Some of these are from Mark Bittman. Karl and I have been loving How To Cook Everything—it has quickly become our most-reached-for cookbook (thanks Winnie!).

• You barely need to “cook” corn, you just need to heat it up. You certainly don’t need to boil it. Fill a pot of water to an inch, add salt, put the corn in, cover, turn it on, and set the timer for 10 minutes. If the water’s already boiling, make that 3 minutes. Doesn’t matter if the corn is half-submerged. Just keep the lid closed.
• Speaking of corn, do not put Tabasco on corn; it tastes awful.
• Speaking of Tabasco, do put Tabasco on most other things, in leiu of salt.
• Pesto freezes very well in an ice cube tray. Cover it with a thin layer of olive oil, to keep the nice green color.
• You can make unripe fruit riper by macerating it. Toss the sliced fruit with sugar and let it sit for a few minutes. This concentrates the sugars in the fruit, and you’ll get some nice fruit juice at the bottom of the bowl.
• Hot chocolate will froth up better when you make it with whole milk.
• Speaking of froth, Alex is right — Diesel Café makes the best latte in town.
• Speaking of cafés, French in Action is a great way to learn French. And if you know French, your food will taste better.
• I don’t know French.

But I do know an amazing amazing pizza dough formula from Cook’s Illustrated. I say formula because it is a dough, and doughs are very formulaic. Hopefully my saying “formula” instead of “recipe” will give you pause before you fuck with it. This cooks in a home oven at 500°F with a pizza stone, preheated for an hour while the dough rises. It comes out with a beautiful thin crust that is crispier than I’d ever thought possible at home.

Crusty 500 Degree Pizza Dough Formula

1 1/4 tsp instant yeast (this is not active dry yeast)
1 cup water at room temp
1 3/4 cups (8 3/4 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
1 cup (4 oz) cake flour! This is where the magic happens.
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar

You might also try this on the grill (I haven’t yet). Just add a 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the dough to help prevent sticking to the grate.