Soy Free

You may have had pappadams — light, crisp wafers made of lentil flour — at Indian restaurants. Here we use them as a stand-in for croutons.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Turn-of-the-century cooks thought the original of this dense, chocolaty cake was so wickedly rich and sinfully delicious that it just had to be bad. So they named it after the devil himself. The first recipe for it appeared in 1905, and it's been around ever since. We've freshened up the devil with a little lift of mint.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

More confections than cookies, really, meringues accompany ice cream well and add a festive dimension to the table. They are best baked on a cool, dry day.

Kalmi Shaak Following Bengali tradition, Chitrita Banerji's mother presented this vegetable dish as a first course — delicate yet spicy, it gets the appetite going. But you could serve it as a side dish with the mung beans and the eggplant fritters. The original recipe called for mustard oil, but because it's so hard to find an FDA-approved brand — many bottles are labeled "for massage only," though Indians find that they're fine to cook with — we have substituted vegetable oil.

Aioli, the garlicky Provençal mayonnaise, is accented with chives and Dijon mustard.

Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 20 min

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Potato salad gets perked up with herbs, vegetables and a terrific dressing. Serve the salad warm or at room temperature.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

The recipe calls for purchased roasted chicken, which eliminates a step.

Frieda Caplan, doyenne of the produce company Frieda's, introduced the U.S. to the kiwi in the sixties. It took a few years, but in the seventies, the green fruit with the fuzzy brown skin really took off.

A fresh and simple dessert that's quick to put together. The flavors develop better if it's made one day ahead.