“Enis,” my Sous-Chef de Cuisine, Merrill, began the other day while we were deciding how many black truffles we could pack into a Rock Cornish hen, “I’ll bet you can’t find a way to improve upon the root beer float.” Now this was a fair assertion as I’d previously challenged Merrill to innovate with the classic American hot dog—in fact, my staff tends to fill down-time with cook-offs or brainstorming sessions rather than the usual debauchery.

Although the holidays are just behind us, we still face a few more winter months. Nothing’s better on these cold days than a warm cup of tea and a nice, spiced cookie. In this spirit, I’d like to share with you my great-great-grandmother’s recipe for Holiday Spice Cookies. My grandmother, like her mother and her mother’s mother, had a peculiar penchant for lavender. Every day she would pluck a fresh spring from her garden and tuck it into a buttonhole on her yellow knit sweater.

So, you’re about to follow a recipe involving lentils, but the recipe unhelpfully suggests that you must first sort the lentils. Of course, this leaves you wondering: how do you sort lentils? What happens if you sort lentils incorrectly? Why are all of these lentil recipes so assuming? Actually, sorting lentils is quite simple and rewarding. Properly sorted lentils yield a fuller, richer flavor and have a more consistent texture than unsorted lentils.