Tomato

Finish off this meal with some cookies from the bakery and fresh fruit.

Buy an apple tart for dessert.

When you want to put on the "dog" but not the fat, try this colorful salad.

Try tucking this simple make-ahead salad into pita bread halves and adding some ruffly-edged lettuce for color.

A terrific appetizer for parties.

Called chakchouka, this specialty is perfect for brunch, lunch or even a quick supper.Traditionally, it is prepared with a slender, spicy beef or lamb merguez sausage, and a soft bread is used in place of a fork to "grab and eat".

Syracuse, the beautiful port city on the Ionian Sea, has a cuisine that is marked by highly aromatic combinations of vegetables and seafood. This pasta recipe is a distinctive example.

(Chile Verde Con Carne or "Caldillo")

Ask your butcher to remove the backbones from the racks to make carving easier. If the lamb has not been trimmed, cut off the outer layer of fat and about two inches of the fat between the bones (the bones will be exposed); this technique is called "Frenching." Begin preparing the lamb a day before serving to allow time for marinating.

In this recipe we used fresh baby lima beans (the frozen ones are excellent, too), but you can substitute any other fresh young shell beans such as fava or cranberry beans.

Active time: 40 min Start to finish: 1 hr

"Many of the everyday dishes I made when I was raising my daughters are recipes I learned from my mother while I was growing up in the suburbs of Paris," writes Fanny Carroll of Eugene, Oregon. "She was quite a cook, and with a husband and seven kids to feed, everything had to be fast."

Bonnie Wilkens Metully of Cincinnati, Ohio, writes: "Having two very active teenagers means I've also had to learn how to put together an interesting dinner even on busy nights. I get inspiration from my favorite bedtime reading, an immense collection of cookbooks and food magazines. I also do a quick grocery run every day —usually because I've just read about a dish that I simply must try —but also because having a well-stocked refrigerator is the key to easier cooking."

Saturday night is typically pizza-making night for my family, and one of the standard features of these evenings is pizza with pesto and fresh tomatoes. I use a good store-bought pesto, and, although I once made the dough in my bread machine, I now purchase excellent dough at our local Bertucci's restaurant and keep plenty on hand in the freezer. The dinner is simple and delicious. A pizza stone is a worthwhile investment if you're partial to pizza with a crisp crust that doesn’t droop. For this recipe we used a large pizza stone (about 14 inches across). But don’t despair if you don't have one; we also achieved good results when we baked the pizza on a baking sheet.

Active time: 15 min Start to finish: 2 hr

Borracho means drunk, and it refers to the beer in the cooking liquid. If you're cooking beans and pork roast at the same time, you can use the fatty pieces of pork that you remove while carving to add flavor to the beans. Otherwise, use some bacon.

This recipe works best with ordinary chili powder, which typically includes not only ground dried chiles but other spices as well. Pure chile powder will be too strong.