It seems to me the first step would be getting your data into your
item list.Something like:
<div id="recipeList">
<div class="recipe hot italian">Pizza</div>
<div class="recipe hot italian">Spaghetti</div>
<div class="recipe cold french">Pastry</div>
<div class="recipe hot french">Snails</div>
</div>
Once you know what your data is then you can code the hide/show part.
In the about example you would have events on the user controls that
show/hide items using a selector, so
$('#recipeList .hot').show(); // Shows all hot food.
With two criteria you would need to come up with selector that takes
both into account, so
$('#recipeList .recipe').hide(); // hide everything
$('#recipeList .hot').add('#recipeList .italian').show(); // Show
everything that is hot OR italian
