There were seven of us kids growing up in my grandmother's house in New York City's Flushing, Queens, and my mother would get home from work every day and put "that pot" on the stove. We called it "that pot" because we took turns doing the dishes and no one wanted to get stuck having to wash it. It was a big, heavy cast-iron thing, and there was always something delicious inside that would feed all of us: pot roast, fish simmered over vegetables, or my favorite, osso buco. It was years later that I learned that the technical term for what Mom was doing by simmering those ingredients in a little liquid was braising—and it's since become one of my favorite techniques. But back then I just knew that something special was going on in that pot, something that produced meats so tender and moist, they flaked off the bone. —Rick Moonen, RM Seafood, Las Vegas