A staple of our holiday table. Not that it's anything that special - just potatoes, carrots, and Brussels sprouts, boiled and served in a butter-mustard sauce - but it's tasty, it's hearty, and it manages to combine a vegetable dish with a starch dish - which, considering that we like sweet potatoes, white potatoes, _and_ stuffing, is no mean feat.

I am not a fan of whole wheat pancakes. Light, fluffy, regular white-flour pancakes are a special weekend treat, reminding me of my parents' love and the pleasures of youth. Whole wheat pancakes, dense and strangely nutty, are enforced moderation; a reminder of encroaching middle age and the fact that my cholesterol number is higher than my area code.

So now that you know where the bar is, these are actually pretty good for whole wheat pancakes. The flour I used does not have too much bran in it, so while not exactly "light and fluffy", the cakes were not dense. The nuttiness was on a par with whole wheat sandwich bread, which I eat all the time.

This recipe is exactly the same as Alton's regular buttermilk pancake recipe 2 pages earlier, so it seems that the issue is finding a flour I like. I still can't see myself choosing whole-wheat pancakes over white flour pancakes, but given I've still got over a pound of this flour to use, I probably will make these pancakes again.

These were fantastic burgers. The shredded gruyere and caramelized onions made a fantastic rich creamy topping. Flavoring burgers with onion soup mix is kind of a throwback... but honestly, it still works.

I've tried to make sorbets before, and consistently come out with a granita at best and a frozen block of flavored ice at worst. But the instruction earlier in the book is spot on - churn to the consistency of a thick smoothie. With this recipe and that instruction, I got a nice soft scoopable sorbet. And a delicious flavor - primarily watermelon with some refreshing lemon acidity.

Good recipe for the Thanksgiving leftover classic. I think it needs garlic. I don't know how they think this fits into a 3 quart casserole dish - it looked it would overflow mine, so I made it in my crock pot insert. (Which led to a discussion about which vessel would have the best crunchy bread-crumb topping to creamy noodle ratio - we think it might be 2 lasagna pans.)

My stock pot may never be used for making stock again, between this recipe and the ones in the Fagor pressure cooker manual. Why spend all that time and energy on the stovetop?

The long simmer produces a beautifully clear amber stock. There's also very little liquid lost in the slow cooker - unlike to stovetop or pressure cooker, the yield is darn near the amount of water you add. The recipe is chock-full of onion, leek, and carrot, and the stock has a strong vegetal sweetness. (If you prefer meatier stocks, you might cut these back a hair.)

I do have a quibble - my printing says to cover the turkey carcass with "4 inches" of water. I just can't see how that's possible in my (large) slow cooker for any turkey worthy of the name. Admittedly, today I'm making stock from the remains of Birdzilla, and I just barely got it into the pot. Extrapolating out to a more moderate-sized turkey, I still think it's a misprint.

Simple base for a sandwich spread or dip. We used smoked salmon in place of "cooked" trout, and I suspect the lower moisture content is part of why we needed a lot more yogurt and sour cream to reach the texture we wanted.

The radish-cucumber sauce is a neat idea. I disagree with the recommendation to use a microplane grater; we wanted a slightly larger grate to give more texture. This would be a great condiment on a more flavorful burger (like a lamb burger, or something with more heat); on a standard ground beef burger it added freshness but not a lot of zing.

Good burger. Hit with my kid, so we'll be doing this again. I thought it was a little indistinct - the sweet potatoes and candied bacon are certainly nice, but they didn't exactly come together. Next time, I'll look at my sweet potato recipes to see if some kind of spice might help the pieces work as a whole. Even something like a piece of lettuce for texture would be good.

Nice combination of flavors, straightforward stir-frying technique. I might increase the ginger next time.

Didn't follow the recipe exactly, but come on, it's egg salad; make it the way you like. It added some pleasant creaminess and a hearty egg flavor to the burger, but on its own, I don't think I'd do it again.

