30 Minutes or Less

If you happen to find a brioche loaf, it also would make terrific French toast. Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 30 min

Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 20 min

Probably our favorite simple chicken recipe.

Fill your plate with corn on the cob, sweet-potato chips, and dill pickles. For dessert, have watermelon wedges and sugar cookies.

Green beans go upscale in this fresh take on a favorite Thanksgiving dish.

Active time: 10 min Start to finish: 10 min

A terrific way to finish off the cranberry relish. Make full use of your oven — and your time — by roasting small red-skinned potatoes alongside the fish, then tossing the potatoes with butter and parsley to have as a side dish. Boil slim green beans or haricots verts to complement the main course. End the meal with slices of marble pound cake ("toasted" briefly in the oven) topped with chocolate sauce and whipped cream.

Nuoc Tuong Pha This vegetarian dipping sauce can be made with any soy sauce, including the Japanese-style Kikkoman, although the Vietnamese prefer the lighter-bodied Chinese-style products marketed under the brands Kim Lan, Bo De, and Pearl River Bridge. Like dipping sauces made with fish sauce, you can embellish this with different aromatics such as ginger and cilantro.

The Ginger Fried Rice with Shiitake Mushrooms is a perfect side dish for this salmon.

This is creamy corn with no cream at all. Our trick? The juice of freshly cut corn thickened with cornstarch.

(Thon Poêlé et "Mariné," Vinaigrette d'Olives Noires) A sophisticated starter from chef Guy Savoy.

"As a kid, I'd accompany my mother to her job at the racetrack, where she would lead the horses out to the starting gate," writes Michael Hunter of Studio City, California. "Eventually I was helping out in the stalls, and when I got older, I became a jockey. My mother was also the person who, in a roundabout way, inspired my other passion: cooking. I'd come home from school, and she would have prepared something from a box or can. I didn't always like what was on the dinner table, so one day I asked her to buy me a cookbook. Pretty soon I was making dinner for us almost every night. Now, after seventeen years of racing horses and cooking for family and friends, I'm making the jump to professional cooking." These beans are particularly delicious with Michael's Sugar-Seared Salmon with Cream Sauce.

Try this side with trout or lamb chops, then apple upside-down cake.