Parsley

Phil Donaldson writes: “This Italian sauce is probably the best-tasting spaghetti sauce we have ever tasted. However, it is not very well-known. The name means ‘prostitute’s sauce,’ and the story goes that the ladies would prepare the sauce and put it on their windowsills, and the smell was so fabulous that it attracted clients for them.”

Salmoriglio, a traditional sauce for seafood, is nothing more than a dressing of olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, salt, peperoncino, and fresh parsley. There’s nothing to it—except remembering to make it ahead, so the garlic and pepper infuse the oil.

This is a classic cold sauce for boiled meats, poultry, and fish, but I find wonderful new uses for it all the time.

This recipe provides a good introduction to the quick skillet sauces and pastas in this section. Typical of these dishes, it’s quick: the sauce itself cooks in 5 minutes in the skillet, and the capellini I’ve paired it with needs barely 2 minutes in the pot; when all is tossed and garnished, the pasta is on the table in 10 minutes. And it demonstrates how well a pasta dish can be created from common pantry ingredients when they are cooked and combined thoughtfully. With its generous amounts of anchovies, capers, peperoncino flakes, garlic, and tomato, I can honestly tell you that this is the kind of pasta I love to eat. The flavors are strong and sharp yet balanced—staccato notes in harmony, to use a musical metaphor. In the recipe, I’ve given a range of amounts for the bold ingredients. If you use the lesser measures of anchovies, capers, peperoncino, and garlic, you will enjoy a distinctive dish suited for most people’s tastes, what I call “middle of the road” at my restaurants. If you use the greater measure, you’ll have the same dish I make for myself at home. Incidentally, you don’t need to use perfect summer tomatoes for this sauce. Even in winter, decent market tomatoes will work as long as they’re not too soft. If none are available, you can make a fine sauce without tomato at all (just don’t substitute canned tomatoes). You’ll need more pasta water for moisture, but otherwise follow the recipe. Like all sauces, this one goes with many pastas. In addition to thin varieties like the capellini, presented here, I suggest linguine, spaghettini, or just regular spaghetti. Remember to coordinate the cooking of the sauce with the cooking time of each kind of pasta. If I was cooking linguine that takes 9 or 10 minutes in the pot, I would put the pasta in first and then start cooking my sauce, reversing the sequence given in the recipe.

This is one of those recipes that I am sure you will cook again and again. It takes just minutes, and when you set the mussels on the table, steaming and aromatic, they beckon the whole brood. Give everyone a warm soup bowl, put a ladle in the pan to scoop out the shellfish and luscious sauce, and set a basket of grilled country bread in the middle. Nothing could be better.

GINA Salad helps lighten the fare, and these green beans with cheese tortellini are a nice change from the traditional tossed salad. I am a big salad-eater, and there are a lot of women like me out there. Honey, we’re trying to stay as “fabulous” as we can, eating all those greens. We just have to mix it up a bit so we don’t get bored!

GINA Roasting the shallot gives it a deep, sweet flavor, and the lemon zest lightens the whole thing up. This butter would also be an excellent topping for fish or chicken.

This kicky sauce is matched in flavor by its dramatic green color. Bright with parsley and with deep notes from the anchovy, salsa verde makes plain grilled fish or meat into something you want to serve to company, and it adds an herby note to rich organ meats or tongue. Try adding a spoonful to soups or tossing with plain boiled potatoes.

This riff on veal piccata is not a complicated dish, but it does have a few steps to it and requires some planning to allow the sweetbreads time to soak overnight. Poaching the sweetbreads in milk and aromatics before sautéing them ensures they’ll turn out sweet and meltingly tender. I prefer veal sweetbreads, though you can use lamb. Either one is usually sold in one-pound packs, with two large lobes per pack. If you don’t see them out on display—they’re usually not—ask the butcher if there are any in back, and make sure they are impeccably fresh. The delicate richness of the dish means that nothing more than boiled potatoes are needed as an accompaniment.

Allowing the farmer’s market to determine the mix of beans in this filling salad gives new meaning to the traditional “three-bean salad.” Fresh beans are always a treat, but I make this dish year-round by using canned navy, garbanzo, or cannellini beans when fresh ones aren’t available. If using canned beans, just skip the blanching step and toss the beans with the herb vinaigrette.

Southerners just love beets—perhaps because beets are one of the rare vegetables that will grow in the South straight through spring and summer and all the way into the fall. But I like to make this jewel-toned salad best in the spring, when you can get multicolor carrots, like Yellowstones, Purple Dragons, Atomic Reds, and Yayas, and beets, like Boros, Bulls’ Bloods, and Candy Stripes.

This recipe makes much more than you’ll need for one meal, but you won’t be sorry you have extra—it spruces up everything from toasted bread and steamed vegetables to grilled fish or chicken.

This dish contains all the flavor and crunch you expect from fried chicken, but with all the health benefits of using boneless, skinless chicken breast. Plus, you get bonus points for scattering the cutlets over a tender arugula salad bursting with fresh herbs and drizzled with tarragon-infused Buttermilk Green Goddess Dressing.

I grew up on these tasty little fried cakes, which Granny Foster used to serve for breakfast with fried eggs and biscuits, or sometimes for supper along with mashed potatoes and coleslaw. Like most Southerners, Granny used canned salmon in her croquettes. I opt instead for freshly poached or grilled salmon, a move that allows the delicate, grassy flavor of the fish to come through. Crispy and satisfying (the name croquette comes from the French for “to crunch”), these easy treats are an excellent way to revitalize leftovers from last night’s salmon dinner, ensuring that the switch from canned to fresh fish does not necessarily sacrifice convenience.