Recipe Sifter

Dark chocolate sea salt cookies, intensely cocoa-rich slice-and-bake sables studded with bittersweet chocolate and flecked with fleur de sel. Slightly underbaked for a soft, fudgy center and a salty-sweet finish.

Easy cheddar and Swiss fondue melted in white wine or beer with just 6 ingredients. Smooth, creamy, and ready for dipping crusty bread in 25 minutes.

French-style pork medallions braised in a classic brown sauce with mustard butter, capers and a bouquet garni. Restaurant-technique dinner served with glazed turnips and potatoes.

Osso bucco with veal knuckle braised in white wine and tomato paste with carrots, celery, garlic, and a lemon-herb flour dredge. Starts in a cold oven for hands-off cooking.

French-style potato pancakes with diced cooked turkey, scallions, chervil, ripe olives, and Dijon mustard. Crisp-edged hash brown cakes that turn leftovers into dinner.

Old-fashioned sour cream cookies with nutmeg, rolled and cut into rounds with a sugar-sprinkled top. Soft, tender, and lightly spiced with a big-batch yield of 60 cookies.

Traditional New Mexican fry bread made with just 5 pantry ingredients. Simple dough kneaded smooth, rolled thin, and deep-fried golden in minutes. Serve with honey.

Zesty chili seasoning mix, a make-ahead blend of chili powder, cumin, garlic, onion, and red pepper flakes with a little flour to thicken. Skip the packet and season a pot of chili from scratch.

Slow cooker German lamb stew with sour cream, dill, caraway, and rosemary. Browned lamb cubes braise all day in beef stock, then finish with a rich sour cream sauce.

Oxtails braised in red wine with celery, leeks, carrots, and a French-style sauce made from the reduced braising liquid. Rich, fork-tender, and worth every one of the 4 hours.

Cream of mussel soup made the classic way: steam-opened mussels, a quick butter-flour roux, and a splash of cream stirred in at the end. Five ingredients, twenty minutes, restaurant results.

Homemade kreplach with hand-rolled egg noodle dough folded into filled triangles and boiled in soup or salted water. A traditional Jewish dumpling made from scratch.

Lemon mustard chicken breasts marinated in lemonade, coated in whole-grain mustard and pecan breadcrumbs, pan-fried in walnut oil with a cream mustard sauce.

Grilled ham steaks with a brown sugar and whiskey pan sauce. Butter-brushed, grilled until charred, and served with a quick onion roux sauce spiked with whiskey.

Southern-style fried rabbit with onions and pan gravy. Flour-dredged rabbit pieces browned in oil, then simmered in a simple flour gravy until tender and saucy.

Tender flounder fillets baked in a sour cream and mushroom tarragon sauce, all made in the microwave in about 35 minutes. A quick, elegant weeknight fish dinner.