Vicky Zeph, chef-owner, along with her brother Mike, of Zephs’ Restaurant in Peekskill, New York, makes the best corn pudding I have ever tasted. I like it because it isn’t overly sweet as some corn puddings can be.

I love this type of cake and blueberries are the perfect fruit for it—they melt to a jamlike consistency between the cake batter and crumb topping while the cake is baking.

If there’s such a thing as a world-class sandwich, this is it. A real muffuletta from Central Grocery is so good that it should be considered a crime to leave New Orleans without having one. The olive salad derives from the Sicilian tradition of marinating still slightly bitter newly brined olives in oil, vinegar, garlic, and other seasonings, including chopped celery, to sweeten and flavor them.

This came about when I was experimenting with an old recipe for breadsticks and found that when rolled thinly, the dough baked up crisp and dry.

This is a classic: a cookie dough crust topped with a thin layer of pastry cream, lots of flavorful fresh raspberries, and a bit of raspberry glaze to bind them together.

Long the traditional July Fourth meal in the state of Maine, early peas and salmon have not been in season so far north at the beginning of July for over a hundred years, according to culinary historians.

Brioche dough makes a perfect crust for a tart of juicy fruit like apricots, plums, peaches, or even small pears. A thin coating of almond filling helps to keep the crust drier, but the brioche can also absorb most of the fruit juices without becoming soggy.

There isn’t much difference between this pie and what we normally call a cobbler, except that this has much more fruit in relation to the crust. The blueberries have no thickeners added to mar their natural flavor and juiciness, so the filling is quite soupy.

In Italy, where they make savory pies from almost every vegetable imaginable, kale is a popular choice, especially in Tuscany where it’s known as cavolo nero or black cabbage. Teamed up with pancetta, onion, garlic, ricotta, eggs, and grated pecorino, its slightly bitter flavor is complemented rather than hidden. This is a great solo dish or delicious accompaniment to plain grilled meat or fish.

Back when I was in high school, my friend Sandy and I would often grab a commuter train in New Jersey and head to Greenwich Village. We spent $3.00 on lunch at Amy’s on University Place, a vegetarian sandwich and salad shop where we always ordered a salad pita and helped ourselves to the added bonus: coolers of free spring water or mint tea. One of the pitas that follow is filled with a standard Greek salad mixture (like the one at Amy’s) while the other has a Turkish-style eggplant salad that I make all summer long.

This type of a tart—a cookie dough crust, covered with a thin layer of pastry cream and an assortment of glazed fruit—has been the mainstay of elegant pastry shops in Paris and many other places for the better part of a century.

Here’s a recipe you can literally have on the table less than an hour after you start making it. I love to use really sweet height-of-the-season strawberries for this, but don’t hesitate to try it with other fruit or berries such as peaches, mixed berries, or even fresh figs.

Slightly reminiscent of a French gâteau breton, this dense cake is perfect with a glass of sweet wine or a cup of tea. As a dessert, it would need to be dressed up with some fruit or berries.

In the fall of 1986, I was teaching my first career-training intensive baking course at Peter Kump’s New York Cooking school when I learned that Peter’s birthday was a few days away. I asked Gaynor Grant, our registrar, what kind of a cake I should make for Peter, and she told me that he absolutely adored the raspberry meringue cake from Maurice Bonté’s bakery, then the best pastry shop in Manhattan.

This delicate meringue cake is named in honor of the famous Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (1882 – 1931). Pavlova performed in Perth for only one season, in 1929, to stellar reviews. A few years later the pastry chef at the hotel where she had stayed, the Esplanade, created this meringue and cream cake and named it after her, both because it is light and because it resembles a tutu.

This is a popular bread to serve for breakfast with butter in Belgium. Like its cousin, the craquelin, it is like a lean form of brioche, a bread enriched with just a little butter, sugar, and egg.

In southern Italy, taralli come in many sizes and flavors. These are typical Neapolitan ones sometimes referred to in Neapolitan dialect as scaldatelli – little boiled things.

The official name of this in Italian is Pastiera Napoletana, though many Italian Americans also refer to it as Pizza di Grano, or grain pie. It’s a sweet crust filled with ricotta, pastry cream, and cooked wheat berries, and scented with orange flower water.

Marble cakes are both homey and festive. A marble cake looks slick when you slice into it and reveal the delicate pattern of the two batters swirled together.

This recipe is based on the famous Mexican sauce pipian verde, made from toasted pumpkin seeds, chilies, and sour cream. I learned about it from my friend chef Roberto Santibañez.

Green vegetables and leafy greens are perfect in a moist and tender bread pudding like this.

Nothing could be simpler—or better—than this tart.The flavor of the filling is of course entirely dependent on the quality of the chocolate you use, so hang the budget and get the best available—you only need a single pound.