Balsamic Vinegar

When a close friend, the head of a renowned academic institution, called to tell us that he had decided to retire from his post to pursue a new career, we could hear both sadness and excitement in his voice. He had served happily in his job for well over a decade, and although enthusiastic about his new undertaking, the decision had been bittersweet. My husband and I picked up on this right away and invited him and his wife, both bon vivants, to come for an overnight visit that we promised would be filled with laughter, wine and food.

My best date ever involved hunting for rabbit. We didn't intend to spend the date this way. The man I had been seeing for a few months initially proposed a far more ordinary activity: seeing a movie at a Columbia multiplex on a winter evening. But the movie was sold out, so we browsed at Borders while we waited for the next show. That's when we spotted the food-and-travel book of the moment - Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes' tale of how she restored an abandoned villa in the Italian countryside while feasting on olives, nuts and pears fresh off the trees.

Thick, creamy pasta sauces don't have to be laden with calories, and they don't have to take forever to make. Sometimes it is just a matter of stirring in the right ingredient. In this case, ricotta cheese. To borrow a tip from chef and cookbook author Mario Batali, hot pasta water is blended with the ricotta to "melt" it into a creamier texture. For this recipe, we broiled cherry tomatoes to get optimal flavor, and used their juice to help create the sauce when we mixed in the cheese.

I am trying to brown thick chicken cutlets in olive oil and garlic. I don't want to burn the garlic. When and how should I add the garlic for the best flavor? A thick chicken cutlet may be just one side of the chicken breast, trimmed and shaped, or the breast piece may have been sliced horizontally into two. I would first saute the garlic cloves, sliced lengthwise, in the olive oil until they are lightly browned, then remove them before adding the chicken cutlets, seasoned with salt and freshly ground pepper.

Think of meatloaf as an edible time capsule. A simple mixture of ground meat and seasonings bound with eggs and bread crumbs, meatloaf has the ability to transport taste buds to another time and place. To Mom's kitchen, where fat slabs are doused with ketchup. To the all-night diner, where it stars on the weekly blue-plate special. To the froufrou restaurant, where well-heeled diners clamor for a glamorous truffled version of what was once considered working-class fare. Meatloaf changes with the times because its list of ingredients is highly elastic: The cook can easily stretch the meat with filler or embellish it with exotic ingredients.

A recipe for salmon croquettes called for cooked salmon. I have some wild salmon and was wondering how best to cook that for the croquettes. Wild salmon is a treasure that I don't think you should waste in making croquettes, where its glorious flavor and taste will be buried under other ingredients. We recently came into possession of a whole fillet of wild salmon when my niece sent us one after she and her husband returned from an Alaskan fishing trip. My wife carefully thawed the fillet in the refrigerator and cut it into generous single-serving pieces.

At the small New England school where my husband teaches, graduation week is one of the most anticipated of the year. You can feel the buzz on campus. Seniors walk with a certain swagger. They've just finished four years of hard work, reading an infinite number of books, cramming for lab tests and pulling all-nighters to get papers in on time. Finally, it's time for celebration. I often get calls from students (especially those who love to cook) asking for advice about planning graduation parties or what to serve, and I love helping.

Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers The Moosewood Collective Good Housekeeping Rush Hour Dinners Hearst Books / 2005 / $14.95 There is fast, and then there is fast and interesting. The cooks at Good Housekeeping provide the interest with recipes for steak with rosemary, cannellini beans and balsamic vinegar; and chicken ragout in squash bowls. This is a good cookbook not only for the rushed cook, but for the cook who hopes to have the time to do more in the kitchen someday. There are short-cut recipes for jambalaya, risotto, meat or fish with wine sauces and some interesting pastas - just the kinds of recipes you might see on a 30-minute cooking show.

A couple of years ago, Dave Lieberman was just another college student. OK, he was a good-looking Yale University student who also just happened to know how to cook. In his senior year, he had his own cooking show on a cable-access channel and operated a catering business. The New York Times' Amanda Hesser featured him in a story, and before you know it, the Food Network came knocking at his door. Lieberman, 25, now has his own cooking show, Good Deal With Dave Lieberman, and his first cookbook, Young & Hungry (Hyperion, 2005, $22.95)

I bought 18-year-old aged balsamic vinegar recently, but am unsure how to use it beyond salads. Do you have any simple recipes to share? I don't know what you spent on that balsamic vinegar, but if you did spend upward of $50 to $75, I'd be curious as to whether you confessed that purchase to your spouse and what his reaction was. Many moons ago, I decided I couldn't live without a 2-ounce bottle of 50-year-old balsamic. With my chef's discount, it was still $125 and you had to use an eyedropper to dispense the one or two drops you might use at a time.