Lettuce

It's March, which feels like the longest month, and for many of us, it's still cold and dreary outside. Time to start fantasizing about sitting at a café table somewhere hot and dazzlingly sunnyéa Greek island would do nicely. These hearty sandwiches will take you there.

Side dishes made from fresh legumes, vegetables, and mint can be found all over Italy, but this quickly cooked version cuts down on labor by using frozen peas and artichoke hearts. It adds a bright touch of spring to cod’s meaty white flakes.

Editor's note: This recipe is from chef Wolfgang Puck. If you don't have a Caesar salad on your menu in California, the customers will rebel. For a zesty Provençal touch, the Caesar at Spago is served with croutons slathered with our homemade tapenade. When you can find baby romaine, use it. If you can't, trim the outer leaves of the larger variety and, if necessary, break them into bite-size strips.

Fresh mint and sliced cucumbers give this American-style salad a lightness that leaves you feeling satisfied, not stuffed.

Speck, lightly smoked pork that is cured and air-dried, adds a richness to this dish. Look for Speck at Italian markets, specialty foods stores, or online at igourmet.com.

Regardless of your foraging skills, you can experience the abundance of the woods with these delectable parcels, which combine the nutty chew of bulgur with rich toasted pine nuts, sweet currants, and smoky trout that could have come from a nearby brook—all neatly wrapped up in a lettuce leaf. And because they're so portable, you can easily enjoy them outdoors on a picnic blanket.

The keys to this fast, simple dish, which was inspired by a crab-stuffed tomato at Yves Camdeborde's Paris brasserie, Le Comptoir du Relais, are ripe tomatoes, fresh herbs, and excellent crabmeat.

Bring on the bacon! For an even leaner option, try turkey bacon in Conlan’s creation.

Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier, of Arrows restaurant in Ogunquit, Maine, use beef but keep calories low.

Generous handfuls of parsley and mint leaves are left whole, to hold their own alongside sweet ruffles of Bibb and thin slices of cucumber.

Dried guajillo chiles and New Mexico chiles can be found in some supermarkets and at specialty foods stores and Latin markets.

To be safe, we boil the egg for 1 minutes rather than use it raw.

In this new take on the Caesar, fried eggs top the salad, and fish sauce replaces the usual anchovy fillets.

Here, sturdy Bibb leaves from the center of the head do the work of traditional dumpling wrappers. If that's not an easy enough sell, the dipping sauce will be.

The best tool for grating is a rotary grater by Zyliss ($20; chefcentral.com) or by Microplane ($25; thekitchenstore.com).