California Cuisine

This recipe originally accompanied Fruit Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing

A sophisticated dish from chef Roy Breiman of The Restaurant at Meadowood in the Napa Valley. If you can't find duck breasts in your area, purchase two whole ducks, and ask the butcher to remove the breasts for you. Freeze the leg-thigh portions for another use.

San Francisco is famous for its sourdough, and a wide variety of apples are grown in Sonoma. In this sensational dressing, both ingredients are combined with almonds, which are harvested throughout the state. If you are roasting a turkey in a 350°F oven, cook the stuffing alongside, covered for 45 minutes and uncovered for about 15 minutes.

It’s unclear just who the Louis of Crab Louis salad fame was; perhaps he was affiliated with the Olympic Club in Seattle, where opera star Enrico Caruso, who visited there in 1904, is said to have fallen in love with the crab salad. San Francisco also claims the dish, which reached its zenith there in the teens, as a specialty at Solari’s restaurant and at the St. Francis Hotel.

Hangtown Fry This omelet hails from Hangtown, a town northeast of Sacramento that was named for the notorious hangings once held there (it's now called Placerville). The dish seems to have come into existence during the Gold Rush, as the high-priced breakfast of a lucky miner, and later became a specialty at San Francisco's Tadich Grill. It is traditionally served with bacon.

For the fastest grain bowl, use bulgur—which steams in just 10 minutes—as the base for sheet-pan chicken thighs and roasted broccolini.

The combination of juicy mixed citrus with sliced avocado and sautéed shrimp is striking and, yes, delicious—but we all know that the bed of crispy rice is why you’re here.

Yes, you can eat butternut squash raw!

Like the one you make with the packet of soup mix, but with no weird chemicals and 1,000 percent tastier.