Zucchini

Chef Jimmy Bradley's wonderfully simple combinations of texture and flavor at New York City's The Red Cat were the inspiration for this zucchini dish—it makes a great accompaniment to "lazy lasagne." Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 20 min

Preparing the zucchini for this dish won't heat up your kitchen — simply salting thin slices is enough to tenderize them. Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 30 min

For this fabulous salad we used red onions, beets, zucchini, eggplant, and bell peppers, but any mix of summer vegetables would work. The salad gets served with grilled bread and is nice with a white wine, like Sauvignon Blanc.

A handsomely arranged combination salad can be the solution for what to serve at an informal spur-of-the-moment meal. The trick is to toss all of the elements separately in vinaigrette, letting some marinate for 10 to 20 minutes if they need to take on flavor. Then when you arrange your work of art, each part of it is perfectly seasoned. Here is a hearty meatless combination.

This dish is delicious over couscous, which will absorb the flavorful broth.

The myzithra cheese often used to stuff zucchini blossoms in Greece comes in two forms: soft (like fresh ricotta) and dried salted (similar to ricotta salata). We wanted to combine the soft and the salted in this recipe, but because the soft variety turned out to be especially difficult to find, we substituted fresh ricotta with very good results. We've also given ricotta salata as an alternative for the salted myzithra.

"I have a 'stragglers Thanksgiving' — that's what I call it — at my house every year," writes Frances Teasley of North Hollywood, California. "I know a lot of people who, like me, don't have any family nearby. Thirteen years ago I started inviting a few people for dinner. And that small holiday gathering has become a big tradition among my friends. For weekday meals, I look for shortcuts and do-aheads. But for holiday meals, I like to do everything the same day because I love the smell of cooking that fills the house." Nice, fresh flavors for a side dish or salad.

When a generous garnish of pesto gets stirred in, the soup turns a vibrant green and becomes perfumed with the intense and sweet aroma of basil mixed with garlic.

Couscous is frequently thought of as a grain, but it's actually a pasta. This is more apparent in rounds of toasted Israeli couscous, which are larger and chewier than the familiar Moroccan kind. Try this dish with chicken or fish.

Use a sharp vegetable peeler to shave the Parmesan cheese into long strips.

A grill pan is just the thing for cooking the chicken and zucchini in this recipe.

Nutmeg adds nice flavor to this soup.

In this recipe we call for a 3- by 1 1/2-inch stainless-steel pastry ring. It is available at some specialty cookware shops.

Brian Preinfalk of Show Low, Arizona, says there’s nothing he’d rather eat on a cold winter day than one of the beef pot pies at Creasey’s Restaurant in the nearby ski resort town of Pinetop.