Ruth Cousineau

Tomatoey green beans and potatoes are completely at home next to smothered pork chops with mushrooms . If there are any leftovers, serve them topped with fried eggs and crumbled feta for a fuss-free vegetarian dinner.

This Italian take on shrimp and grits comes together in just 25 minutes for a creamy, comforting dinner.

A pilaf enriched with butternut squash, red pepper, and toasted pumpkin seeds is wonderful with Spanish white beans and spinach. It would also be terrific with roast chicken.

Thanks to a few humble additions—sun-dried tomatoes, sweet smoked paprika, and leafy spinach—these saucy beans have real pizzazz. Best of all, the dish requires little more than a quick sauté and simmer.

We've given eminently tasty salmon the crab-cake treatment. Topping the lovely, golden (and satisfyingly chunky) cakes is a tart, tangy yogurt sauce rather than the usual tartar.

Dripping with snowy-white icing and paired with fresh berries and a ruby-red currant and raspberry sauce, this sheet cake is a charming way to end a dinner party.

A topping of buttery whole-wheat bread crumbs and hazelnuts creates a toasty counterpoint to baked thick-sliced tomatoes. What prevents it from being too rich, though, is the accent of thyme—lemon thyme in particular. With its small green leaves edged in yellow, the herb is easy to spot at the farmers market. Still not sure? Take a sniff. Lemon thyme's brisk, citrusy scent is a real eye-opener.

This kuchen would be terrific made with all types of stone fruit, so feel free to substitute any of your summertime favorites for the plums.

Smoky grilled vegetables—not a cloying amount of meat or cheese—rule here. Instead of embellishing the enchiladas with a complex (and time-consuming) Mexican pipián (pumpkin-seed sauce), cook a few customary pipián ingredients and then purée them with cilantro for an easy enchilada that's herbaceous and fresh.

The French custom of serving radishes with sweet butter and sea salt is a lesson in simplicity; there's something so satisfying about a lick of creamy butter against the snap of peppery radish. Here, anchovy paste adds a singular savor to the butter, but the ease of the tradition remains. It's worth seeking out small radishes like the French Breakfast variety; if you can find only big ones, just halve them.

The piquancy of little sweet-and-sour squash helps balance the lavishness of the creamed corn and okra stew. The surprise ingredient here is maple syrup: It adds a more rounded flavor to the pickles than sugar. A mixture of tiny green, yellow, and pattypan squash makes a visual impact, but slices of regular zucchini would be delicious, too.

Lobes of golden mushrooms, shreds of buttery Gouda cheese, and the heartiness of spicy greens come together in this substantial salad. It's a terrific companion to the chive shortcakes, stew, and baked tomatoes, but keep it in mind when all you're after is a soup-and-salad supper.

The inspiration for test kitchen director Ruth Cousineau’s velvety chilled bean soup comes from Mediterranean-cooking authority Claudia Roden's recipe for bissara, an Egyptian bean-and-herb purée. The beans here are lima and green, simmered in chicken broth (you can use vegetable broth if you want to go vegetarian) and then puréed until silky. The herbs—parsley, cilantro, dill, and mint—are blended with olive oil so that you can finish the soup with a verdant drizzle, but don’t think of the herb oil as merely a garnish: Its bright flavor brings everything together.

Mexican aguas frescas, or "fresh waters," made from all kinds of fresh fruit, flowers, or herbs, are a great way to beat the heat. This cantaloupe version gets additional vim from a splash of club soda.

Comfort food, August-style: A creamed-vegetable stew tastes mighty fine ladled over pillowy biscuits dotted with chives. A store-bought smoked turkey leg deepens the stew's flavor almost effortlessly—its bone and skin go into making the broth (along with the corn cobs and silk), and its meat is stirred into the stew.

Fennel and raisins are a classic combination, and they come together here with rice to make a gratifying side dish. Dried fennel seeds help boost the fresh vegetable's delicate anise flavor, while plump golden raisins thread the rice with sweetness.