Leftovers—who says that they have to be boring? At my house a juicy roasted chicken and rice one night often means a big pot of spicy mulligatawny soup the next. No one is ever disappointed.

If you’ve never heard of this beloved Anglo-Indian soup, you’re in for a treat. Indian cooks all have their favorite versions, but the soup basically combines a fragrant curry broth with cooked chicken pieces and rice, fresh lime juice and cilantro. Rich and deeply flavorful, it at once warms the soul and nourishes the body.

I learned how to make mulligatawny soup from my friend Leela Manilal during one of our marathon cooking sessions. We were into the third day of recipe development and had lots of leftovers. Always frugal, Leela stressed the importance of never wasting food but re-working dishes into new and exciting meals the second day.

Everyone at our table that day called mulligatawny “the soup with the funny name,” so Leela patiently coached us in its correct pronunciation. She told us that the name comes from the Tamil language and means “pepper water.” I thought that a tad strange, as there is no pepper in the base recipe (though there is a bit of chile).

Fast forward to my kitchen last Saturday as I prepared lunch for some friends. I find picking chickens for this recipe boring, but am driven forward by the promise of a kitchen filled with the scent of sautéing onions, garlic and ginger. As I stirred in the coriander, earthy cumin, golden turmeric, red chili powder and Turkish bay leaves, my tummy growled with anticipation.

With the soup pot simmering, I decided to set the table on the deck and take full advantage of a small window of warm sunshine on an otherwise dreary day. I covered the table with some beautifully gauzy orange Indian fabric and got out my favorite Jaipur Blue pottery—all hand carried from India over the years. Their brilliant colors and patterns are the perfect contrast for this reddish soup. In this pretty setting, my humble but inspired pot of leftovers became the high point of the weekend; good friends, good food and time to catch up on everyone’s life.

I ladled the piping hot soup into bowls and…

…encouraged my friends to help themselves to rice. None of the guests had ever added rice to soup this way…

…or spritzed in fresh lime juice. Some commented on the taste and beauty of the contrasting green cilantro leaves as they sprinkled them on top. We all inhaled the divine scent with each bite, and agreed that mulligatawny soup is sensational.

Could things get any better? Well yes, they did. I brought out a large basket of warm naan, the Indian flatbread, as a special treat. Some guests dipped it into their soup while other simply devoured it. I told them that I found it in the artisan bread section of my local market, but they could also find it in Indian markets and restaurants.

The afternoon flew by as we savored every last drop of soup. One guest looked at me and laughed, “I guess there won’t be any leftovers today, so you’ll have to create something new tomorrow. Can I come for dinner?”

My friend and cook extraordinaire, Leela Manilal, always enjoys the luscious chocolate desserts at my table—especially the truffles. She asked if I would teach her how to make them, and I knew that my favorite chocolate-Kahlúa truffles would be the perfect place to start. They are easy for beginners and offer a sophisticated depth of flavor that satisfies the most devout truffle lovers, including Leela.

In the kitchen, she spied a large block of chocolate and pitcher of cream on the table. “That’s it? How can two basic ingredients produce perfection?” The secret is in the chocolate. Always use best quality brands like Valhrona, Scharffen Berger or my personal favorite, Barry Callebaut. All are easily available at good grocery stores, online baking supply sites or kitchen stores. Inexpensive supermarket chocolate is not worth your time or money in this instance.

I handed Leela a sharp chef’s knife and showed her how to chop the chocolate into small, uniform pieces so that it would melt evenly. “Barbara, that’s so much chocolate. Is this really necessary?” If you leave large chunks, they won’t melt completely and you could have lumpy truffles.

Lumps seemed almost inevitable when I poured the hot cream over the chocolate. As any experienced truffle maker knows, this step instantly creates an alarming mass of puddles and chocolaty blobs. “Now what?” asked Leela in frustration. “It’s a muddy mess!” I handed her a whisk and reassured her all would be well.

As Leela whisked with a vengeance, I told her how an assistant to culinary great, Auguste Escoffier, invented chocolate truffles when he made a huge mistake in his kitchen over 80 years ago. The assistant was whipping up some chocolate pastry cream and not paying attention as he accidentally poured hot cream over a bowl of chocolate pieces. Sacre bleu! What to do? Soon the melting chocolate absorbed the cream and cooled into the malleable mixture that we know as ganache. Reluctant to waste expensive ingredients, the assistant scooped and formed the ganache into lumpy, bumpy balls and rolled them in cocoa powder. The resulting confection strongly resembled truffles those rare, highly prized fungi dug up in parts of France and Italy. Voila! Chocolate truffles were born.

Today, there are hundreds of truffle variations as cooks flavor them with Grand Marnier, Kahlúa, brandy, whiskey, a variety of wines, liqueurs and extracts and coat them with crushed nuts, cocoa powder, chocolate shavings, sugars and spices—or dip them into warm liquid chocolate.

