David Lebovitz

This tarragon-laced version of the classic French Parmentier subs in a rotisserie chicken for the traditional beef.

This has the authentic taste of that old-fashioned ripple of fudge. You can swirl it through just about any ice cream you like. Try it in old-fashioned Tin Roof Ice Cream with chocolate-covered peanuts.

These easy-to-make peanuts will make you feel like a chocolatier assembling a world-class candy bar. If you're anything like me, you can't keep chocolate bars around the house without breaking off a hunk every time you pass by, so by all means double the recipe if you want, just to make sure there's enough for folding into the ice cream later on.

Gnocchis à la Parisienne This dish is considered humble fare, and one you would never see in a restaurant. Hence it's largely unknown to folks outside of France. Paule Caillat gave me her family recipe, to which I made a few changes (authorized, of course). The dumplings are made of pâte à choux dough, similar to that used for profiteroles. They're partially cooked by poaching them first, then baking, where they'll puff up gloriously before settling down, waiting to be scooped up from under a blanket of browned cheese. This is a pretty rich dish; serve it with a simple green salad.

Mousse au Chocolat au Beurre Salé There's not much I can say about this. One bite will leave you just as speechless.

Couscous Israélien au Citron et aux Pistaches Every year in Menton, a city near Nice that's on the border of Italy, there's a festival celebrating the famed Menton lemons. Plump and irregularly shaped, they're seasonally available in Paris markets, with their leaves still attached. They are prized by chefs and cooks for their intense lemony flavor (without the harshness of commercial lemons), and their not-too-bitter pith, which makes them perfect for preserving. This nutty, lemony salad makes good use of preserved lemons, which you can easily buy or make yourself (see my website for a recipe). I keep a jar on hand at all times. They take a few weeks to mellow and soften, so don't save making them for the last minute. Their flavor is incomparable, and a jar will last for months in your refrigerator. Chopped-up bits can be tossed with olives for a quick apéro, and they also add an assertive citrus flavor to this dish made with pistachios and Israeli couscous. Israeli couscous are little pearls of pasta, elsewhere called pastina, which means "little pasta," and when toasted it's known as fregola sarda. Since they have more substance, I think they hold up a little better to North African-style braised meats, like the lamb shank tagine, than traditional couscous. (Orzo is a good substitute for the Israeli couscous.) To change things around a bit, you can vary the dried fruit or swap in fresh mint or cilantro for the parsley. Another nut, such as toasted hazelnuts or almonds or even pine nuts, could be used in place of the pistachios.

Tin roof sundaes are traditionally made of vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate sauce and a scattering of red-skinned Spanish peanuts. I couldn't resist using chocolate-covered peanuts instead and folding them into the ice cream, where they become embedded between layers of fudge ripple.

Everyone needs a terrific vanilla ice cream recipe in their repertoire, and here it is. Keeping a tub of homemade vanilla ice cream in my freezer is standard policy, since I can't think of any dessert that isn't made better with a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting alongside.

Making ice cream cones at home is very easy. It’s quite fun if you have an electric waffle-cone maker, although you can bake them in the oven with great success as well. The batter is simplicity itself: just a few ingredients mixed together, baked, and rolled up into cones…which is the fun part! You will need a conical cone-rolling form made of wood or plastic, or you can simply shape them around overturned teacups to make a cone-bowl hybrid. A few tips for baking cones by hand: The batter recipe can easily be doubled, allowing for a few practice cones, which may come in handy your first time making them. When baking them in the oven, I prefer to use parchment paper to line the baking sheet, rather than a silicone baking mat. Also, I let the baking sheet cool between batches or have another baking sheet handy, as the batter is much easier to handle when the baking sheets are at room temperature. To roll the cones, you may wish to wear clean rubber gloves or use a tea towel, since the just-baked cookies may be too warm for you to handle with bare hands. If using an electric ice cream cone maker, most models require 3 tablespoons of batter for each cone, so you may get 4 cones from this recipe. Follow the instructions that come with your unit.

If you don't believe the saying that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, this simple yet incredibly good sorbet is proof positive that it can be true. This is my all-time favorite sorbet.

