Cucumber

WHY IT’S LIGHT Gazpacho is traditionally made with pieces of stale bread as a thickener. In this lightened version, vegetables alone contribute heft, and toasted bread is offered as an optional side.

FLAVOR BOOSTER A fragrant sauce made from a handful of pantry standbys—including soy sauce, garlic, vinegar, and red-pepper flakes—serves as a marinade for the chicken and a dressing for the finished salad. Feel free to substitute pork or beef for the chicken.

FLAVOR BOOSTER Toasted sesame oil, used in many Asian dishes, has a robust and nutty taste. Combined with rice vinegar, lime juice, garlic, and red-pepper flakes, it multitasks in this recipe as both marinade and salad dressing.

GOOD TO KNOW Kebabs are a good way to incorporate vegetables into from-the-grill dinners. They also allow you to use a small amount of a high-fat food, such as the chorizo in the pork kebabs, to maximum effect. If using wooden skewers, soak them in water for thirty minutes before grilling.

WHY THEY’RE LIGHT Waxy new potatoes, tossed in a flavorful mustard vinaigrette, easily outdo heavy, mayonnaise-based potato salads, while low-fat yogurt and dill dress up sliced cucumbers. Pack either low-calorie side for a picnic.

SMART SUBSTITUTION Unlike white rice, brown rice retains the nutritious bran and germ covering the grain; it has three times the amount of fiber and a host of essential nutrients. Adding brown rice and other whole grains to salads makes them more filling without significantly increasing fat and calories.

GOOD TO KNOW To impart more flavor and moistness, cook the salmon fillets with the skin intact. The skin will cook to a delightful crisp, but you can remove it before serving if desired.

FLAVOR BOOSTER With its tangy flavor and crumbly texture, a little feta cheese goes a long way. Use it to add oomph to salads such as this one, which is bulked up with cucumber, cabbage, shallot, and fresh parsley.

David makes these pickles to be enjoyed right after seasoning, while they are still vibrant and crunchy.

Charlie makes this refreshing soup when tomatoes are at their peak of ripeness and flavor. The same method can be applied to extract flavor from other watery vegetables and fruits, such as cucumber and watermelon.

This is not a particularly traditional version of this recipe, but if you have ripe delicious tomatoes, it makes a beautiful piquant summer soup—a sort of liquid salad—that’s worth all the grating, pounding, and dicing. For a light summer meal, add a few shrimp—or other fish or shellfish—to the soup.

There are many varieties of cucumbers, each with its own flavor and texture. I especially like Armenian, Japanese, and lemon cucumbers.

This composed salad is based on a recipe from Provence. It makes a delightful lunch or light dinner. The summer vegetables are set off by the piquant anchovies and rich hard-cooked egg.

This sauce is a version of a raita, the cooling South Asian yogurt sauce, which is often seasoned with cumin seed, cinnamon, and cayenne. Try different varieties of cucumber such as lemon, Armenian, or Japanese. If the cucumbers have large seeds, use a spoon to scrape them out after you cut the cucumbers in half. A cool growing season sometimes yields bitter cucumbers, so taste each cucumber; a bitter cucumber will spoil the sauce.

A salad of many ingredients, either all tossed together or dressed separately and arranged on a plate, is called a “composed” salad. A composed salad such as the Greek salad that follows is a hearty dish; with some crusty bread, it could be the main event of a dinner on a warm night. Or, a composed salad might be a delicate arrangement of, say, a few pieces of crabmeat, some grapefruit sections, and a little curly endive in a creamy dressing, served as an elegant first course. Almost anything can be an element in a composed salad: all the various lettuces and salad greens, of course, but also raw or cooked vegetables, chopped, diced, or cut into thin shavings; roasted meats cut into cubes or thin slices; tuna and other fish or shellfish; and hard-cooked eggs, quartered or chopped. Tasty leftovers can be delicious in a composed salad. Don’t combine too many ingredients into a single salad or it will have too many conflicting flavors. The components should be chosen thoughtfully with regard to the tastes and textures they contribute, and the dressing must complement them all. Sometimes a vinaigrette works best, when a tangy sauce is needed; sometimes mayonnaise, for mellow richness; at other times, a creamy sauce. A potato salad, for example, can be made with any of these dressings, and each will yield a distinctly different salad. When dressing a composed salad that includes both tender lettuces and heavier ingredients such as artichoke hearts or pieces of fruit, dress all the heavier elements separately and arrange them around the tossed lettuces on a platter. Otherwise the salad is hard to serve because everything ends up at the bottom and the leaves get crushed. Even salads that have no lettuce should be assembled carefully. What’s most important is that each ingredient be tasty on its own. Taste everything and season each element with a little salt or dressing as needed before adding it to the whole. When things are tossed together, don’t overmix, or the parts will start to lose their distinctiveness, muddying the flavors and spoiling the look of the salad. (You can always arrange a salad and drizzle vinaigrette over it, or even pass the vinaigrette in a pitcher.) As for what to include in such a salad and how to dress it, taste each ingredient before you decide. That is really the only rule you must follow, and while it may sound frustratingly vague, as you acquire a little salad-making experience, you’ll begin to recognize and remember the flavors you like and the ones that you like together.

This shredded beef salad is perfect for a crowd or for a leftover-friendly family. It actually tastes better a day or two after you make it, when the flavors have had more time to combine. Although capers aren’t traditionally found in salpicón, I think they make perfect sense in this summer dish, adding just a touch of salt.

This has to be the easiest recipe in the book. Maybe that’s why this plate showed up on the table almost every day when I was growing up. It also happens to be a very healthy and refreshing snack that my son loves. At every taco stand across Mexico, next to the salsas, you will find a bowl of sliced cucumbers and another with whole or halved radishes. These are meant to be sprinkled with lime juice and a little bit of salt to appease your hunger while the tacos are being prepared. Make sure both the radishes and the cucumbers are very fresh and crisp!

Jícama, a Mexican root vegetable with the crispness of a raw potato, but with a sweeter taste, adds great crunch to this simple salad, which gets a lift from the unexpected addition of soy sauce and sesame oil to the dressing. My great-grandmother used beet coloring as lipstick and as blush. Here I add beets not only for their vibrant color but also for crunch.

This is a simple, refreshing dish that perfectly represents the current trend in Baja-Mediterranean cuisine: the fusion of local ingredients and cooking techniques with European (mostly Mediterranean) ingredients, with an occasional Asian ingredient showing up in the mix. Variations of this dish pop up in restaurants all around Mexico, some adding spicy avocado dressing or fresh orange juice to the mix. I like to keep it simple to let the fresh taste of the ingredients shine through.

Italians love lentils and cook them in lots of creative ways, including the traditional lentil and sausage dish that is served on New Year’s Day. Lentils are also very often used as the basis of a main-course salad like this one, which is a little more refined than most thanks to the sweet, juicy grapes and chopped hazelnuts. Like lentil soup, this salad develops more flavor the longer it sits, and it makes a wonderful bed for flavorful fish such as salmon. Certainly you can eat this right away, or make it ahead of time, refrigerate overnight, and serve at room temperature the next day.