Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

This peanut butter sandwich cookie is a smaller version of the gargantuan homemade Nutter Butters served at Bouchon Bakery, Thomas Keller's restaurant in the Time Warner Center. It is pure peanut sophistication; two crunchy, crisp peanut butter cookies filled with pillowy peanut-butter frosting. These cookies spread a fair amount while baking, so be sure to give them plenty of room on the baking sheet and let them cool and firm up before filling. (After reading through some of the reader comments, we retested the original recipe and decided to make the cookies smaller and double the filling. We've edited the below recipe to reflect those changes.)

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

This butterscotch budino from the pastry chef Dahlia Narvaez is a pudding to shame all other puddings. The budino’s simple master stroke? Over the pudding hovers a thin layer of caramel with an audaciously generous sprinkling of sea salt. Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

This fast recipe for meatballs came to The Times from the actor and director Stanley Tucci, who compiled his Italian-American family’s recipes into “The Tucci Cookbook” in 2012. Make sure the bread for this is really dry -- it will improve the meatballs’ texture. And if they are to be used in sauce, undercook them slightly before adding them to the sauce. (The New York Times) Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

This quick, easy-to-put-together chicken comes from Paul Kahan of The Publican, a restaurant in Chicago. The ingredient list is short, and may include much of what you already have on hand. But the flavor it yields is paramount: Serve it with wedge fries and a frosty beer for a meal that will lift the most flagging spirits. Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

Frank Bruni, a former restaurant critic for The Times, came up with this drink at Ward III, a lounge in Tribeca that lets you choose the ingredients and qualities you want in a drink that's then custom-made for you. It's a lightly-sweet strawberry-tequila cocktail that gets a flicker of heat from the addition of jalapeño. It's got summer written all over it. Keep in mind that some jalapeño is hotter than others: it’s impossible to give a measure that will assure a specific degree of heat. So if you make the following recipe, go especially light on the jalapeño the first time around, and don’t overdo the ice in the shaker. Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

This is a project recipe, to be sure. But the result? An impressive, delectable mountain of perfectly cooked pasta, tender meatballs, egg and salami, swathed in a rich ragu and folded all together in a lissome dough. It is an excavation to eat this, and one to be undertaken slowly, carefully, so as to catch every prism of flavor. The vivid compliments given to this in the film “Big Night” are unrepeatable here, but we are sure you’ll find some choice adjectives of your own. (The New York Times) Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni · NYT Cooking

This recipe, a contemplation on classic Italian cooking, is adapted from “The Tucci Cookbook,” a book of recipes from the actor and director Stanley Tucci’s food-obsessed family. It will take some time, so set aside an afternoon, say, a Sunday in the fall, when browning meat and listening for the correct simmer are exactly what you want to do. (The New York Times) Frank Bruni