A thin layer of frangipane, a rich almond pastry cream, elevates this simple, classic French dessert into something special. It's made in the style of many French fruit tarts: thin-crusted and only lightly sweetened to let the fruit truly shine. Americans have eagerly adopted French-inspired freeform tarts, even giving them a French name, galette, a word that the French generally use to describe a round, squat pastry, cookie, or buckwheat crêpe. The most famous galette is Galette des Rois, two disks of puff pastry filled with frangipane and eaten on Epiphany. I considered calling this dessert a tart, but decided against it because that term can put off people who are worried about dealing with fussy doughs and trying to achieve picture-perfect results. This pastry is intended to be rustic, and for that reason, it's often my go-to galette. Or tart. Speaking of tart, if your apples are particularly tart, you could sprinkle a bit more sugar on top of them before baking, but if you serve a sweet accompaniment alongside, as I usually do, additional sugar probably won't be necessary.

I got a perplexing message from someone who made these biscotti: “They were good, but full of big chunks of chocolate.” I’m not sure if that was meant as a compliment or a criticism, but I do know for sure that it wasn’t a mistake—that’s exactly what I had in mind when I came up with these superchunky chocolate biscotti. They’re perfect for dipping in a large cup of dark coffee or alongside a glass of Cognac after dinner. They’re also great travel cookies—I’m always happy when I pull out a bag midway through a flight or train trip. I make sure to bring extras because when I see the longing looks of passengers around me, I feel pressured to share—and I do, reluctantly.

If you're lucky enough to have a persimmon tree, you're guaranteed to have plenty of gorgeous persimmons come autumn. Or, if you have a neighbor with one, you're bound to find a bag of persimmons on your doorstep one fall day. The prolific trees are especially striking when the leaves drop and the traffic-stopping bright-orange orbs are still clinging to the bare, gnarled branches, silhouetted against a clear autumn sky. Even if you don't have a tree, or a neighboring one that you can benefit from, you might have seen persimmons at the market. Most likely they were Hachiya persimmons, the most common, elongated-shape variety. It's the one I recommend for this cake. They must be squishy soft before they can be used. If you buy them rock-hard, leave them at room temperature until they feel like water balloons ready to burst. When ready, yank off the stem, slice each persimmon in half, then scoop out the jellylike pulp and purée it in a blender or food processor.

If you don't believe the saying that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, this simple yet incredibly good sorbet is proof positive that it can be true. This is my all-time favorite sorbet.

This jam is the filling for the Rosemary Cookies with Tomato Jam . I often serve a small pot of it to accompany a sumptuous platter of perfectly ripened cheeses, one of my favorite desserts of all.

At a dinner at an Italian vinoteca, on the dessert menu was something I'd never seen before: ricotta-stuffed eggplant with candied orange and chocolate sauce. My curiosity piqued, I placed an order with the waiter, only to have him come back with "You won't like it. Order something else." Not one to be easily swayed from ordering an intriguing dessert, I ordered it in spite of his admonition, and you know what? I liked it—quite a bit, in fact. With that experience in mind, when I saw a fresh fennel cake on a dessert menu at a fancy three-star Michelin restaurant, I didn't hesitate to order it. I had high hopes and was ready for anything. But so was the waiter, who informed me as he set it down that if I didn't like it, he'd replace it with something else. He saw my expression after I took my first bite, and he briskly returned to the table to make good on his offer. Still, I do believe in giving a chance to things that are out of the ordinary, otherwise, how would we discover new flavors and tastes? I haven't gotten around to trying to come up with my own version of an eggplant dessert (and I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to come up with a fresh fennel one, either), but I've made these tomato jam-filled cookies many times and not once have I had to rush over to offer guests anything in their place.

Serve with pita toasts or crackers, or smear it on grilled chicken breast or tuna steaks for a main course.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop: Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, and Sweet Accompaniments. To read Epicurious's review of the cookbook, go to Summer Cooking Guides. This is the perfect chocolate sorbet — very rich and full of bittersweet chocolate flavor. Use a top-quality cocoa powder; it will make a huge difference. And be sure to use a large saucepan, since the mixture will bubble up as it boils.