Here's a nice bass recipe with a nice tomato sauce.

Grilling makes anything good, and asparagus is no exception. Bright green, crisp-tender, with a hint of smokiness. Yum. Here’s a salad that offers a nice mix of flavors to excite all your taste buds. Time to break out the grill and take your stand against a never-ending winter!

Red snapper is a favorite among fish-eaters for its sweet, nutty flavor, and was, a number of years ago, overfished. The scarcity led some suppliers to mislabel other reddish fish as red snapper, but there’s a sure way you’ll always know you’re fishing in the right pond: buy it with the skin on and always check the eyes. Red snappers have bright red irises.

Salad can be a challenging meal to pair to wine, but if you pay attention to a few key elements—namely, the standout ingredients and the acidity of the dressing—you can find a great match. It’s easy to overpower a salad with wine, but if you pay attention to the weight and body of each, you can strike the right balance. Check out this basic salad recipe and wine pairing, then share your own variations and wine pairings!

This breaded and fried cutlet is utter crispy goodness and a favorite of many national cuisines, but probably no more so than in Vienna. It can be made from several meats, but with veal, it’s called Wiener Schnitzel, the national dish of Austria. There’s about a million ways you can dress this number up—add spices, melt cheese all over it, stuff it with bacon and mushrooms or spritz it with lemon. However you choose to schnitzel tonight, don’t forget the wine.

Rich and buttery, roast leg of lamb needs a structured red wine that can stand up to the weight of the meat. With the robust treatment of the plum and merlot sauce, this dish is particularly suited to pairing with a red presenting notes of late summer fruit.

There’s no reason elegance needs to mean time-consuming. With a smidge of do-ahead preparation, this elegant north Italian dish will be ready to eat in an hour or less.

Here’s an easy Asian meatball appetizer that works well alone or as the protein topping to a salad of mixed greens spritzed with rice vinegar. You’ll want to balance the heat out with a slightly sweet white wine.

Pretend for a moment you’re Hungarian. In your mind’s eye, you remember that incredible red chicken stew from your youth—it was one of those foods that cemented your cultural experience. Now open your eyes and voila, you can still make it for dinner and reap the benefits of Hungarian ingenuity: onions, paprika and chicken all stewed together into one big pot of deliciousness. Keep the bones in…they’ll make the meat moist and flavorful.

There’s no time like the present to start getting in gear for your Super Bowl bash. Run those laps, clean the house and show off your own Super Bowl (menu) strategy with these make-ahead mini crab cakes from WineTable Executive Chef Harry Haff. The adults will love your style—especially when you serve it with a well-paired wine. Don't forget--they eat crab cakes in BOTH San Francisco and Baltimore...so show your true colors with the dipping sauce you make.

Broaden your Super Bowl menu with this spicy southwestern stew. This twist on the more traditional ground beef chili with the introduction of beef brisket or bottom round will keep your crew well-fed and cheering throughout the day. Try this recipe from WineTable Executive Chef Harry Haff and pair it with a cool-climate syrah or shiraz from Australia or Washington State, a full-bodied, cool-climate zinfandel or an oak-aged Lemberger from Washington State, Germany or Austria.

Chips and dip is about as necessary to the Super Bowl as Kaepernick is to the 49ers’ try at the victory this year. Guacamole is a healthy alternative to some of those greasier meat-and-cheese dips we all know (and—let’s face it—love) and is also great for slathering on carrot sticks. Make this version by WineTable Executive Chef Harry Haff and put your conscience to ease while you dig in. Even on Super Bowl Sunday you can have your veggies and eat them too.

Ham, mushrooms and cream on toast. What could be a more comforting set of ingredients for a cold winter’s snack. Who’s bringing the wine? From WineTable Executive Chef Harry Haff.

This quinoa and lentil salad makes a healthy and herby lunchtime feature. Try it and watch how the nuttiness of the grains plays off the herbiness of the dressing and complete the dance of flavors with a chilled pinot or Beaujolais. From WineTable Executive Chef Harry Haff.

This is a classic Italian bean-and-sausage dish that is excellent fresh or made a few days ahead of time. Serve it with crusty bread, salad and an Italian wine and you'll surely be blissfully singing like Pavarotti by the end of dinner.

So, here it is, December again and that means the holidays are staring you in the face. For many of us that means shopping for presents, sending cards, visiting friends and relatives’ homes and cooking or being invited to some pretty swell dinner parties, buffets, brunches and maybe hosting a couple of festive events ourselves. So why not explore some of the more traditional, as well as some contemporary, holiday libations?

This is a festive time of year, so something with bubbles will always be welcome. This does not mean dropping a bundle on champagne, although it is never money ill spent, but try some different types of bubbles with some flavorings and maybe add your own special ingredients to personalize these drinks for you and your guests.

With cold weather lurking all around us, think of fortifying yourself against the cold. And a great way of doing this at holiday time is with some fortified wines.

If you are a red wine fan and have tried sangria, give these flavorful treats a try.  For a large crowd, make some glögg. Or try the German variation, glühwein.