Please welcome guest author Garrett McCord as he shares a lip-smacking recipe for mushroom stir-fry he recreated from one he enjoyed in China. ~Elise

During a recent trip through China I ate a lot of life changing food. Sichuan stir-fried duck tongues, homemade noodles in beef sauce, spicy lotus root with ginger, Sandouping-style boiled peanuts, curried yak with butter, deep fried river shrimp with garlic... Oh! The list goes on! You can believe that I was taking plenty of notes so that I could recreate these dishes back in the States.

While in Beijing and Xi'an I noticed that much of the food there was sweeter than the rest of China. One particular dish we had quite a few times was a simple mushroom stir-fry. It was spicy, but not too much. Just enough to make the tongue tingle a bit. It was also quite sweet, but not sickeningly so. When I asked one of the cooks what made it sweet he pulled down a jar of practically-black honey whose musky fragrance, even with the lid firmly closed, dominated a kitchen packed with garlic and scallions. I was smitten.

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When I was a kid, my mother often used to add sliced raw jerusalem artichokes to our salads. I have no idea why. She doesn't do it any more, and hasn't for years. At the time I just thought they were weird looking and didn't taste like much. Nothing at all like the real artichokes that we kids fought over at the dinner table. My kid's mind decided that they didn't grow very good artichokes in Jerusalem. Hah! Well, mystery solved. Turns out jerusalem artichokes are neither artichokes, nor are they from Jerusalem. They're tubers, native of North America, and the plant is related to and resembles sunflowers. (In fact, these days they are often called "sunchokes".) "Jerusalem" is thought to have evolved from the Italian name for the plant, "girasole" for sunflower. Why "artichoke"? If my mom had only cooked them, then that part of the mystery would have been solved for me. Cooked, they taste surprisingly like artichokes. Yum!

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Gobsmacked. I thought I was pretty well versed in what one could do with cabbage, addicted to the stuff as I am. Whether it's braised, in stewed, stuffed, boiled, or made into coleslaw, we eat cabbage in every which way around here. But this my friends, this has to be the easiest way to prepare cabbage and still have it taste great. (Boiled cabbage is probably the easiest, but then what you have is just boiled cabbage.) My mother made something like this the other day with curly cabbage. You just simply blanch the torn or roughly cut cabbage leaves in boiling salted water, drain them, and toss with butter, and seasonings. Butter and cabbage together? A dream team. And caraway and celery seeds just make them dance.

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Although at first glance it may not look like it, with our Northern California sunny skies and green lawns, winter truly is here. The leaves have all fallen. The fish in the pond are half asleep. Several of the lettuces in the garden have succumbed to frost, while the chard and parsley thankfully are thriving. It's still, quiet, and chilly most days. Perfect weather for a hearty soup. Even though this bread soup is meatless (if you use veggie stock), it is thick and filling. In fact, it's really more of a stew than a soup. The bread absorbs much of the liquid. It's called a panade, or panada, from the Latin base "pan" for bread. The recipe is based on one introduced to me by my friend Ann Martin Rolke, cookbook author, Sacramento local, and co-founder along with Amber Stott, of the California Food Literacy Center, a recently formed non-profit with the mission to help us understand the impact of our food choices.

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Hank Shaw is back, tempting us with pumpkin ricotta gnocchi. It's crazy good, and actually not as hard as you would think to make. Enjoy! ~Elise

Pumpkin ravioli with brown butter and sage is a classic for a reason: The color, the texture and the flavors of winter squash, fried sage and browned butter are a match made in heaven. But making ravioli requires a fair bit of skill. Gnocchi, however, are easy to make once you get the hang of it.

The key to making any dumplings is to make them as light as possible. We've all had leaden lumps of unhappiness before; they're memorable, and not in a good way. What keeps these gnocchi fluffy are the ricotta cheese and a light hand with the flour. Gnocchi dough is often sticky, and it's the ability to resist the urge to keep adding more and more flour that separates a good dumpling from a heavy one.

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Homemade stock almost always tastes better than boxed or canned, and this is never more true than with vegetable stock. In the case of chicken or beef stock, the stock comes from cooking bones in water on low heat, for several hours. With vegetable stock, there are no bones to cook, so the richness of the stock comes from the variety of vegetables you use. It helps to brown the veggies first, so the stock gets infused with some of the flavors from caramelization. Unlike chicken or beef stock, which needs time to extract all the goodness from the bones, with vegetable stock, you cook the stock for only an hour to an hour and half. Beyond that, the flavors begin to disintegrate.