Soon Leela’s hard work was rewarded, as the mixture came together into a satiny smooth batch of perfect ganache. I handed her a quarter cup of Kahlúa to flavor the mixture. “That isn’t much,” she observed. Therein lies the secret to flavoring truffles: always go easy. There is nothing worse than those that reek of alcohol or send you into hand-flailing contortions with over-the-top taste. Be especially careful with flavorings designed for serious bakers, as they are more intense than the supermarket extracts we are all familiar with.

Once the ganache sets in the refrigerator, creating uniformed sized truffles is easy with a one and one-quarter-inch ice cream scoop. Perfectionist Leela struggled to roll perfectly round balls between her warm hands—with messy results. I laughed as she held up her chocolate-covered hands, looking much like a kid making yummy mud pie. Before long, she learned to embrace the imperfections of a quick scoop, working swiftly to keep the ganache cool, firm and easy to handle. Since this was a lesson, I had Leela roll some of her truffles in chopped pistachios while others got a dusting of cocoa powder. For the tour de force, I gave her a bowl of molten chocolate with two forks for dipping the remaining truffles. To my mind, there is nothing better than double chocolate.

Packing up the truffles was bittersweet because Leela was leaving for her home in New Delhi, India the next day. I slipped a pound of Callebaut chocolate into her suitcase and knew that she would spread the magic of truffles to her family and friends.

Get a printable Chocolate-Kahlúa Truffles for easy reference.

Refer to my illustrated, step-by-step instructions on  How To Chop Chocolate for Melting and How To Melt Chocolate.

When I was a kid, Oreos were my favorite cookies in the whole world. Today, they are the dark crunchy crust of my decadent chocolate mousse pie. It’s a bit more sophisticated but just as memorable. This deep, rich chocolate dessert is my Valentine to you.

As an eater, I’m not sure which gives more pleasure: licking the spoon after folding mounds of freshly whipped cream into liquid chocolate infused with espresso and Kahlúa, or just dipping Oreo cookies into an icy-cold glass of milk, then sucking them dry until the next dip. Chocolate love needs no real thought—it just is.

This pie is a showstopper dessert—the “wow!” both at large gatherings and spoon-to-spoon, one-on-one with your special love. And it gets better—especially for you, the cook—because this pie is easy to assemble and can be conveniently made a day ahead.

To start, you’ll need a 10-inch round springform pan to mold and chill the pie. For Valentine’s Day, I used a special heart-shaped springform that I bought at a local kitchen store. These pans have side latches that make removing the pie in one piece fairly foolproof. After all, who wants all that chocolate love on the floor or in multiple pieces of ugly on the serving plate?

Think you’re too busy to try this? Time is on your side as the crust and mousse are ready in approximately 30 minutes. And while the recipe allows for a quick chill of four to six hours, mousse pie is best when chilled overnight. Now if you are new to cooking or never attempted a dessert like this, don’t be shy. Jump right in and refer to my illustrated, step-by-step cooking techniques and tips for help.

The ingredients are easy: double-chocolate Oreos (any style will work, as there is no wrong Oreo), semi-sweet chocolate chips, espresso powder, Kahlúa, butter, eggs and heavy cream—plus decorations of your choice. My personal Valentines get fresh raspberries, but you could pipe whipped cream on top, add shaved chocolate or colorful holiday candies or sprinkles.

On the day I removed my mousse pie from the refrigerator and outlined it with plump red raspberries, I couldn’t help humming a bit of Janis Joplin, “…come on, come on…take another little piece of my heart…it makes you feel good.”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Refer to my illustrated, step-by-step cooking techniques and tips:

Make a Crumb Crust
Melt Chocolate
Grease and Flour a Cake Pan
Unmold Your Cake from a Springform Pan

Oh, how I love spaghetti carbonara twirled on to my fork, then lustily devoured and slurped while plucking crispy pieces of pancetta off the plate with my fingers. No napkins required. Besides being delicious, this pasta dish is the perfect embodiment of one of my favorite cooking principles: Simplicity rules!

Carbonara is an Italian classic that first appeared in the 1940s—exactly where is debated by food historians. My favorite theory has the Allied soldiers of World War II sharing their humble rations of powdered eggs and bacon with the local, hungry population of war-torn Italy. The Italians supplied dried pasta, and together they all prepared a dish that both nourished and gave them a sense of community. The soldiers became so fond of pasta carbonara that when they returned home to their respective countries, they introduced the dish to their families and local restaurants. These days you’ll find all kinds of spaghetti carbonara on restaurant menus; dressed up with cream and onions or speckled with peas. But traditional cooks—and I’m one of them—swear by five simple ingredients: pasta, cured meat, cheese, eggs and black pepper.

