Radicchio

This reduced-fat version hits all the flavor notes of the original Caeser.

This creamy dressing is also terrific over chilled steamed vegetables.

Tarragon brings its distinctive flavor to this salad. Serve it alongside the strata.

The chef's salad is a familiar yet fading star in the salad world. In delicatessens, diners, and airport snack bars everywhere, we find its faithful components: lifeless leaves of iceberg lettuce, suspiciously blue-hued slices of hard-boiled egg, wedges of pallid tomato, and rubbery chunks of cheese, ham, and turkey. To top it all off (or perhaps sitting alongside): gloppy, high-calorie dressing. But this still-beloved salad may have had a noble beginning. Though nobody has ever stepped forward to claim the title of the chef in "chef's salad," the dish has been attributed by some food historians to Louis Diat, chef of The Ritz-Carlton in New York City in the early 1940s. He paired watercress with halved hard-boiled eggs and julienne strips of smoked tongue, ham, and chicken. (The concept of the chef’s salad dates still earlier; one seventeenth-century English recipe for a "grand sallet" calls for lettuce, roast meat, and a slew of vegetables and fruits.) No matter how the salad has evolved, its underlying virtue remains unchanged. This is a no-cook meal that satisfies our cravings for greens and protein. And, in these dog days of summer-when cooking is sometimes the last thing we'd like to do-a main-course salad is especially appealing. In our updated take on the classic recipe, we used a selection of lettuces (early chef's salads were not always made with iceberg alone), and, in a twist on the norm, small but flavorful amounts of sugar-cured ham and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Feel free to improvise with ingredients depending on what looks good at your farmers market. Summer savory or dill can flavor the dressing in place of the mixed herbs, and many kinds of ham and cheese will work well.

A suitably named pasta salad that's loaded with flavorful ingredients. Try it with grilled veal chops or Cornish game hens.

This monochromatic mix of radicchio, cabbage, red onion, and cold weather citrus is bright, crunchy, and fresh—just what your holiday table requires.

This zingy sauce works with whatever jam you have.

Swap tomatoes for citrus in this wintery twist on the classic Italian bread salad.

This robust main-course-worthy pasta salad balances buttery olives, bitter radicchio, and crunchy almonds with a bright, herbaceous dressing.

Turn classic chicken piccata into a salad by using the lemon-and-caper-spiked pan sauce as the base for a warm vinaigrette.

A bright and tangy salad featuring attention-grabbing radicchio that adds drama and balance to any holiday meal.

We want to drizzle everything with hot honey, and this radicchio, quinoa, and cotija salad is no exception.

Carla Lalli Music's ingenious shortcut for perfectly browned pork chops is the weeknight dinner cheat code we all need.

The solution to legume doom: This citrusy marinated bean salad with crunchy greens and big chunks of salty feta.

If you aren’t into bitter greens, this salad from vegetable maestro Bryant Terry may change your mind.

We’ve got moisture insurance (a tadka-ish sauce!) for these grilled chicken breasts.