Chicken

Steamed Swiss chard and buttered egg noodles sprinkled with chives are nice sides for this Hungarian-inspired meal. Apple strudel makes the perfect dessert.

This flavorful chicken makes an impressive impromptu dinner when accompanied by the Caramelized Onion and Roasted Red Pepper Linguine and a nice salad (use a bagged lettuce mixture, of course). Frozen chicken will work here if that's what you have on hand; just defrost it quickly in the microwave.

"I come from a big family, so I learned how to cook to help my mother feed all of those hungry mouths," says Molly Shannon Daum, Evergreen Park, Illinois. "Dad loved whatever I made, and he would always tell me that I should have my own restaurant named Molly's Marvelous Makings. But despite Dad's suggestion, I decided to study nursing. Nowadays I usually don't get home until seven o'clock at night, which means that dinner has to be quick. Sometimes my husband, Tom, helps out in the kitchen, but mostly it's up to me to get something delicious on the table fast. Since the opportunity to prepare challenging meals doesn't come up often, I save the complex cooking for the times when we entertain. That’s when I get to use the recipes that might have appeared on my menu if I'd taken Dad's advice." Molly also uses the dressing on salads.

Begin the meal with toasted baguette rounds topped with sautéed wild mushrooms. Marinate the chicken three to six hours before cooking. what to drink: A crisp, fresh white wine, such as a California Sauvignon Blanc.

Bonnie Wilkens Metully of Cincinnati, Ohio, writes: "As much as my husband and I love to go out to eat, it's just more fun, intimate, and cozy to cook and entertain at home. I've taught a lot of our friends just how easy it is to prepare restaurant-quality dishes themselves. Who taught me? My older sister, who's a professional chef. She showed me the importance of getting everything prepped beforehand and seeking out the freshest ingredients." This terrific dish also works well as an appetizer if it's cut into bite-size pieces.

"During a vacation in Scottsdale, Arizona, my brother-in-law took me to his favorite restaurant, Cowboy Ciao," writes Linden Avery of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. "It serves a very colorful, delicious chopped salad called a Stetson. Could you get the recipe so I can re-create it at home?" This main-course salad is presented with the ingredients lined up in rows. For convenience, you could just toss the salad instead.

This is a dish you might be served in a café in the Middle East. It's simple and flavorful and makes a quick dinner; it's also great for a picnic.

Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 35 min

If you have leftover roast chicken or turkey, use it here and save a step. You'll need 3 cups of shredded meat.

To make the salad, Mary uses leftovers from a roast chicken and adds giardiniera, Italian-style pickled vegetables.

One diner's instructions on how to find Mrs. Wilkes': "Walk along West Jones Street until you smell fried chicken."

This Cambodian curry is traditionally made with beef, but Mao Sokhen says his American friends prefer the chicken variation. Though you can use any brand of Thai red curry paste and Asian fish sauce for this recipe, Mao likes the brands recommended below because he finds they produce a dish that is closer to classic Cambodian flavor.

A Provençal specialty, pan bagnat is literally a sandwich with "bathed bread" — that is, the loaf of bread is split and drizzled with olive oil and/or a vinaigrette before being filled with other ingredients. In this version, grilled chicken stands in for the traditional tuna. Begin these sandwiches at least four hours and up to one day before serving. Get the picnic started with a selection of cheeses, salami, and crackers. What to drink: A light red, slightly chilled, such as a Beaujolais or Bandol Rosé.

These fresh and pretty wraps fuse three different Asian influences: Chinese stir-fry, Japanese ingredients, and a Vietnamese dipping sauce.

We recommend using the freshest watercress possible — if not at its best, it can give the sauce a slightly bitter taste. (Try hydroponic watercress; it's generally better than conventionally grown supermarket cress.) Tanis suggests skimming all the fat from the cooking liquid and serving the broth as a first-course soup, garnished with toasted slices of French bread.

The origin of this dish is unknown, but it's a common menu feature of many Italo-American restaurants of the red-sauce variety. In kitchen lingo, a shoemaker is a shortcutting, skillful hack; a shoemaker cobbles things, a meal, together from the meager things on hand. In Italian, scarpa translates as "shoe" and scarpariella is slang for shoemaker. The actual name for one who plies this trade is calzolaio. In Chicken Scarpariella, a spring chicken is "hacked" up in to small pieces and quickly cooked with a few common ingredients.

The popular rum-and-mint cocktail from Cuba was the inspiration for this entrée. A last-minute spritz of grilled lime adds even more flavor. Garnish with grilled pineapple slices cut into star shapes, if desired.

Madras-style curry powder, which is spicier than the standard, adds a little heat here.