Cast Iron Skillet

BURGUNDY Known in France as Côtes de Porc Vigneronnes (Grape Growers' Pork Chops), this provincial dish is typical of the simple yet substantial fare served after a hard day of harvesting grapes. Serve with wilted spinach in cream. What to drink: Red Burgundy or a Burgundian Pinot Noir.

This is known as chilpachol in Mexico. Don't forget to add a squeeze of fresh lime juice to each bowl.

Cremini mushrooms or their mature form, portobellos—or both—can be used in this side dish from Cory Schreiber's new cookbook, Wildwood: Cooking from the Source in the Pacific Northwest (Ten Speed Press).

In this recipe, based on a dish from the Republic of Georgia called tabaka, small chickens are flattened and weighted so they cook evenly and quickly. We call for poussins or Cornish game hens, but the same technique works well with a frying chicken.

This dish was inspired by pommes Anna, the regal, crisp-crusted potato cake rumored to have been named for Anna Deslions, a famous courtesan in nineteenth-century Paris.

This compound butter is great on lamb or chicken, too. Or try it on crusty hot bread.

The two-step method of searing and then roasting this thick fillet is what keeps the fish succulent.

When buying the dried chile for this recipe, be aware that a pasilla de Oaxaca is not the same as a regular pasilla chile. The former is smoked and has a very distinct flavor.

Chef Susan Goss says that the secret here is in her cast-iron skillet. Nonstick pans produce anemic, soft corn bread. This recipe also works well with corn-stick or muffin molds, as long as they’re well-seasoned cast iron. If your pan is hot enough, the batter will immediately rise and start to cook around the edges. (The restaurant’s skillets rarely leave the oven.) At Zinfandel, the corn bread is served with a wonderful spread. To make it, combine 1 stick of softened unsalted butter with 2 tablespoons buckwheat honey (another honey or pure maple syrup can be substituted).

This recipe for chiles en macedonia combines ingredients from three states—Jalisco, Colima, and Michoacan. It came from the late Juan Diego Michel, who taught in Billy Cross's schools in Napa Valley and PuertoVallarta. The dish was a favorite of the Michel family in Jalisco, where, in his younger days, Juan Diego had his own restaurant and used the recipes from 200 years ago that had been passed down to him. To Cross, he was a Mexican-cooking mentor.

Jamie Davies and her late husband, Jack, were pioneers in the California wine industry. In 1965 they purchased and restored Schramsberg, a vineyard estate established in 1862, and they soon began producing the first American sparkling wine. When Davies thinks about comforting desserts, she remembers her childhood in Pasadena. "I was about eight when I started making upside-down cakes with my older sister, Dallas. We’d come home after school and mix up the recipe; I loved the sensual pleasure of making the batter. We'd put the cake in the oven, then go play croquet with our friends. Then we’d all come in and eat it up. We thought we had died and gone to heaven." The easy upside-downer here has wonderful spice flavors. Using canned pineapple chunks keeps the preparation simple.