Simple Cooking

Feel-good food: New research shows the vitamin C in acorn squash may help boost your mood.

You will be surprised at how quick and easy it is to make real homemade caramel sauce.

To cut baking time, fork the tuber a few times, then nuke for 5 minutes.

This cheesecake has Classic Caramel Sauce swirled into it, which makes it flavor-rich as well as visually exciting. The crust, made with toasted walnuts, provides a perfect balance of both flavor and texture. Because the cake needs time to cool and chill, I recommend making it at least a day in advance of when you plan to serve it.

In Latin America, achiote-colored lard or achiote-infused oil is part of any well-stocked pantry, traditionally stored in an achiotera, a special metal container with a spout. My friend and mentor Felipe Rojas-Lombardi, the brilliant Peruvian-born chef and author who created the Ballroom restaurant in Manhattan, loved the sunny color and subtle smoky flavor of achiote-infused olive oil. He used it for everything from marinating the luscious suckling pigs that he proudly displayed at the counter of his tapas bar to enhancing the color of his spicy mayonnaise to giving his lamb empanadas a gilded look. This recipe gives you both a seasoning and a coloring.

Editor's note: Use this with Maricel Presilla's Boiled Yuca (Yuca Hervida) . Ajilimójili (ah-hee-lee-MOH-hee-lee) is the wonderful whimsical name for this Puerto Rican–inspired sauce. How to translate this tongue-twister? It seems that it is a composite of the words ajo (garlic) and moje (sauce), but much more can be drawn from it. In Cuba and the Mexican state of Tabasco, ajilimójili is a colloquialism for the Castilian Spanish intríngulis, a hidden reason that is suddenly revealed, or the workings necessary to pull something off, or the key to making a difficult feat look simple. Why was this sauce called ajilimójili? Perhaps because it has its own ajilimójili—the "inner workings" to make any food it touches splendid. Serve with Puerto Rican Pasteles .

Watercress is the green of choice in Cuba, its peppery taste a perfect foil for the avocado and the sweet pineapple in this classic Cuban salad. I serve it with shrimp in a spicy tomato sauce called enchilado de camarones. In Cuba, the pineapple is never roasted, but this technique adds another dimension of flavor I find very appealing.

For seven centuries, Moors and Christians fought one another in Spain, but in the guise of black beans and rice they surrendered to each other's charms within the all-embracing New World pot. Like the hybrid culture that flourished in medieval Spain, the rice dish known as moros y cristianos is an exemplar of exchange between civilizations. It is feast food in Cuba, where you'll find it in the western provinces. Considering that there is a Veracruzan version of this dish and that Cuba always imported black beans from Mexico, we are left in doubt as to which version came first. Regardless of its place of birth, it is one of the most felicitous rice and bean combinations I have ever tasted. The flavors of all the other ingredients are absorbed seamlessly by the rice, the vinegar providing point and counterpoint to the mealy beans, the aroma of cumin and oregano a subtle backdrop for the meaty smoked bacon, which in turn joins forces with the olive oil to add aroma and sheen to the rice. And then the color, a dark brown or hybrid of white and black.

Editor's note: Pair this with Maricel Presilla's Puerto Rican–Style Ají Dulce Sauce (Ajilimójili) . Boiled yuca is a small miracle. I can hardly think of another vegetable so transformed just by simple boiling. The impenetrable tuber, which starts out fibrous and as hard as the tusk of an elephant, becomes a creamy and supple vegetable. Boiled yuca is also the stuff with which many other preparations start, and you will come back to it time and again. There is no single rule that will help you figure out how much time it will take to cook fresh yuca until fork-tender. A general estimate is 30 minutes, but it might take less time or much longer, depending on the type of yuca. Start testing the vegetable with a fork 15 minutes after the water comes to a boil and continue to test until you reach the desired texture. Usually I prefer to remove the central spindle after rather than before cooking. It takes some force to whack through it when you're cutting the raw yuca into chunks, but it is much easier to detach the spindle from cooked yuca. Serve the yuca with a sauce of your choice or with just a sprinkling of olive oil and some salt.

A sensuous variation on the theme of bread and chocolate is a silky ganache flavored with a garlicky Cuban-style olive oil mojo, smeared over slices of Cuban bread. Because the ingredients are so few and basic, it is important to use a not-too-bitter premium chocolate. I also like the effect of a mellow Spanish extra-virgin olive oil made with Arbequina olives, with their slight accent of apple peel. Sea salt sprinkled on the bread right at the moment of serving brings out all the flavors.

This garlicky sauce is the traditional accompaniment to the starchy root vegetables of the Hispanic Caribbean, especially Cuba. The acidic medium is usually Seville, or bitter, orange juice, though lime juice or white vinegar can be substituted. The mojo is at its best spooned or brushed over piping-hot boiled yuca, plantains, or other starchy tropical vegetables.

A hint of lemon is perfect in a creamy baked custard. This one has no caramel to get in the way of the lemon flavor. Lemon juice would be too overpowering here. Instead, the subtle lemon flavor comes from steeping lemon zest in the milk for the custard mixture. The heat of the milk extracts the essential oil from the lemon zest skin, and the milk absorbs the delicate flavor. The hints of cinnamon and vanilla are there to support the lemon, not obscure it. Raspberry sauce makes a perfect complement. I wouldn't dream of serving the custard without it.

Here's a good base recipe for using frozen berries to prepare a flavorful sauce. I find that frozen berries need to cook a little to make them less watery and to concentrate their flavor. Look for raspberries that come frozen in a bag. Feel the bag to make sure all of the individual berries are loose and not clumped together. Bags of frozen berries tend to taste better than those frozen in a block.

Forget the British way of serving rice pudding with a dollop of jam and go for the French way of topping it with a drizzle of caramel sauce.

The lively flavor of this ice is a perfect accompaniment to fruit salad. The key to its smooth texture is making a ginger "tea," then combining it with the remaining ingredients, rather than simply incorporating pieces of ginger into the custard mixture.

This remoulade is a classic French dish and makes perfect use of an under-used vegetable. Choose from capers, parsley or gherkins (or any combination of all three), to add flavour and a pretty hint of green. The celeriac will discolour and brown as soon as it is peeled and sliced, so either use it straight away or soak it in water with lemon juice added, for up to 1 hour before using.

Most chocolate mousses are high in calories, but it's quite easy to make a delicious chocolate mousse that contains a fraction of the original calories and fat. The secret is to use high-quality bittersweet chocolate. It packs a strong, lively chocolate flavor and makes up for the fact that the mousse doesn’t have a quart of whipped cream in it.

This delicious combination provides a mouthful of contrasts—crispy savoury bacon and soft, melting sweet prunes—great served hot or cold. Substitute the prunes with dried apricots for an equally tasty alternative.

When I was just starting to put some ideas together for recipes that I wanted to be included in this book, I had a conversation about lightened whipped cream with my friend and mentor Maida Heatter. She suggested that I try a recipe of hers called Cream Ooh-La-La, which she uses to top strawberries macerated with sugar and Grand Marnier, in Maida Heatter's Best Dessert Book Ever (Random House, 1990). It's basically sweetened whipped cream with the addition of some sour cream and whipped egg whites. I've transformed it a little by substituting reduced-fat sour cream and a cooked meringue. This results in a whipped cream with overtones of crème fraîhe and an exquisite lightness.