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Fish cakes make festive party fare. They're especially good when complemented with a cool, colorful and crunchy cucumber, radish and cilantro salsa.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

This recipe can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

These potatoes, oven-crisped on the outside and tender inside, go especially well with red meat.

Miniature Tourtières Every French-Canadian home serves a version of tourtière during the holidays. Various thickeners (such as flour, crushed crackers, or even oats) can be used to bind the filling. Our version is made with flour, and the filling is enclosed in a tender biscuit crust. We decorated our pies with a maple-leaf-shaped cutout.*

Hey-mul Pajun Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from restaurateur Jenny Kwak's book, Dok Suni: Recipes from My Mother's Korean Kitchen. Kwak also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. To read more about Kwak and Korean cuisine, click here. It is said that because Korea was almost all surrounded by water, Koreans looked seaward for culinary inspiration. Hey-mul pajun, a simple and reliable treat, is a good example of this. My parents both spoke of this dish when I was growing up. My father ate it when his family had little to eat, and still to this day he enjoys it with a bottle of soju (sweet potato vodka). My mother told me that the aroma of the dish was so good that it would entice her neighborhood girlfriends to peek over the walls that divided the homes and ask, "Hey, can I come eat that with you?" And because the girls enjoyed the company as much as the food, they sat by the fire cooking up one pancake at a time, talking and eating until their mothers called them back home.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

"When I had dinner with my son recently at Wild Abandon restaurant in Portland, our bread was served with a garlicky potato spread," says Pauline E. Dickey of Medford, Oregon. "It was a nice alternative to the usual butter or olive oil."

A rich, earthy first course or side dish.

This recipe is best made with fresh ricotta, which is very dry and flavorful. If you cannot find fresh ricotta, use 2 cups supermarket whole-milk ricotta and drain it (see below).

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Yogurt gives this dressing tang and lightens it a bit for the weight-conscious.