The Mint Julep is a southern delight and a tradition for the Kentucky Derby.  At the race they use Old Times, but that's not really good bourbon and since the race is so commercialized now I figured my friends deserve better.

I boiled up the simple syrup the night before with mint from my garden.

Except for the ice, this drink is a little syrup in a tall glass of bourbon. The crushed ice melts on contact, reducing the liquor to something you can sip for an hour without getting hammered. Ice cubes leave too much room for liquor and don't melt enough to adequately water the drink while cooling it; the result is a drink that is too strong for its volume.

You might think "I like it strong" and you may indeed like it strong, but empirical evidence counts, too: I made a large pitcher of bourbon and syrup mixture and poured it over ice-filled glasses, emptying the pitcher and still facing demand for more. Try it with the crushed ice- it's worth it!

Tsoureki, or Greek Easter Bread, is difficult, expensive, and delicious in an exotic way that takes it far beyond the realm of everyday cuisine.  It is worth learning, if you have the skill, the time and patience, and access to three peculiar ingredients.

This splash of tropical sunshine was a huge hit at one of our Actifio Pot-Lucks, and it was photographed for this article in Inc. Magazine's December-January 2014-15 issue!

Now Debbie's a star and her Mango Pie is a command performance every time we have another pot-luck lunch at work.

This is easy no-bake recipe is great whenever you can get fresh mango pulp.

This is a fabulous seafood antipasto: seafood on a pile of steamed vegetables with a piquant Genoese green sauce to hold it together. 

The top image shows one that was made by Richmond for a gala affair at the Old Colony Club with 80 guests. It was an extravagant showpiece with numerous kinds of seafood, including lobster. Then he used the head and flippers to make it even more eye-catching.

The middle image was for a smaller event at the Old Colony Club, this one a structured wine tasting with 36 guests.  This Capon Maggro was made by my friend Mary Quinlan. It had to share a table with cheeses and salumi from Piedmont and Genoa, so she made it simple and elegant, so as not to overshadow the other foods and the Roero Arneis and Gavi di Gavi wines that we were showcasing in this room. In addition to the basic structure of bread topped by the vegetable salad garnished with seafood, she also added steamed mussels and cherrystones around the bottom for color contrast. The white and green along the top are quartered hard-cooked eggs and large green pitted olives.

The bottom image is a small one made for an appetizer for a dinner for four people. It was made with only shrimp with steamed potatoes and pearl onions.

See the notes for tips on how to make this delicious invention into a less intimidating affair.

Colcannon is a traditional Irish vegetable side dish made with mashed potatoes and shredded cabbage, flavored with leeks boiled in milk or cream. After it is all mashed together it gets baked again and served with melted butter that sits in a well in the center.

Because it has the cream and it gets baked after it is all mashed together, it get a sort of twice-baked potato texture and flavor that goes well with Irish Baked Salmon.

Though I seldom eat potatoes, I have made this easy recipe again and again to share with friends. The biggest part of the recipe can be prepared ahead of time for later reheating. It's a nice change from the ubiquitous garlic-mashed-potatoes and others of that ilk served at so many restaurants today.

Here's a hearty bread for deli sandwiches or stew bread bowls.

It's the basic recipe for Potato-Caraway Bread, with flax meal and rye flour added. This recipe also calls for baking the potatoes for mashing, rather than boiling them. 

Because this recipe makes a loaf with such a great crust, this redux version includes some tips for using it as bread bowls.

This Russian fish pie is wonderful made with Atlantic salmon. It's a big recipe, and a festive one, so it's great to prepare a big one for a crowd or you can make four smaller ones for a more intimate dinner (as shown here). Much of it can easily be prepared ahead of time, leaving only the final assembly and baking to be done on the day of the great feast. 

This is a great crowd-pleaser recipe, because it's easy to make and it makes you look like a culinary genius! 

It's an easy matter of making the crust and then filling it with layers of rice, sauteed mushrooms, hard-cooked egg, and poached fish, all of which can be prepared ahead of time. When you take that into account, the time required to prepare this for a fancy dinner is no more than an hour if you have prepared all the components beforehand.

This recipe looks like a big dinner, but it's not as heavy as it looks, so it works for summer as well as winter. Serve this with a dry New England hard cider, or a crisp rose wine (or chilled vodka, or beer, or whatever you please!).

Castagnaccio is a traditional Tuscan unleavened bread for travelers and field-workers. It's heavy, flavorful, and nourishing without being too sweet.

Castagnaccio is made with fresh chestnut flour, olive oil, rosemary, and pignoli, and sometimes raisins. I get chestnut flour in Boston's North End at Polcari's Market or at Salumeria Italiana; I am told that it is also available at Whole Foods sometimes. 

Van Morrison includes this sweet tea bread among his reminiscences of youth in his song Sense of Wonder, and most Americans have no idea what he's talking about, or even the words he's using.

Barm Brack is an old Irish recipe typically served with tea in the afternoon. The name means "speckled bread" because it contains raisins or currants. It can be made as a yeast bread or as a soda bread. 

Barm Brack is also traditionally served at Halloween time with some standard trinkets baked into it; if you get one of the trinkets in your slice, then you know your fortune for the coming year. 

Ouefs en Meurette is a classic dish from Burgundy that features poached eggs in a richly-seasoned Meurette red wine sauce.

This dish has that great Burgundian combination of red wine, bacon, onions, and mushrooms, but it's not as heavy (or as time-consuming) as Beef Burgundy. 

It's a great brunch dish traditionally served over toasted rounds of crusty bread, but I like to serve it as a light supper dish in the wintertime, served over a bed of rice to get all of the delicious sauce.

Bammy, a descendant of an old indigenous Arawak indian food, nearly went extinct about 20 years ago. It was saved by the government of Jamaica with help from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and a handful of enterprising and hardworking Jamaican women. This in turn saved the livelihood of many Jamaican subsistence farmers who survived on their meager surplus of cassava root.

Bammies are a simple food, and as with many simple foods, ingredients and technique make all the difference. It was something of an adventure to work out the identity of the single ingredient... but then the technique beat me.

Here's what the recipes say, and how I did it, and how it worked. The recipes are pretty much in unanimous agreement with Enid's recipe, so I can't blame the recipe.

The technique is strange, but then I am not a 16th-century Arawak in Jamaica...maybe it would be common sense to them.

In the end I found the flavor great but the texture more suited to the heel of a work boot than as an accompaniment to Escoveitched Fish.

Read on and see what you think.