Enchiladas. Photo: purdyinblue, Flickr.

Enchiladas are arguably the most comforting of all Mexican entrees. Perhaps that's because they most closely resemble a casserole -- with protein, grains and vegetables all baked together and topped with delicious, flavorful red sauce and a layer of melted cheese.

Whether filled with beef, pork, chicken, fish, cheese, beans or any combination of those ingredients, enchiladas can often be complicated dishes, like these with homemade sauce and fresh cilantro from Flickr user purdyinblue. But the Mexican one-pot meal is also a great way to feed lots of people with very little effort, especially if you use a Dorito-encrusted recipe from the likes of Emeril Lagasse... or Charlie Gibson, depending on who you ask.

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Shrimp cocktail. Photo: No Recipes.

While shrimp is delicious on its own, deep-fried or sautéed with pasta and butter, it it seems to pack the most flavor -- and color -- when served as part of the classic shrimp cocktail.

Pleasing to the eyes as well as the palate, this single shellfish from No Recipes is dipped in an Asian-inspired twist on the staid red cocktail sauce, combining the usual fresh tomatoes and tomato sauce with Thai sweet chili and fish sauces, lime juice and wasabi. It sounds so good, we're tempted to try to pluck the perfectly pink crustacean straight off the screen.

[Via No Recipes]

I'll never forget the first roast bird I made, when I had a friend over for dinner. I threw the balsamic roast chicken on the table, added the sides, and she asked me: "There's no sauce?" The question seemed foreign. Strange. Sauce? I grew up in a family where roast/baked/broiled meats were served as-is. Maybe once and a while we'd try out a saucy recipe, but it certainly wasn't a staple. I felt bad, and had nothing I could offer her save bottled bbq sauce or ketchup. At the time, I hadn't yet delved into the world of gravy.

If this has ever happened to you, or you find yourself scouring the Internet trying to find a good or different sauce recipe, check out this collection of sauce recipes at Nikibone.com. This page is chock full of saucy possibilities, but what I like most about the page is the diversity of flavors -- from my beloved wasabi to asiago, champagne to turmeric cream. The list offers flavors you wouldn't necessarily expect, and is a great jumping point for further saucy shenanigans. At the very least, it's a whole slew of tasty options on one small page that saves surfing time!

Looking for quick, easy dips for your veggies, crackers and chips? We've got you covered!

Tired of boring pastas with just one sauce? Add another, or two!

This photo on Apartment Therapy definitely called my name. "Elllllllen..." it whispered. "Bloooooggggg about meeeee...."

Making a mental note to lay off the hallucinogens, I decided to relay the recipe. Apartment Therapy offers it as a "low-fat, no cream" alternative to heavier, creamier pasta sauces, but I saw it as a great vegan option, and a welcome reprieve from pesto or marinara. AT uses butter and beef or chicken stock, but you could easily use Earth Balance or veggie/faux chicken stock, and omit the Parmesan, or use one of the many awesome soy or rice-based cheeses.

Check out the recipe after the jump.

Epicurious and Dawn Direct Foam set out to find the world's messiest dish, and they found it all over the face of 1-year-old Audrey Kaplan. The food all over Audrey's face is spaghetti and meatballs, made by her grandmother, Dorothy.

Dorothy won a flatscreen TV and a year's worth of Dawn Direct Foam for submitting the picture of her very messy granddaughter. It's kind of ironic that this photo won, since Dorothy will presumably not be using Dawn Direct Foam (a dish soap) to clean up her granddaughter (although I'm sure it will do a number on her dishes).

What's the messiest dish you've ever come across?

A lot of our food traditions and habits we learn from our parents at an early age. Take pasta sauce. I come from a large Italian family, so we had spaghetti every single week when I was growing up. My mom made her sauce (my dad's recipe, and I'm not exaggerating when I say it was award-winning) and when we put it on the pasta, we put a lot. Not enough so it gets all watery and the pasta is swimming, but certainly enough to cover the pasta out to the edge (more than the photo above).

Now here comes Mark Bittman at The New York Times who agrees with this approach. While most cookbooks will tell you to make a lot of pasta and just add a couple of ladels of sauce in the middle of the plate, Bittman suggests you turn the amounts around and make twice as much sauce as pasta. Mario Batali, in a video from Serious Eats after the jump, disagrees.

How do you sauce your pasta?

Chocolate pudding cake is an intensely satisfying, yet simple, dessert. As it bakes, it separates into two layers - a tender chocolate sponge-type cake and a very rich chocolate sauce/ pudding base - so the cake needs no accompaniment unless you want to throw a scoop of vanilla ice cream into the bowl, too.

The second best thing about this cake (the flavor is the first, of course) is that it is incredibly easy to make because it is mixed in the pan that you bake it in. This means that cleanup is minimal and that you can have a delicious, from-scratch dessert on even a very busy weeknight. Not that you shouldn't have it at other times, as well. Any excuse is a good one for chocolate pudding cake.