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Edamame (eh-dah-MAH-may) are nothing more than fresh soy beans. Typically cooked in heavily salted water, they are usually found in the shell served at Japanese restaurants. Having first encountered them in bars when I lived in Japan, I've always thought of them as the Japanese version of a beer nut—they're salty and go great with beer. They've recently become more popular in the states and you can usually easily find them frozen, both shelled and shell-on. They are rather tasty beans, so I thought we would make a simple bean dip with them. So good! This dip includes cilantro, lime juice, yogurt, and a whole avocado. Also just a little bit of Tabasco and dark sesame oil for some sparkle.

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I never used to know what to do with fennel, but these days, I can't get enough of it. Fennel is the most wonderfully versatile vegetable. You can slice raw fennel thin and serve it with a little shaved Parmesan for a crisp salad. Or you can plop it in the oven with a little balsamic and roast it until it gets sweetly caramelized. Fennel has a special affinity for Parmesan, and in this simple gratin fennel wedges are tossed with breadcrumbs, Mozzarella and Parm, and baked until golden brown. A lovely side for lighter fare, such chicken or fish, and would also work well as a dressy side for a holiday meal.

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Oh my, this is a good one. I never would have thought to pair kale with tahini (thank you to my friend Peg for the suggestion), but it's great. Sort of reminiscent of a popular Japanese dish with spinach and sesame gomasio. The slightly bitter green kale does a happy dance with the acidic lemon and salty richness of the tahini sauce. Very easy to pull together. Would make an excellent addition to a Thanksgiving or holiday spread. Enjoy. (And as my dad says, eat your greens!)

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One of my favorite foods is quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah), a grain-like seed native of South America. It's a lot like couscous, but nuttier in flavor, and smoother on the tongue. It's also high in protein and completely gluten-free. You can make a pilaf with it, or use it for stuffing, or just eat it plain. I recently stumbled upon a recipe for quinoa with queso fresco in this book, and then found many other variations online. As I played around and experimented with this recipe I had two revelations. The first is that quinoa tastes great with milk poured over it. The second is quinoa tastes great with cheese (queso).

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Have you ever had broccoli rabe (pronounced "rahb" or "rah-bee" depending on where you are from)? I have sort of a love hate relationship with it. It looks like broccoli, but it doesn't taste like it. Broccoli rabe can sometimes be so bitter, even with blanching, there's no amount of vinegar or bacon that can save it. But bitterness heightens flavors (hence the purpose of parsley). Your tongue can distinguish 4 basic tastes—sour, bitter, sweet, and salty—so if you combine the somewhat bitter rabe with strong tastes from the other groups, the result can be like happy fireworks in your mouth. Rabe combined with sun-dried tomatoes is a deli classic, the tomatoes offering a sweet intense counter-note to the rabe. Still, it's not for everyone, so be warned. This recipes tosses lightly sautéed broccoli rabe with sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, Parmesan cheese and penne pasta. So good! We devoured it.

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Years ago I visited the Caribbean island of Trinidad and was struck not only by the music of steel drums filling the air everywhere, but also by a street food called "roti", which is sort of like an east Indian version of a burrito. A curry pocket of sorts.

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Called papas bravas or patatas bravas in Spain, this dish is essentially potatoes cooked in a spicy sauce and served as an appetizer, or tapas. Variations abound in both the cooking method—the potatoes are fried, boiled or roasted—and the sauce, which usually has hot chiles, tomato and vinegar. The name of the recipe roughly translates into "fierce" or "angry" potatoes. But these potatoes are as spicy or "fierce" as you make them. We've made ours with some tomato sauce, quite a bit of Tabasco, and some smoked paprika. The potatoes absorb a lot of heat, so they're not as hot as you would think, given the amount of hot sauce. You can easily reduce the heat to taste. The smoked paprika called for in the recipe really helps these potatoes shine, but sometimes it can be hard to find. McCormick makes smoked paprika, so you may be able to find it at your local supermarket. If not, just substitute regular paprika (sweet).

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Updated, from the recipe archive. Originally posted in 2005.

Here in the San Joaquin Valley, the eggplant season is in full swing. At our local farmers market last weekend one could find eggplants of every variety - globe, Japanese, striped, white, even eggplants that looked like tomatoes. I have a couple still on the vine, after picking the one used for this recipe that was just begging to be eaten. Here is a wonderful recipe for baba ghanouj (also spelled baba ghanoush) a middle eastern eggplant dip. It is typically served with pita bread.

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My dad is the kind of dad who will notice we aren't doing something to his standards and then just take over. (Insert growly voice.) "The recipe says mince, not finely chop, but mince. This isn't minced." I'm happy to report that my father is now in charge of mincing around here. (Was this all part of cunning plan on my side? I'll never tell.)

What we were making that precipitated the great mincing event this week was one of our absolutely favorite sauces for pasta or polenta, a Genoese mushroom sugo or mushroom sauce. The recipe comes from Darrell Corti of the Sacramento gourmet grocery Corti Bros. The recipe is Darrell's grandmother's and appeared in Saveur in 2001.

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