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.

The classic Jamaican rum punch recipe is recorded in this simple rhyme:

"One of sour, 
Two of sweet,
Three of strong, and
Four of weak"

It works like this:

Sour is usually lime juice, but lemon juice or a mix is OK. 

Sweet is simple syrup or sugar, or any sweet liqueur.

Strong is rum, usually amber, but white is OK.

Weak is water, seltzer, fruit juice, or soda.

It doesn't matter if you use ounces or hogsheads as long as the proportions stay the same.

Combine them all and serve in tall glasses over ice. Garnish with fruit. A 10-ounce serving (less than a can of Coke) has three ounces of rum, so it's an easy-drinking but potent potion.

Here is the formula that I made for John's Jamaican Birthday Dinner. 

Escoveitched Fish is eaten in Jamaica for breakfast, lunch, and supper. I saw it served at the Norman Manley Airport as I was waiting to board my morning flight home, but I had been admonished to wait for a better version on my next visit.

This simple recipe is a cook's delight because it is so amenable to modification both in preparation and in presentation. You can use different types of fish, vary the marinade ingredients, and dress it in any number of ways. 

It's strange, too, in that the fish is cooked and then marinated without refrigeration. That, of course, makes it an excellent choice for a picnic or for a lunch on the beach. I fully expect to prepare this again in the summertime.

"Jamaica's Coat of Arms", Rice and Peas, is a delicious, easy, and substantial dish. It's quick enough to make (if you use canned beans) that I plan to add it to the weeknight repertoire. It was the surprise hit of the night at John's Jamaican Birthday Dinner!

But Rice and Peas has no peas at all - not by the language of New England cooks. By peas, the Jamaican cook is referring to red or green beans such as kidney beans.

Rice and Peas makes a fine accompaniment to many simple fish dishes such as broiled haddock or steamed cod, where the coconut milk lends an island flare.  

This uniquely Jamaican dish uses ackee, a tree fruit that is not uncommon in the islands, but that is cultivated for food only in Jamaica.

The ackee fruit is rare and expensive in New England markets. I got two cans for $9.99 each at Compare Foods Supermarket in Worcester, but I had to ask for it at the customer service counter.

This hearty Jamaican classic has a thousand ingredients and it takes a long time to make, but it's bursting with flavor and well worth the effort!

Some of the ingredients are unusual in the typical New England kitchen. Be sure to read about Jamaican Ingredients before committing to this recipe. 

Note that this is not a dish for fussy eaters! If they don't balk at the unfamiliar ingredients, they'll surely shriek at the little bones or the unidentifiable bits of fatty meat from the pig tail. This was food for the slaves, not for the masters. But it is a wonderful mosaic of textures and flavors that will excite the palate of those not so easily intimidated by a bowl of soup!

This is simple to make and delightfully complex to taste. This old cocktail rewards experimentation; the different Artisanal Gins made in New England can change the nature of this drink in unexpected ways, and the two "official" variations described below double the possible permutations. 

It's not a strong drink; equal parts of gin and four other less potent ingredients, plus a dash of Orange Bitters is all it takes. That means you can experiment with a few different gins in one sitting while imbibing no more alcohol than a standard restaurant Martini.

There are two variations of this cocktail.  You can get Satan's Whiskers "curled", as written here, or you can get them "straight" by substituting orange curacao for the Grand Marnier.