One of our favorite breakfast or lunch dishes on a cold rainy day is this old Scottish favorite made from smoked haddock in a white sauce, with the white sauce made from milk in which the fish was cooked.

Finnan haddie is smoked haddock. You can sometimes find it frozen at your fishmonger. That's OK - Finnan haddie is said to have been invented by a penurious Scot who wanted to salvage a load of haddock damaged by smoke in a warehouse fire. Rather than let it be discarded, he claimed it was the Irish ("Fennian" or "Finnan") style and sold it for food. So this recipe was never developed to use the purest, freshest, local ingredients - it came from a salvage operation!

Finnan Haddie can be a tricky dish. In general, people that like it the way they like it (follow that?) and any deviation is simply wrong. For example, one of our favorite restaurants used to make it one way, and Lorna loved it. Then the new chef changed the recipe and she won't eat it any more. It wasn't a big change - he didn't add pickles or substitute mussels for haddock - he just makes it thinner.

So this recipe is for a thicker version. It's easy to thin it by adding milk or cream, but it's a little more work to thicken it up again.

This is an easy recipe, good for when you have a cabbage from your CSA and you really don't want any more cole slaw...

It's a savory dish, good with homey fare like meatloaf or hamburgers. The flavors mingle over two hours of slow cooking to become something unexpected and delicious.

I did this in a heavy Le Creuset braising pan. If you do not have one of those expensive kitchen luxuries, don't worry! You can do this just as well in a glass or enameled baking dish covered tightly with aluminum foil; the secret is to confine all the flavors in a small volume with enough area to spread out.

This easy crowd-pleaser is known variously across New England as Blueberry Buckle, Blueberry Cobbler, Blueberry Slump, and Blueberry Grunt. The basic idea is simple: a bed of berries topped  with sweet biscuit dough and baked until the berries burst into a delicious sauce for the tender biscuits.

This is great hot with ice cream, or cool with whipped cream.  Make it with wild Maine blueberries if you can, especially while they are in season in August.

Blueberry slump is very easy to make; this one was made at work in the Actifio Food Truck by my friends Debbie Goswami and Chandrika Venkatraman.

This is a delightfully light celebration of late spring.

It's easy, and it's a good choice when strawberries go on sale at the supermarket because you have to use them fast before they spoil.

This one was made by my friends Debbie and Sonali at work. We used a frozen pie crust because rolling out a homemade pie crust is not very difficult, but it is a good way to get your work clothes dusted with flour! 

What a treat! This early summer dessert is easy to make and it looks and tastes like something special. 

There's not much to this, so the focus must be on the berries and cream. The flavor can really sparkle with fresh local berries, but more than that is the problem of watery berries. A pint of those enormous supermarket strawberries has less flavor than six or ten natural berries, the flavor is simpler, and the berries are full of water too. 

This simple dish responds well to a variety of garnishes, from chocolate sauce to mint leaves to sour cream and even balsamic vinegar. 

Here's another gem from Jasper White's Cooking From New England. I love to make this every June when the peas come available at the farm stands and farmers markets.

This can be made a few days ahead. Like many soups, it improves with a day of rest so the flavors come together.  

The mirepoix is a fancy French name for the aromatic vegetables at the base of a great many sauces and braises. It's simply 2 parts by weight of onion to one part each of carrots and celery. 

You use a mirepoix when making any brown sauce (Escoffier's Sauce a l'Espagnole and its many fine children), many red sauces, and most white meat demiglazes. You also use it when braising meat, as in a Pot Roast, and in many stews. 

This is really a class of braised beef, examples of which can be found in almost every non-vegetarian cuisine of the world.

The recipe below is full of generalities, because the details vary with the cuisine. For example, a Yankee pot roast is braised in a savory broth, an Italian Brasato in Barolo is braised in wine, and a Belgian Carbonnade is braised in beer.  A German Sauerbraten uses a savory broth, but adds vinegar to it. The vegetables vary by location and the herbs and spices also vary to reflect the cuisine.  Even the cut of meat can inflame passions; many Italians demand the Capello del Prete, which is known in the USA as the Chuck Blade.

This recipe is really about technique, including one very important and counterintuitive one that is essential to the success of any pot roast, so be sure to read the Notes!

We love fresh haddock, simply baked with no crumbs or other distractions from its own exquisite flavor. Very fresh haddock is obviously essential to this dish!

I might have a bit of tartar sauce, and I like a Martini with Naked Haddock better than any wine.

Now that brings up something to think about. We are programmed by our culture to think about pairing wines and foods, and to think what's the right wine for a certain food. But sometimes the besst libation isn't a wine at all! So try a floral gin with haddock. You may find some old preconceptions crumbling.

This New England favorite is a classic accompaniment to Baked Beans. It's easy to make, and the uncooked mixture stores well for a few days, so you can easily make multiple meals from one recipe.

I searched through many recipes to find one that would have satisfied my mother-in-law, who was old Yankee on both sides back to the 17th century. This recipe is simple, so it relies on ingredients and technique. I used Yukon Gold potatoes and frozen salt cod from my local fishmarket (not the kind that comes in a box).