Amanda Hesser

These Red-Wine Braised Short Ribs with Carrots are the perfect crowd-pleasing dinner party entrée. This is part of BA's Best, a collection of our essential recipes. Learn how to make this recipe and more in our online cooking class with Sur la Table.

Sturdy escarole can sit for a few minutes, even when tossed with a warm vinaigrette

Most 1”-thick pieces of fish will cook in 30 minutes. If the fish is done before you're ready to sit down, simply turn off the oven—it will hold. If it isn't quite ready when you are, crank up the heat to 350° and it'll finish quickly.

For this ginger-spiked Prosecco number, you can make the ginger syrup a week ahead; then all you have to do is add the bubbly.

WHAT: White wine infused with cardamom and star anise, as well as the more traditional triumvirate of cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, and amped up with pear brandy.
HOW: A slice of Asian pear is added to each drink as a garnish—the pear softens slightly as it absorbs the warm booze and makes for a yummy treat once you've sipped the last of the wine.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Like a delicate warm sangria, this drink is the perfect accompaniment to a cozy evening indoors.

Delicate, crumbly little thumbprints that are the perfect combination of sweet and savory—a cheese plate wrapped into one crunchy little morsel.

WHO: Midge lives in Boston and is a journalist specializing in travel. She says, "Cooking, especially baking, is my way of winding down after a long day."

WHAT: A rich pudding that has just the right balance of bitter and sweet. HOW: Starting the water bath with cool water, rather than hot, cooks the pudding very gently, giving it the most incredibly silken, glossy structure.

WHY WE LOVE IT: Puddings thickened with cornstarch make great comfort food, but Midge's luxurious caramel custard, which uses egg yolks as its only setting agent, elevates pudding to dinner party fare. As with any egg-enriched custard, the key is careful tempering. As for the caramel, be sure to brown it as far as your nerves allow.

Midge says: "So far, one of the best parts about living in Boston is my proximity to Toscanini's burnt caramel ice cream. I'm not even that into ice cream, but this flavor, with its slight bitter edge to cut the richness, is cracklike. I attempted to capture it in a pudding, and after incinerating a lot of sugar, I think I finally got it."

In these delicate and unassuming little puddings, the bread rises to the top, leaving a layer of silky custard below. Surround the puddings with a moat of the lively orange sauce.

Any food historian will tell you that trying to track down the origin of a recipe is like chasing tadpoles. There are so many, and they all look alike. Even when you find what seems to be the original source, you can't necessarily believe it because adapting recipes is an age—old industry. Nonetheless, I thought I'd give the hunt a try with chicken Canzanese, an unusual recipe that ran in the Times in 1969.

A Google search for "chicken Canzanese" yielded many results, a number of them facsimiles, or slight variations of the chicken dish that appeared in the Times. There's one on Cooks.com that's a close adaptation of the Times's recipe, another by Mario Batali on the Food Network's website and one by Anna Teresa Callen, the cookbook author and teacher, on her own website. Batali's and Callen's, which vary only slightly from the Times's recipe, are nearly word for word the same. Only one recipe that I found sourced the Times's recipe, which itself came from Ed Giobbi, a cookbook author, and was written about by Craig Claiborne.

You can also find plenty of turkey recipes done in the style of Canzanese (Canzano is in the Abruzzo region in Italy), which refers to braised turkey, served cold with chopped turkey aspic. But chicken Canzanese, which is not mentioned in important Italian cookbooks like Le Ricette Regionali Italiane (Italian Regional Cooking), is completely different. When you make it, you understand why it's still kicking around after all these decades. After flash-brining the chicken, you throw everything into the pan at the same time—chicken, cubed prosciutto, sage, bay leaves, rosemary, garlic, chile, cloves, peppercorns, and wine—and end up with a dish that has the fragrance of Chinese steamed duck and the succulence of a Bolognese sauce.

I sensed that it would be impossible to come to a conclusion about where chicken Canzanese originated (Giobbi's recipe was the earliest I could find), and this was confirmed as soon as I started calling people. Callen said she grew up in Abruzzo eating chicken Canzanese. Batali, who regularly credits people from whom he adapts recipes, said that he must have gotten his from Callen, and was apologetic about the borrowing. Giobbi, whose recipe came from a family friend in Abruzzo, suggested that perhaps Callen was influenced by him. When I asked Callen if there was any chance she referred to Giobbi's recipe when writing about her family's dish, she said, "Could be, very well." I didn't intend this to be an investigation—recipes are adapted all the time, it's one of the primary ways cuisines evolve—so I did not chase down the dozens of sites that appear to have copied Callen or Batali. One thing is clear, though: a good recipe has a thousand fathers, but a bad one is an orphan.

For reasons that elude me, cakes are reputed to require long hours in the kitchen, when anyone who actually makes cakes knows that cookies are the true time suck. Cookies require measuring out portions and multiple batches. Cakes get mixed up and go into the oven all at once. The most complaisant ones even cool in their pans and require no icing.

All of which is why if you look back in the Times archives at recipes from thirty or more years ago, when most people cooked every day, there were many more cake recipes. Cake was a staple you whipped up every couple of days, after the previous one had vanished into crumbs.

Teddie's apple cake is a typical standby of the period. None of the ingredients are difficult to find—most are probably already in your pantry. Based on oil rather than butter, the cake has a light, airy crumb that's delicious while it lasts, with walnuts, raisins, and slivers of apple threaded through the cinnamon-scented cake. There is no icing, and no need for it.

When I asked readers for their favorite recipes from the Times, this one was near the top, with thirty-seven votes. Like many of the most recommended recipes, it shares three qualities: ease, good flavor, and someone's name in its title. Unfortunately, I still have no idea who Teddie is.

I usually forget how satisfying it is to eat mussels this way — splashing into the steamy bowl fragrant with spring herbs — until I'm at a restaurant eating them and think, "Mmm, I should make these again, soon."