What would a collection of SuperBowl dip recipes be without a little blue cheese, considering that it is held to be the gold standard of hot wing dips - excluding hot wing sauce itself, of course. Blue cheese (or bleu cheese, if you prefer) dip is made with a pungent, creamy cheese that cuts into the spiciness of hot wings by adding a new layer of flavor and a cooling sensation that dulls the heat of the chicken. The strongly flavored cheese, in most of these dips, is often combined with sour cream, mayonnaise or cream cheese, each of which contributes to the overall texture of the dip without bumping up the flavor to the point where it overpowers the hot wing itself.

This particular dip is a pretty standard recipe that you'll probably find in several different places. It calls for sour cream and mayonnaise in addition to the cheese, so "healthy" is not something that could be applied. You can always substitute low fat or nonfat sour cream/mayonnaise; using a good quality blue cheese will make up for any loss of flavor in either of those ingredients.

Joe, from Culinary in the Country, included these Honey-Chipotle Barbecue Chicken Sandwiches in a post about summer dishes. I'm not going to argue that barbecue is summer fare and that these would be perfect for, a cookout, but barbecue is also perfect for sporting events - which makes this sandwiches a great option for Super Bowl Sunday. The sandwiches are very easy to make. They start with chicken breasts that are boiled/steamed with a bit of garlic and cumin until tender, although you could very easily go with grilled chicken or a pre-cooked roast chicken - all you really need is a good amount of meat. The meat is then tossed with a simple, smoky chipotle sauce (that sounds like it would be good on pork or ribs, in addition to chicken) and piled onto toasted hamburger buns with a bit of smoked mozzarella or Monterey Jack cheese.

Even though I don't live anywhere near Illinois, the pizza restaurants here offer three styles: regular, thin crust, or "Chicago Style". They are referring, of course, to Chicago Deep Dish. When made properly, one slice is equivalent to three slices of regular. The crust is deep on the edges, and the toppings are literally piled on. Just talking about it makes me want to order in a pie right now.

If you are making it at home, don't use a regular flat pizza pan as it is virtually impossible to build up the edges of the crust without some reinforcement. Personally, I use a 14-inch cake pan which has always worked well for me. Cook the crust part way first to ensure that it will be cooked through once the toppings have been added. Sauce is added, then layered with toppings of your choice and smothered in cheese - lots of cheese. Bake until golden brown and serve. I recommend having a knife and fork handy, or at the very least, a handful of napkins!

Dear Domino's,

I'm not going to lie to you. When it comes to fast food pizza, I'm a Pizza Hut guy. Actually, before I even get to calling Pizza Hut, I'll go with one of the two local pizza places in my town. They're two of the best pizzas I've ever had anywhere, and I usually go with one of them. But last night I had this craving for one of your deep dish pepperoni pizzas. Plus there's a Domino's right next door to my apartment and I didn't feel like going across town.

So I went to you web site and almost ordered the pizza online. Not because I'm lazy, but because I've never ordered a pizza online before and thought it would be fun. I decided to just walk over because it's only about 33 steps from my front door. But while I was on your site I noticed something that troubles me.

A recent survey taken of Britons revealed that nearly two thirds of them think that "arrabiata" is a sexually transmitted disease of some kind, which probably makes going out for an Italian restaurant for dinner a rather unique experience. Arrabiata, as fans of Italian food will know, is not a sexually transmitted disease. It is a spicy Italian pasta sauce. Characterized by the use of simple, but fresh, ingredients, the sauce always features tomatoes and hot chili peppers, either fresh of dried. Other common inclusions are garlic, fresh herbs, olive oil and sometimes a little bit of meat or some olives for additional flavor and texture.

In fairness, the survey was about sexual health in general and was released on World Aids Day, this past Friday, so it is possible that some participants were confused by the questioning. It might be a good idea to give the sauce a try just to ensure there won't be any confusion over the name in the future. Read on for a recipe.

How much do you want to know about sauces? If you are looking for one solid tomato-based meat sauce, then Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making is probably not the book for you. If, however, you want to know just about everything there is to know about the history, evolution and techniques of sauce making across cultures, then this James Beard Award winning cookbook is the perfect choice. The encyclopedic book is over 600 pages and starts with the basics, including the equipment that is needed for proper sauce making and the fairly standard stocks and things that are the absolute foundation of most cooking. The subjects, in terms of the types of sauces covered, range from meat and fish sauces to salad dressings, vegetable-based and dessert sauces. There is even a who chapter dedicated to the somewhat out of fashion jellied sauces, although their construction is interesting even if you don't plan on serving them.

The wonderful thing about sauces is that they can transform something ordinary into something much more impressive, not to mention into something that is far tastier that it might be plain. This book is an essential reference for a home chef who wants to really take their cooking up to a new level and for a pro who wants to, similarly, learn some more techniques and just improve their basics.