert called fool, which consists of a fruit sauce (in this case, blackberry) folded into whipped cream; more sauce and fruit is spooned on top. Elderflower cordial, another English specialty, flavors the whipped cream; you can omit the liqueur from the recipe if you want. You could also use it to flavor homemade ice cream to serve alongside.

This recipe comes from Julia Dunlinson, mother of Martha Stewart Living design director James Dunlinson, who hails from England. Despite the name, plate cakes are actually pies, baked on dinner plates. You will need an eight- to nine-inch ovenproof plate, such as one made from stoneware or ironstone. This recipe is for a raspberry-and-apple-filled pie, but any summer berries can be used; the amount of sugar will vary with the tartness. Whipped cream is divine with tart fruits like gooseberries or black currants (see variations below).

I adore pearl barley, yet seldom remember to cook it. But at least once a year, in late spring leaning toward summer, when the weather is still chilly, I suddenly have a notion to make Scotch broth. It is essentially a homespun celebration of root vegetables bolstered by and enriched with lamb. The usual vegetable selection includes leeks, carrots, turnips, rutabagas, kohlrabies, and parsnips. Hamburg parsley, which is grown for its root rather than its leaves and is popular in northern European cooking, is also a good addition, adding herbal appeal. Unfortunately, it is so far not widely available in U.S. markets, but a garnish of fresh parsley nicely fills the herbal niche. Lamb neck and bone-in shoulder chops, the customary cuts for Scotch broth, create a meat broth as the soup cooks. Here, I turn the lamb into sausage and use a quick and convenient-to-make vegetable broth. That way the meat is thriftily stretched while still providing its depth of flavor to the soup. I add a tablespoon of tomato paste for color and a hint of acid: perhaps a shocking sidestep to staunch traditionalists, but I think the soup appreciates it.

Shepherd’s pie is a signature dish in the pubs of England and Ireland, sometimes made with lamb, as here, and sometimes with beef, in which case it is called cottage pie. The idea is the same: a simple meat pie made with a mirepoix—onion, carrot, celery—under a top crust of mashed potatoes. There’s no cheese in the mashed potatoes, but when the pie is baked, the crust is somehow enriched through the alchemy of cooking and tastes as though there were. Shepherd’s pie is usually made with leftover cooked lamb. Swapping that for quick and easy homemade lamb sausage is my revisionism, to give the humble pie a fresh and lively taste. Also, to gussy it up, I use tiny pearl onions so the onion element has a more defined presence in the pie. The horseradish is also my whim, to give the dish an acrid lilt that helps lift it above what might otherwise be humdrum fare. Fresh horseradish root is often available in produce stores and supermarkets around Passover for Jewish customers; wasabi root, though not exactly the same botanically, is similar and it is available around the New Year for Japanese customers. Like fresh ginger, horseradish root can be stored in the refrigerator almost indefinitely, as long as it is kept dry.

The highland sheep of Scotland and Ireland graze in rugged terrain with sparse vegetation. Fittingly, the seasoning for a lamb sausage one might find in those northern isles is somewhat understated. A few well-chosen aromatics, along with salt and pepper, suffice to make a tasty sausage that evokes that landscape and its restrained fare.

Season: Pretty much all year round. I’d like to introduce you to a group of cordials with a name inspired by a British fruit juice beverage called Ribena. These can be prepared throughout the year and are an excellent way of using fruit that’s too ripe for jam making. I’ve made rhubeena with rhubarb, berrybeena with summer berries, plumbeena with plums–and currants work very well too. Use these fruits alone to make single-variety ’beenas or, for a lighter and more economical cordial, use 50 percent cooking apples. Because the fruit pulp will be strained, you needn’t be too fastidious with its preparation. Rhubarb should be cut into chunks. Strawberries should be hulled. Plums are best halved, but it’s not necessary to remove the pits. Apples should be stemmed and coarsely chopped, but there’s no need to peel or core them.

Here’s a twist on a classic British pub recipe. The beefy base of the pie gets flavored up Dino-style and topped off with savory mac ‘n’ cheese instead of the traditional mashed potatoes. It makes a hearty meal. Just add salad.

Here is the dessert we served on opening day at Joe Beef. You can use small foil molds or teacups for serving.