Chicken soup from roast chicken is richer, more robust, even slightly more bitter (from the twice-cooked herbs, spices, and potatoes), and more buttery — see how the chandelier shines back in the photo — than soup made with a fresh raw chicken.

This chocolate treat became a family tradition on the very first taste. Another gift from Michele Pulaski, it is intense, molten in the middle, and a touch sweeter than my usual fare, but I wouldn’t change anything, partly because the sugar does things to the texture that one doesn’t want to spoil.

So silky, so nutritious, so lightly-sweetened, it can be breakfast, snack, or dessert.

It’s an idiosyncratic collection. The recipes here are those of a farmers’ daughter, former vegetarian, and home cook. They reflect the rhythms of my life with a cheesemonger husband and three small children. The ingredients are timeless, not trendy; the methods classic rather than rule-breaking. Above all, these are the dishes I love, made with real food.

Even supermarket carrots in the dead of winter are good this way.

Your task: to go to the market in deepest February and find distinctive, crunchy things like watermelon radish, fennel, and apples, and to make them look and taste lovely.

Because it’s stable at high temperatures, coconut oil is excellent for cooking and baking. The coconut and chicken broth make this luscious soup the ultimate cold-and- flu therapy.