Salad

Because beets are sweet and earthy, they need a good helping of acidity and salt to brighten them up. Immediately after cooking, dress beets in vinaigrette and salt to let them marinate.

The thinly sliced radishes and carrots in this healthy lunch salad get extra crispy, thanks to a quick soak in an ice bath.

This all-purpose dressing brightens whatever it touches, like Snap Pea Salad or Greek salad. It proves that three simple ingredients can become something extra-special when they're combined in just the right proportions.

This salad is the answer to people who think they don't like leafy greens. Good kale has a deep, almost meaty flavor. Searing it and mixing it with brown-butter-drenched pine nuts, sweet raisins, and salty Parmesan cheese is a no-fail treatment. Most other hearty greens like beet greens, dandelion greens, or radish tops would also be good in this dish.

I admit that I'm hard on sugar snap peas. I get disappointed when they suck, of course, but I also get grumpy when they're anything less than perfect—unblemished, super sweet, and not a bit starchy. That's the curse of keeping high standards, I suppose: you're so rarely satisfied. When at last I do find perfect snap peas, I make this salad. I leave them raw—only the finest snap peas can be this delightful without a dunk in boiling water—and accentuate their flavor with little more than a lemony dressing and mint. If you'd like, you could add some creamy goat cheese in blobs or good old burrata alongside.

The Zuni roast chicken depends on three things, beginning with the small size of the bird. Don't substitute a jumbo roaster—it will be too lean and won't tolerate high heat, which is the second requirement of the method. Small chickens, 2-3/4 to 3-1/2 pounds, flourish at high heat, roasting quickly and evenly, and, with lots of skin per ounce of meat, they are virtually designed to stay succulent. Your store may not promote this size for roasting, but let them know you'd like it. I used to ask for a whole fryer, but since many people don't want to cut up their own chickens for frying (or anything else), those smaller birds rarely make it to the display case intact; most are sacrificed to the "parts" market. But it is no secret that a whole fryer makes a great roaster—it's the size of bird favored for popular spit-roasted chickens to-go. It ought to return to retail cases. The third requirement is salting the bird at least 24 hours in advance. This improves flavor, keeps it moist, and makes it tender. We don't bother trussing the chicken—I want as much skin as possible to blister and color. And we don't rub the chicken with extra fat, trusting its own skin to provide enough. But if the chicken is about method, the bread salad is more about recipe. Sort of a scrappy extramural stuffing, it is a warm mix of crispy, tender, and chewy chunks of bread, a little slivered garlic and scallion, a scatter of currants and pine nuts, and a handful of greens, all moistened with vinaigrette and chicken drippings.

The secret to making this extraordinary spring salad? Remove and fry rotisserie chicken skin for a salty, extra-crispy topping.

We love making this salad with mâche instead of traditional frisée.

The steak can be marinated a day in advance—in fact, it gets better.

When dressing hardy raw greens, it's good to be aggressive. Fortunately, we've got spicy ginger and seedy flavor bombs on hand.

This all-green salad is studded with creamy avocado, crunchy cucumbers, and asparagus, and punctuated by tons of fresh dill and basil. The varied shades of green look like spring in a bowl.

Vibrantly colored and spiced, this creamy dressing is great drizzled over your favorite salad, grain bowl, or cooked veggies. Fresh turmeric will give you the best flavor and health benefits, but if you can't find it, ground dried turmeric works too.