It's the ingredients you choose (Chorizo? Sure! Rye bread? Why not?) that will make your stuffing stand out.

Can you braid three strands? Then you can make babkallah. The very idea of babkallah came about because the recipe avoids the complicating twisting technique that gives babka its signature swirl.

Serve as a sweet brunch treat or with tea in the afternoon. No one would turn it down as dessert after a big holiday meal, either. You'll find there's no bad time for babkallah.

I know very little about my great grandparents, who came through Ellis Island in the early twentieth century, settled in Baltimore, and spoke only Yiddish.

My maternal grandmother, a.k.a. Nanny, wasn't much of a cook. As a kid I remember her making only a handful of things, mostly dishes with Ashkenazi Jewish origins like kasha and bowties (which, for the record, only my dad liked).

When making any pureed soup, don't blend all the liquids and solids together at once. Hold back some liquid at first and use it to thin the soup as needed. You can always add more liquid, but there's not much you can do to fix a too-thin soup.

Simmering vegetables in a covered pot over low heat so that they steam in their own liquid - a French technique called a l'etouffee - is the ticket to achieving a soup with pronounced depth.

For rave-worthy soups, skip the store-bought stock. You can extract a cleaner, stronger broth from a combination of water and several pantry ingredients. It's all about layering powerful flavor-enhancers that you probably already have on hand - bacon, tomato paste, herbs, peppercorns, a Parm rind, and, of course, kosher salt.

True marshmallow - and I'm not talking about those ones from a bag - is nothing more than an Italian meringue set with gelatin.

Lemon curd is a basic custard, meaning it's thickened by eggs. Although many curd recipes call for just yolks, I prefer to use a combination of whole eggs and yolks to add a bit of lightness.

Lemon curd is one of the first things I remember cooking when I was old enough to use the stove without supervision. I looked up a recipe in my one of my mom's Martha Stewart cookbooks and went to work, stirring anxiously and monitoring closely for signs that the mixture was thickening so as not to curdle the eggs.

For reasons that aren't quite clear I derive a weird and almost inappropriate pleasure from making a cake that looks like a decomposing log. Essentially, that's what a Buche de Noel is supposed to look like, complete with meringue 'mushrooms' poking out of the chocolate buttercream 'bark.'

I made my first Yule Log as a culinary student in Paris, complete with the traditional chestnut filling, silky chocolate buttercream, and almost-too-adorable mushrooms. Since then, I've tweaked and updated both the recipe and the process - and I've definitely learned tips and tricks to make it easier.

Every year since culinary school I have made a Buche de Noel, or Yule Log.

In the height of summer, a ripe cantaloupe is one of the most intoxicating pieces of produce under the sun.

The mild creaminess of cottage cheese makes it a perfect blank canvas for almost any flavor combination, savory or sweet. Since it's so soft, I usually try to give it some textural contrast in the form of something crunchy. Brightening it up with acid is also a must.

As an adult, I use whole-milk cottage cheese anywhere you might use plain Greek yogurt or ricotta cheese.

When I was a kid, my idea of heaven on a hot summer day was fresh cut-up watermelon, Breakstone's cottage cheese, and a sprinkle of salt.

I ate cottage cheese all the time growing up, but it wasn't until I was in college that I became aware of the stigma surrounding it.

Don't get attached to any one idea. Nothing is too precious.

Criticism of a dish is not a criticism of the cook.

Having those people that you trust implicitly is so important.

There's a lot you can learn about something by taking it apart.

Cooking has always been work.