However, I'd also made some sauteed spinach, inspired by the Is This Your Chard? or Sit And Spinach burgers. And together, they worked really well... the egg salad plays a role very similar to a rich mild cheese, while the greens bring the acidity and complexity. (And in my case the garlic and shallots.)

So I'm giving 3 stars for the recipe, but I'd rate the concept that egg salad can go on a burger 4 stars.

A delicious and complex treatment for pork. The mix of salt, sweet, and the acrid funkiness of fish sauce calls barbecue to mind. Brennan says this is the "Thai equivalent of ham" and I can easily see making a big roast of this and spreading it out over multiple dishes. (However, I used it as a treatment for pork chops, and while I'm afraid they came out a bit dry, they weren't at all tough and the flavor was delightful.)

A pleasant enough recipe for a crispy, hearty starch - almost like an Italianate hush puppy. The recipe makes a wealth of 2-bite balls, appropriate for appetizers or a side dish, not the baseball-size behemoths I've had on occasion.

I admit using leftover rice pilaf, not the called-for risotto, and my mixture was a wet mess almost impossible to work with. I added an additional half-cup or so of rice, which still didn't help; finally, I added bread crumbs to the mix (in addition to the bread crumb coating) and the mix started to hold together. I should try it with risotto instead of long-grain rice to see if it's a recipe problem or a changed-the-ingredients problem.

I'm giving this a slightly higher rating than I think it deserves, because I suspect I made an important (and negative) change to the recipe by using ricotta cheese instead of cottage cheese. Truth is, I don't like stuffed squash very much, and this only seemed average to me. I am glad I used the optional handfuls of raisins and chopped pecans; they added good texture and flavor. (The recipe says walnuts, but as far as I'm concerned, every recipe which calls for walnuts is better with pecans.) All in all, not a bad way to make stuffed squash, just not exceptional.

OK, I took some liberties. Kind of a lot of liberties. It's still a good cake. I'm really impressed with the way the graham crackers don't go soggy (even after 2 days) but do soften into a cake-like texture.

I didn't have strawberry jam, so I used a mix of blueberry and a blackberry/raspberry preserve. These are delicious, but they were pretty substantial homemade preserves and I wonder if assembly would have been easier with a few teaspoons of water mixed in to loosen it up. Then again, free water might have made the cream collapse so maybe not.

I also didn't use the cream cheese icing, opting instead for whipped cream stabilized with gelatin, with a little vanilla and almond extract. (The process is described in the chocolate mocha refrigerator cake recipe from the same episode.) This worked just fine; I suspect it helps that the preserves were a little tart.

Would definitely make again!

Straightforward to be sure, but a satisfying base for plenty of experiments. Alone, they'd work as a side dish. Pepin himself suggests that you could add sausage and chicken and call it cassoulet. Americans might be thinking of white bean chili. My wife added a quart of chicken stock and turned it to soup. I'm sure we'll be returning to this versatile base.

As a main course, this was disappointing. Hearty to be sure, but bland. It's certainly in the "comfort food" genre, but didn't quite make it for me... it got boring before it got homey. I might make it again as a side dish for a potluck, but not as an entree.

A warning - use your biggest pot. 2 pounds of raw spinach is a lot, as is 4 cups of cooked rice.

Fresh buttermilk cheese is a wonderful thing - a very slight bit of effort for an appetizer which always impresses. I've tended to serve fresh cheese on the sweet side, but this goes spicy with ginger, jalapeno, and pepper. It was a big hit as both a dip and a topping for chili. We liked it with more ginger than originally called for.

I love cacio e pepe, and I'm pretty sure this is the first recipe for it I ever tried. It's worth hunting down the video on this - the tempo at the end is a combination of do all the steps in quick order, so you don't lose your heat, but you pour the pasta water into the cheese slowly (and the same is true of the sauce over the noodles).

If I owned a fine grater blade for my food processor, I'd make this more often. Grating 6 ounces of pecorino romano is a job.

