Readers' Picks: Favorite Recipes

For this beef stew, Jacques Pépin uses a special piece of the shoulder called the flatiron steak. This long, narrow piece is extremely lean, tender and moist, and it makes an ideal stew. This rich, winey beef stew is always a hit with his chef friends.

In matching spicy sausage with a creamy mustard sauce and fragrant basil, British cookbook author Nigel Slater created a quick pasta supper with warm, mildly spicy flavors, perfect for a cool fall or winter evening.

Grape tomatoes sautéed with capers, shallot and cumin form a bright, chunky sauce for seared salmon. The recipe is from Ted Allen's cookbook, The Food You Want to Eat.

This piquant dish from Lidia Bastianich's Missouri restaurant, Lidia's Kansas City, is one of our favorite ways to prepare skinless chicken breasts.

These pillowy, vitamin C-packed cakelets are adapted from The Greyston Bakery Cookbook. "When you overwhelm dry ingredients with wet ones, an amazing texture separation happens," Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan says. "These cakes are rich without being too heavy."

Tomato, golden raisins and saffron transform canned chickpeas in this sweet and savory specialty of Seville from Spanish cookbook author Janet Mendel.

In these single-serving desserts from F&W's Grace Parisi, the rich and creamy cheesecakes are baked atop a chocolate-wafer base. You don't need any special equipment to make them—just a muffin tin and foil liners.

Here, Mario Batali stuffs chicken thighs with bread crumbs, herbs and cheese for a rich (but easy) main dish.

This extraordinarily simple dish is packed with flavor.