"I'm just slowly moving past my BLT binge, which consumed nearly all of my sandwich-making capabilities for the whole summer. Luckily, I ran into some figs at the produce shop, and before I knew it I was at the Chocolate and Zucchini site, gawking at this warm sandwich. How could I not go for this? It seemed soothing and a perfect dish for the slight cool in the air."

"These Grilled Baby Backs with Sweet Soy Glaze from Steven Raichlen's Planet Barbecue! are adapted from Naughty Nuri's Warung, a restaurant in Bali with a crowd of martini-swilling expats and a proprietress with a deft hand when it comes to grilling. Reading the intro to the recipe left me with an urge to book a flight to Bali and a serious hankering for some ribs."

"I am addicted to this dish. Usually I have to cook so many new dishes a week, I don't have time to revisit the really impressive ones. But I've made an exception for this one. I understand on paper it doesn't sound like it should work. The recipe from Eggs On Sunday uses a lot of maple syrup, Too sticky sweet? Nope, everything is balanced by the cider vinegar and black peppercorns, which transform into this rich, meaty glaze that miraculously makes each bite taste like the best rib eye you can imagine."

"I really hate that I still have food hang-ups. Don't get me wrong, the Josh from five years ago would marvel at what the Josh of today includes in his diet, but I still have such a long way to go to be the eater I aspire to. One of those absolutely silly things I've never been able to get over is peanut sauce. I love peanut butter, I love meat, but for some reason if the two were put together, it's not going in my mouth. It came time to crush this aversion into oblivion, and these beef satay skewers did just the trick."

"That is where 5 Heads of Garlic Roast Chicken comes in. I've always been an ardent admirer of the rotisserie chickens you find on the streets in Paris, and I always seek to achieve the same burnished gloss in my roast chickens at home. The secret is, as it always is, butter. I make a compound butter stocked with thyme and two heads of roasted garlic. Over and under the skin, it makes the chicken moist inside and crispy outside. Garlic perfumes the pan sauces, and more roasted garlic nestles in the pan instead of onions or potatoes. Serve it with a crusty country loaf, and you're done. Bye-bye, summertime!"

"Ever since The Food Lab uncovered the baking powder for crispy wings trick, I've been rocking grilled wings all the time. With my wings now near perfection—my wife even suggests them anytime we have company, her sly way of getting more for herself—I've been branching out beyond the usual buffalo and trying out different sauces. The latest, and greatest, incarnation were wings slathered in a honey chipotle glaze."

"This time of year there is a lot of hubbub about stone fruits, berries, corn, and tomatoes, but I'd like to take a moment to talk about two vegetables that don't get too much summertime recognition—the beet and Swiss chard."

"When I opened up Cooking the Cowboy Way in search of dinner, I had one thing in mind: steak. I found more recipes than I could count, but was drawn to this simple recipe with big flavors: a spicy, salty-sweet rub and a disc of compound butter melted over it."

"Roasting a chicken is one of the most indispensable skills that a cook can hone, and no one has been championing the simple joys of a roast chicken more than Thomas Keller. So it's not surprising Keller chose to contribute a recipe for One-Pot Roast Chicken to In The Green Kitchen by Alice Waters, a collection of essential skills for home cooks."

The pizzas served at Otto, Mario Batali's New York City pizzeria, might not be made in a way that the VPN or many pizza purists might agree with, but the technique that they've developed is a boon to any aspiring home pizza-maker.

"This is a signature dish at Al Di La, the popular Brooklyn Italian eatery, and one that I love to order. The jewel-colored beet filling shines through the delicate pasta, just bidding to be eaten. These ravioli are so sublimely delicious, I always want more. Now I can make and eat as many as I want at home, and you can too."

"Being a lover of Tex-Mex and Southwest cooking, I find Bobby Flay's recipes enticing whenever flipping through his books. Although I let the sometimes lengthy ingredient lists and long processes stop me from cooking the most intriguing recipes, every now and then I decide to give it a go, like these Spanish spice-rubbed chicken breasts with parsley-mint sauce (quite the mouthful)."

"Rose Gray, the late chef of London's River Café, had a thing for flourless chocolate cakes. The River Café's signature dessert was called the Chocolate Nemesis, a concoction of chocolate, butter, and eggs that was more of a sliceable truffle than an actual cake. In Italian Easy there are no fewer than five recipes for variations on this incredibly rich and chocolaty dessert."