A pleasant preparation of slowly braised ribs in a sweet Asian sauce. Ours completely fell apart; it wouldn't have been much work to pull the bones out of the pot and serve it like pulled pork. My wife enjoyed the subtle flavors, as did my young son; I thought it was OK but was hoping for bolder flavors. ("Soulful" is in the eye of the beholder.) I might add five-spice powder and up the garlic in future, to bring it more in the direction of Chinese-restaurant ribs.

Basically a soda bread griddle cake. I think my technique needs work (and maybe the recipe needs more specificity) - I made my first batch way too thick and ended up having to cut them in half to get the insides done. But it's a fun way to get something related to a biscuit in a fraction of the time.

A hearty dish which comes together with a lot less work and time than I thought it would. It's almost a 4-star recipe, but I'm dinging it a bit because the gravy didn't thicken in the oven as much as I thought it would. (It's my fault, though, that I gave the sauce more time in the oven and the chops got tough.) I didn't have a Vidalia onion, so I used one medium-size white onion. The flavor worked, but it would have been more "smothered" if I'd gone for 2 onions.

Thoroughly enjoyed this low and slow approach to lamb. The marinade gives wonderful onion, garlic, and paprika flavors to the lamb without overpowering. I wish I'd had even more rosemary sprigs on hand to smoke with - the smoke was delicious, but I think it was lost in the apple wood I used as well.

One point - the timing is for a grill-smoked leg of lamb. In my water smoker, the timing was more like 4 hours. I do expect the marinade would have become a very nice rub, but slow smoking gave me a delicate texture, rare but fully done, which was just to die for. Worth the wait.

Certainly tasty, but I'm not convinced it was worth the extra time and work. How close could I have gotten with a bottle of liquid smoke?

A perfect crock pot recipe - peel and quarter the apples, add lemon juice and water, and forget it. I didn't even need to use the food mill on mine (though we do like applesauce just a bit chunky).

Sweet potato, brown sugar, and cinnamon... what's not to like? It's a classic flavor combination and a lot less work than sweet potato pie.

However, mine also turned out dry. Not unpleasantly so - just a consistency I associate with roasted vegetables, not dessert. Part of the problem may have been that I microwaved the sweet potatoes. Boiling or steaming may have left more moisture in them. But then they're sauteed and baked, so maybe not. I was tempted to add a liquid (maybe orange juice, maybe bourbon) to get a syrup started. I also cheated and used panko instead of fresh bread crumbs; that would have left a bit of moisture too.

Everything came together when my wife pointed out that it needed a scoop of ice cream. (Ben & Jerry's Peach Cobbler, to be precise.) There's the moisture, and a contrasting texture and temperature. Of course, you won't get that kind of advice when you get recipes from a fitness site...

Alton, you know you're my boy. There are terra cotta tiles in my over because of you. I eat barbecued tofu because of you. But, my friend, sometimes you just gotta rein it in.

Like this steak recipe. I mean, it's broiled steak! The point is simplicity. And here you go telling me to move the dang oven racks after 10 minutes of cooking. Not the steaks, the racks! I don't know what dinnertime looks like in your house, but in mine, it doesn't involve messing with hot oven racks.

Maybe I'm overreacting. But let's try a little less "mad" in your "mad genius."

Excellent shortcakes. Just the right amount of sweetness while still having a good bit of biscuit texture to them. I let the dough get too wet and it was hard to work with, but that's just something to watch for next time.

A good example of the double-cooking method of mashing potatoes. It's never let me down, and it's easy enough to mess with the recipe if you want to.

Pretty solid recipe. I might like a little more advice on good seasonings to add to the sausage. The technique of flouring the hard-boiled eggs to make the sausage stick to them better is genius and I don't know why every recipe doesn't include this trick. We also found that, if you don't want to deal with deep-frying, it's perfectly acceptable to use enough oil to get about halfway up the Scotch egg, and flip them at about 4-5 minutes.

