Onion

Spinach and lowfat ricotta make it hearty—and good for you.

An easy fancy meal with a bonus: Mushrooms and tomato may fight cancer.

My mother grew up in Bad Nauheim, Germany, where she helped her parents with their inn and restaurant called Die Krone (The Crown). When I was growing up, she cooked several traditional German dishes, but one of the most memorable for me was her recipe for sweet-and-sour red cabbage. Though I was a pretty picky eater, I adored the cabbage and loved how it colored the mashed potatoes my mother would always serve with it. Mom never wrote the recipe down for me, but I reached out to German relatives and re-created it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed taking the trip down memory lane. Grating the cabbage takes a while, so make sure to have some good tunes on!

These flavorsome burgers are ideal for relaxed family meals and offer a good hit of mood-lifting tryptophan.

This smoky, fiery concoction is inspired by Bar Amá's "Bus Driver" salsa.

Spoon gingery, slow-cooked beef and vegetables over wide rice noodles for a warming, soul-satisfying dinner.

Make this dish ahead of time: It's great at room temperature.

Whether you pile this spicy, marinated grilled steak and cabbage into warm tortillas or over a bowl of rice, the only thing you’ll wish is that you had made more.

Make this salad without plating anxiety: Treat the daikon rounds like a deck of cards and let them fall where they may.

Hot, hearty and, yes, sloppy. This flavorful favorite is a meal in a bun. Serve it up and watch your family run to the dinner table.

Adding onion delivers moisture; forming thicker patties prevents them from cooking too fast and drying out. Both steps are key when working with grass-fed ground beef.

The batter for these fritter-like cakes is pretty dry, but that's what yields crisp results. Pressing them flat in the pan also helps maximize the crunch factor.

Gravy is pure comfort for me, and if I can make a gravy into a meal, so much the better. This is one of my favorite ways to have a rich, comforting, and filling dinner in less than half an hour. It also contains one of my favorite methods to get a toasty gravy base with lots of depth—toasting bread crumbs. After caramelizing the onions, you sprinkle in the bread crumbs and toss them around a bit until golden brown. Then, when you add the liquid ingredients, the bread crumbs thicken and flavor the gravy. It's wonderful served with grilled or sautéed kale, and over mashed potatoes.

This garlicky sauce is the traditional accompaniment to the starchy root vegetables of the Hispanic Caribbean, especially Cuba. The acidic medium is usually Seville, or bitter, orange juice, though lime juice or white vinegar can be substituted. The mojo is at its best spooned or brushed over piping-hot boiled yuca, plantains, or other starchy tropical vegetables.

This dish is the result of a kind of friendly competition I had with my friend Jeremy Marshall of Aquagrill restaurant in downtown Manhattan. We wanted to develop crusts for salmon: His is falafel, mine is hummus. The lemon oil will be best if you start it a day ahead, so there's time for the flavors to mature.

This may be more of a rémoulade than a tartar sauce, but we've been making it this way since I came to the Oyster Bar. Has it changed at all since 1974? There's no way for me to know—but I doubt it. Be sure the hard-cooked egg and potato are cold when you make this.

Dickson's Farmstand Meats Dickson's Farmstand Meats is a unique butcher, sourcing their meats from farms with extraordinarily high standards. It is only natural (pun intended) that their chili recipe would be uncommonly good, loaded with flavor as well as detailed techniques for great results. This is not your granddaddy's chili! For example, the main meat is beef shank, a highly gelatinous cut that gives a luscious smoothness to the sauce. The meat is marinated overnight before cooking, and the seasoning gets complexity from smoky Turkish Urfa chile flakes. If you have the time, refrigerate the chili overnight before serving to mellow the flavors.

The personality of raclette in macaroni and cheese—the combination of cornichons and creamy, salty cheese takes to pasta with an irresistible grace.