Russians drink a lot of vodka at their dinners, instead of or in addition to the wine that we usually serve in Western dinners. Here are four simple varieties that I have made. In each case you put the flavoring into a one-pint mason jar of vodka and let it sit 24 hours at room temperature, then store it in the freezer.

You might wonder why I have put a pear-and-honey recipe with the condiments instead of with sweets, but this recipe is a sort of sweet pickle that you serve with grilled meats or hearty fish dishes. The sweetness of the honey and the pears is balanced by the tart cider vinegar in which it marinates for a week.

I needed a cake to finish a paella dinner, so I searched for something Spanish. I found a whole class of citrus and olive oil cakes (Spanish cooking doesn't use a lot of butter), so I picked this easy Coca de Llanda version from Valencia.

Cotechino in Camicia means "Cotechino in a shirt" because in this recipe the unctuous cotechino sausage is wrapped in a shirt of lean chicken!

Camillo Benso, the Count of Cavour was a hugely important 19th century Sardinian and Piedmontese politician and patriot who also is known for his favorite dishes of traditional Piedmontese cuisine. Like many Piedmontese dishes, this one uses butter where recipes from more southerly states would use olive oil, and it uses the Grana Padano cheese of Piemonte and Lombardia where other dishes would use Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Here's one way to use the black kale that comes in your CSA share. It's a simple recipe that's good with sausages.

You cut the kale into thin shreds and cook it with fusilli or a similar textured pasta that can "catch" the kale shreds.  You need a second pan to make a simple sauce of olive oil flavored with garlic and chili to add some zing, and then some grated Pecorino cheese to finish it.

The Brasato al Barolo is a rightly celebrated main dish of Italy's Piedmont region, traditionally made using the local Barolo wine.  That can become very expensive in this country, but driving through the Piedmont I was astonished to see €10 bottles of Barolo on endcap displays in highway rest areas! The best Barolos can fetch $1,000 and more; that's not what you braise a chuck roast in!

I was surprised when I first saw this. It's so simple, with no hard-to-get ingredients, that I would expect to see it on menus and at picnics and other al fresco dining opportunities. It seemed at first counterintuitive, but Tartar Sauce used to be used for many things beside fried fish, and this is just one simple example. 

This is best in late spring and early summer when you can get fresh local asparagus. There are plenty of brands of commercial tartar sauce available on store shelves, or you can make your own. 

Here's a hearty cheesy dish from Italy's Piedmont region, and it's really simple and fast.  Piedmont is at the foot of the Alps, and it's easy to see this as something nourishing and hot after hours of playing in the snow on a mountainside.

Because it's so heavy and caloric, it may be better to halve the servings as part of a more balanced meal!

Here's another French dish with a creamy sauce, this time sparked up with paprika. You bake the breasts in a savory onion-butter-paprika base, then use that base on the stovetop to prepare a creamy sauce.

When you're done, you'll have a lot of sauce, but it goes great over rice or with boiled new potatoes. If you want a more elegant presentation than shown here, you can serve the breasts with minimal sauce and pass the rest in a gravy boat.

This dish of chicken breasts with mushrooms and a cider cream sauce is a hearty fall or winter dish. The chicken breasts (or thighs) are sauteed in butter with mushrooms, then flamed with calvados and braised in cider until tender and cooked through. Then the sauce is finished with heavy cream and an egg yolk to thicken it, making it awesome comfort food. 

The sauce is delicious, so consider serving this with rice or potatoes, or crusty bread - you will want to get every bit of the sauce!

This recipe is built from three simpler recipes. First you poach the fish and save the poaching liquid, then you turn the poaching liquid into a Sauce Parisienne. At the same time on another burner, you make 1 quart of Mussels in White Wine. Then you enrich the Sauce Parisienne and add mushrooms, truffle, and shrimp.

I made this for our Feast of Normandy. This is double the size of the base recipes because I make it for dinner guests.