Another entry in my collection of "Pepin recipes which look more complicated than they are." This would be a great vegetable for when company comes over... it looks classy but requires only a hair more time and attention than boiled green beans.

Terrific meatballs. I'll definitely be using the technique of mixing panade with meat in the food processor, not by hand. These seemed to pay off my labor better than other meatball recipes I've tried. (The recipe also makes enough meatballs that I can get 2 or 3 meals out of it.)

The sauce is fine, but forgettable. I'll probably just open a jar in future. That may be a comment on the quality of my supermarket crushed tomatoes and tomato sauce.

It was only recently that I tasted borscht for the first time, and I knew I had to learn how to make it. It's fantastic comfort food; satisfying and rich, with balanced sweetness from the beets.

This recipe has the added benefit of being dead easy to make, especially if you let the food processor do the chopping like I did. (Like Queezle_Sister, I found some of the beet and carrot pieces too big at the end of cooking, so I hit it with the immersion blender to break them down a bit.)

I'll add a serving suggestion: horseradish. It adds a pleasant note of heat and a touch of acid to the soup. And don't forget a loaf of black bread.

A very good ice cream, rich and lush. The cream and buttermilk combo gives a very interesting flavor. I'll agree with the comment that a little more strawberry flavor would be welcome. This is an ice cream which really benefits from a minute or two of thawing - the creamy texture becomes something you'd expect at an ice cream shop, and the strawberry wakes up just a bit.

An easy and pleasant approach to roasted potatoes. They do turn out creamy, not fluffy or crusty. The garlic and rosemary flavors mix for a very pleasant bite.

A pretty nice approach to a roast; once again with this book, I'm glad I turned the heat from "low" to "warm" about an hour early.

The apples are interesting. We used Fujis, which are probably too sweet for this dish, though their apple blossom perfume was captured well. With a sweet apple, a little goes a long way - it's almost a dessert topping. My son picked up on the brown sugar and ginger flavors and accused us of serving him sweet potatoes instead of apples. I'd like to try it again with a properly tart apple, but even so, I'd probably scale back the sugar.

I think of thyme as pork's best friend, but this recipe shows that sage might be a close second. I found the garlic flavor was a little lost, given the effort of studding the ham with slivers. We had a smaller ham than called for (4.75 lbs) and found the 20 minutes per pound timing turned out a well-done roast - a few more minutes would have made it downright dry. A brine, or a closer eye on the roast, would have been nice.

The apples worked very well; reviewed separately.

I don't particularly like rhubarb or muffins. But it's Mother's Day and my wife and son like both those things, so I roused myself and made them. They were really quite good!

The little chunks of rhubarb provide the balance that most bakery muffins seem to lack. They're particularly good warm while the rhubarb is still hot and soft. The batter is the right amount of sweet but not too much so.

The recipe says "walnuts", but I used pecans because, well, I always prefer pecans.

The recipe says it makes 12 muffins, but in my muffin tin it makes 16. The last 4 were prettier than the first 12; maybe the batter benefits from standing a few minutes.

My wife called this a "very German" cake - meaning it's dense, with a tight, slightly dry crumb. Cinnamon is the dominant flavor, with chocolate and raisin notes behind it. (I'll probably back off the cinnamon and boost the cocoa next time.) Very pleasant with a little iced cream or whipped cream, and perhaps a cup of coffee.

Red beans and rice isn't my go-to dish when I think of Creole cuisine; that spot is held by the more complex dishes like jambalaya and gumbo. Yet every time I make this dish, I wonder why it isn't higher on my list. The brilliant mix of savory beans and gravy over sweet white rice always feeds my soul as well as the more opulent dishes do. Alton Brown's recipe brings the flavor in at just about 2 hours of cooking, assuming you've already put in the 3 days necessary to pickle the pork. (And if you haven't... well you should, but I won't tell anybody if you substitute a nice link of andouille or the like.)

Most of my ratatouille recipes are built in a skillet or pot. In this one, the vegetables are roasted first and then covered with tomato sauce. The result is that the eggplants, peppers and zucchini hold their shape and individual flavors better.