Alas, simplicity is often complicated with unnecessary snobbery as some cooks insist that only specific cured meats and cheeses merit the name carbonara. In Italy, particularly Rome, diners prefer their locally available guanciale and push it as the only true cured meat for carbonara. This very fatty, mild-tasting meat is made from unsmoked pig’s cheeks or jowls and must be cut in small, matchstick pieces to capture the striations of meat. While reasonably priced at six dollars a pound at my local Italian market, guanciale is often hard to find and requires an adventurous spirit.

My favorite is pancetta, an unsmoked, flavorful Italian bacon that adds tasty morsels of meat to the carbonara rather than crunchy pieces of fat. It runs around 16 dollars a pound—or eight bucks for this recipe—and is well worth the extra expense.

If you want to send food snobs wickedly over the edge, use readily available smoked slab bacon (that reminds one of bacon and eggs for breakfast). It costs around seven dollars a pound, or $3.50 for this dish. I don’t know about you, but if I get a hankering for carbonara and can’t have my favorite pancetta, I’ll fry up bacon in a heartbeat.

The cheese is fairly easy. Italians often prefer percorino romano; a salty sheep’s milk. Others—myself included—like parmesan-reggiano, the richly flavored, nutty tasting cow’s milk cheese from Parma, Italy. Try them both and then decide your favorite; you may even want to mix them up. Spaghetti is most common pasta used, but fettuccini, penne and rigatoni are also great choices.

Once you select your ingredients, there are a few tips you need for preparing out-of-this world pasta carbonara.

1. Start with perfectly cooked pasta. Cook it in ample water with a handful of salt. Master this cooking technique and your pasta will be restaurant quality.

2. Grate your cheese from larger pieces; do not waste your money on flavorless supermarket cheese in a shaker container.

3. Add the raw eggs to your hot pasta off the heat of the stove, or you risk scrambled eggs. Tasty but ugly.

4. Create a creamier sauce by adding a few tablespoons of the hot pasta cooking water. Don’t add too much water or your pasta will be swimming.

5. Fry the small pieces of meat slowly on a medium to medium-low flame to render them of their fat. You want the meat crispy, not charred—especially with guanciale.

6. Add several tablespoons of the rendered fat to the pasta—not all of it, as some meats release far too much fat to work well.

7. Keep to the five traditional ingredients: pasta, cured meat, cheese, eggs and black pepper. Less is more.

Perfetto!

Print a copy of my Spaghetti Carbonara and How To Cook Perfect Pasta for your convenience.

It smokes, it gurgles and bubbles, then spews orange marshmallow lava over a dark chocolate mountain of cake. The crowd goes wild!

I made my first Amazing Erupting Volcano Cake several years ago when Chef Catherine Christiansen sent the recipes for her Beyond Wonderful baking column. At first glance they seemed complex, but with a bit of planning the cake was easy and came together quickly. This cake is all about fun so don’t get hung up on perfection. Embrace all its lumps, bumps and crumbs—they add character and keep you sane.

First pick a theme, then let your imagination soar. I’ve made this cake with dinosaurs, super heroes…

Star Wars characters and …

…zombies—lots of zombies slipping and sliding in  green slime.

You’ll find everything you need at cake supply, party and toy stores; from small bottles of brilliant red, orange and turquoise food coloring to plastic trees, edible rocks and a variety of characters, candles and costumes for added party fun.

Who can resist Darth Vadar and a Jedi Master blowing up the Amazing Erupting Volcano cake?

And with a little face paint and disgusting teeth, this birthday boy looks like he jumped off the zombie cake.

I bake the cakes and prepared the black chocolate and green buttercreams and the Kahlúa soaking syrup the day before assembly. Next day, I frost the cakes, made the sugar lava and lake and color the marshmallow lava. Assembly is a breeze and great fun. Once the Amazing Volcano stands before me in all its glory, I just can’t wait to blow it up! When it’s time, everyone gathers and holds their breath as I fuel the cake with cubes of dry ice, hot water, and warm lava. Then it starts—a little smoke—a few bubbles—lots of hoots and hollers—and over the side it goes. “That is so cool! I want that cake for my birthday.” “WOW!” Soon the group joins in a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday with intermittent giggles as the volcano continues its spectacular show.

As the lava…or oozing slime slows, everyone goes for the cake and just can’t believe how good it is. More than a few have a second piece, but my mind is always on the leftover chocolate frosting. No matter how delicious—and how spectacular—the cake, it’s hard to beat the thrill of pure buttercream, sneaked on the sly. Give me a spoon.

See more photos from the hilarious zombie birthday party on our Facebook page.

Get a printable copy of The Amazing Erupting Volcano Cake.