Rose Water

Light, pretty, festive, and special, this can pull off the trick of being either the Christmas Yule log (without the chocolate or the sponge) or the perfect pudding for a midsummer lunch.

These old-fashioned marshmallows look beautiful in apothecary jars. Find one at a flea market, Williams-Sonoma, or on etsy.com.

Rice flour gives these cookies a very fine texture, and also results in a gluten-free dessert. Letting the dough rest allows the flour to absorb moisture, making it less crumbly and easier to handle.

Worth It If you're anything like us, the first thing you think of when you hear "Turkish delight" is Edmund, the jerky younger brother from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe who's plied with Turkish delight by the evil White Queen. We never really had this candy growing up, and so it has a bit of a magical association. How could something be so good that it would cause you to betray your family? Well, to be fair, the queen's Turkish delight was actually magical—we can't promise the same for this. But we can promise a delightfully soft and chewy sweet that's better than any store-bought version you've encountered. Rosewater is the traditional flavoring, and is available at many specialty and gourmet stores, but feel free to replace it with the same amount of whatever pure extract you like, such as orange or vanilla. Do note that this recipe requires expert timing (don't worry: that doesn't mean you have to be fast as lightning)—read it through a couple of times before you start! It's not a difficult recipe, but if you don't have a good idea of how everything gets put together before you begin, it's easy to bamboozle yourself in the middle. Be a good Scout and be prepared!

These cream puffs are a completely French invention. They look so perfectly beautiful! My children love filling them with whipped cream—and eating them, of course. These are certainly hard to resist.

This chiffon cake filled with rose-scented whipped cream is inspired by the aromatics found in Persian, Turkish, and Indian confections. Cardamom seeds have more flavor than the ground powder and are like little explosions of spice in the cake.

Whether seasoned with rose water or cinnamon, these are beguiling. They’re best with fresh fruit that is just short of perfectly ripe, but you can use reconstituted dried fruit also. Though they will not take as much stuffing, dates are good this way too. Rose water can be found in small bottles at Middle Eastern stores.

If you ask me, baklava is a two-person job, and even at that it’s a difficult one. I curse and fret during the production, but in reality there is no way to make such a huge quantity of dessert in such a reliable manner. And this is among the most wonderful, foolproof, impressive, and delicious desserts on the planet. A lasagne pan is about the right size; if you need to buy a pan, look for one that measures about 16 × 10 × 2 inches. You will also need a 1-inch brush (paintbrushes, bought at the hardware store, are cheaper than and identical to so-called pastry brushes). Two possible variations (there are dozens, but these are the simplest): Substitute hazelnuts, almonds, or unsalted pistachios (the best, but the most expensive) for the walnuts, and add about 2 tablespoons orange-flower water or rose water to the syrup after cooking it. With thanks to Virginia Christy and her brother Sem.

It seems every country that grows rice makes rice pudding, and almost every experienced cook has his or her own technique. After years of playing with it, this is the one I like best, and it works well with the variations of most cuisines. In many cases rice pudding is simply milk bound by rice; often the amount of rice is well under 10 percent of the total. I prefer this recipe with just 1/4 cup, no more. The result is a thick milk custard with a recognizable but understated rice presence. If you want a dense and slightly chewier mixture, use the larger amount of rice. Other possible additions to rice pudding: a strip of lemon zest, a pinch of saffron threads, or a teaspoon of ground cardamom added at the beginning; a couple of tablespoons of raisins and/or slivered pistachios stirred in at the end. See the variations, and the following recipes, too—this group of recipes is unending.

A lovely yellow rice pudding, with the exotic flavor of saffron; interestingly, it’s dairy free. Use cinnamon or cardamom in addition to (or in place of) the rose water (available in small bottles at Middle Eastern stores) if you like.

Something between pudding and cake, basbousa is popular throughout the Middle East. It’s always drenched in sugar syrup and often topped with fresh whipped cream. Rose water (sold in small bottles at Middle Eastern stores; it keeps indefinitely) is an odd ingredient, a lovely flavor that can quickly become overpowering. Use it judiciously.

In the quaint walled town of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, I passed the birthplace of Michel de Nostredame—called Nostradamus by most—a physician and astrologer best known for his prophecies, not for his recipes. Nearby is a small bakery called Le Petit Duc. Owned and operated by Anne Daguin and her husband, Hermann van Beeck, the bakery, which has a branch in Paris called La Grande Duchesse, specializes in Renaissance recipes. They include those of the prominent Nostradamus, who came from a Jewish family that converted to Catholicism in 1504, when he was just under a year old. When I spoke with Anne, whose mother is Jewish, she told me that she had wanted to open her shop in Saint-Rémy but felt that there was no real pastry tradition there. So she turned to old books for inspiration, and found many recipes, some by Jewish physicians like Nostradamus, who came from a long line of men skilled in mathematics and medicine. As a healer, he often used foods and herbs as treatments for various illnesses, such as this praline with pine nuts.

This fragrant drink was a favorite in my home. Commercial varieties of a concentrated version (a syrup) have an unpleasant synthetic taste.

This wonderful, heartwarming winter drink is hot milk thickened with the starchy ground bulb of an orchid called Orchis mascula. This was sold by street vendors from the large copper urn in which it was made. The stone-colored powder called sahlab (salep in Turkish and Greek) is expensive and not easy to find. I have often bought it in Middle Eastern markets only to discover that it was a fake or adulterated mix. Cornstarch is an alternative which gives a creamy texture but not the same special flavor.

In Egypt, vendors sold crates of rose petals, in their season, for making rose water and rose jam. Certain varieties of rose, such as the wild eglantine of Turkey and Syria, are the best for jam-making. I have not been able to make a good one with the roses from my garden. The petals remained tough under the tooth.

In North Africa the almond stuffing is colored green to give the semblance of pistachios, which are considered grander. You can of course use real pistachios.