We just ate it as a side dish; serving over pasta or rice would also be nice.

These were fine, but nothing to write home about. I had trouble with the extra moisture from the pumpkin throwing the cook time off; my first batch was definitely underdone and even the more done ones were more moist than fluffy. I found them undersweetened, although maybe that's intentional because they were about right with syrup and candied pumpkin seeds.

The recipe also makes an enormous batch, so I'll be finding out how well they reheat.

I adore paprikash - stewed chicken in a rich and creamy sauce spiced with paprika. This slow-cooker approach is a winner. I used 2 chicken leg quarters instead of the poussins called for, and it worked just fine. The meat was tender, almost falling off the bone, and the sauce was pleasant.

Looking at my previous favorite recipe (from the Frugal Gourmet: Immigrant Ancestors book), I think I'd increase the shallots in this recipe next time. I also got a reminder that this is a dish where you should use the freshest paprika you can find - I used the end of a can of indeterminate age and it was a little lacking in flavor. (The amount called for - 3 teaspoons - looks right; I'm sure this was about my spice cabinet.)

A pretty good take on the classic. Warm, smooth, and refined. I found it needed salt; that probably depends on how much is already in the stock you use.

This is a light and simple stew, appropriate for a spring meal. It's pleasant, but we found it lacking depth. The pork cooked nicely, and the apples and onions were fine, but the broth was downright watery. I imagine that either adding a cup of chicken stock, to make it a soup instead of a stew, or cutting half a cup or so of cider, to concentrate the flavors, would help. A handful of dried fruit might play well with the pork and apples, or I might do a riff on Julia Child's spring lamb stew and add green beans. So, as I keep saying with this book, the recipe is so-so but it's an intriguing base for future experiments.

Hash is comfort food; it turns stretching the meat or using up the leftovers from an act of necessity to an act of love. Pepin hits that note just fine with this recipe.

That said, I found this recipe under-spiced. It wanted more Worcestershire sauce, and for my taste, more Tabasco. Of course, this will vary depending on how the pork roast was prepared. (I also suspect that I'd prefer the more mild flavors if I'd had it for breakfast instead of dinner.)

I had trouble getting mine to brown, even going a little longer on the time than stated. Perhaps my "medium" heat wasn't high enough. I wonder, though, if I over-worked the potatoes and caused them to steam more than saute, or if this is a problem with the thin slices of potato called for.

It's a neat take on a Thanksgiving burger - turkey, cranberry sauce, and blue cheese for some creaminess and spice. The apple I used added some generic sweetness but got lost; I wish I'd had a firm green apple on hand as called for. (Maybe I diced it too small to add any texture.) I made them slider-size; the recipe made 9 small burgers. Paying for a good blue cheese was worth it.

I thought they were only OK, creative in concept but still kind of bland. My family, however, enjoyed them a lot, so I may experiment some more to try and kick up the flavor and texture just a bit.

A fantastic dish for spring or early summer, this is a dish that's hearty without being heavy. It's a dish of little bites... a bit of salt from the pancetta, cubes of sweet potato which retain their shape, and a hit of freshness from the vinegary capers.

Rice cooking is one of my great struggles - I seem to have either wet mushy stuff or a burnt layer at the bottom pretty frequently. But Alton's approach to pilaf is darn near bulletproof, including the facts that it's flavorful, and saves well in the fridge.

I know 2 or 3 people, plus myself, who've tried this recipe and, as near as we can tell, it's just broken. The dough comes out wet, almost soupy, and makes something like a biscuit-flavored muffin top. It doesn't hold its shape and it spreads out tremendously in the oven, gaining almost no height. It's a pleasant enough bread (especially if you're partial to crumbly biscuits instead of flaky), but it sure ain't no biscuit. At the end of the day, turn to page 138 and make the biscuits according to that beautiful bulletproof White Lily recipe (which is the same as the one on the sack of flour).