Weeknight Meals

This visually stunning dish also packs a real flavor punch. Even people who don’t normally like tofu feast on this dish, though you can substitute beef, if you must. If you can get your hands on an Asian pear, use it here. Green beans are also good in this instead of the spinach. Serve this with Perfect Steamed Jasmine Rice (page 240).

Sweet potatoes are pale yellow, yams are deeper orange, and red garnets have a reddish hue. If you have trouble finding all three, just buy three pounds’ worth of what you can find. This colorful salad is perfect with roast pork, or on the Thanksgiving menu as a refreshing change from the traditional sweet potato dishes.

This salad is wonderful served warm or at room temperature with French bread and a green salad.

Just as you would never find chow mein in China, I don’t think you’d find this salad anywhere in Asia, but the concept is a popular one. In my version, chicken breasts are roasted, not deep-fried.

This is a wonderful Greek-style one-dish meal or a side dish for a party. Roasting brings out the flavors of the vegetables. You can prepare all the vegetables except the potatoes ahead of time.

These crispy, flavorful potatoes, a tasty accompaniment to any meal, are simple and quick to prepare.

This is truly one of my favorite ways to cook tiny new potatoes. Sometimes when I buy a sack of potatoes, there will be a few larger ones, which I cut in half or in quarters to match the size of smaller 1- to 1 1/2-inch potatoes. No need to peel the potatoes, just scrub them.

Roast the potatoes along with hamburgers, steaks, pork chops, boneless chicken breasts, or any other meat you choose. I use the highest oven setting, and they are done in about 15 minutes. Roast the potatoes in the center of the oven if that’s all you are cooking. You can also roast three pans of potatoes at once, on evenly spaced oven racks if you’re cooking for a crowd. If you are roasting meat, place it on the center or upper rack and roast the potatoes on a lower rack.

When carrots are roasted, they develop a sweet flavor that thyme enhances. I serve these carrots with a beef pot roast and roasted potatoes.

Honey enhances the natural sweetness in rutabagas and parsnips. This is a perfect side dish for a holiday menu.

This basic, versatile recipe can be adapted to just about any vegetable depending on what you have on hand. While the oven preheats, prepare the vegetables. Serve with oven-grilled chicken breasts and steamed rice.

Meals don’t come much easier, quicker, or better than this!

A pan of these vegetables cooks easily along with chicken, Cornish game hens, or pork roast. Consider adding a dessert to the oven, too. All three items can be baked on separate racks. Place the vegetables in the center and the dessert on the bottom rack.

Roasted asparagus spears are crisp-tender with great flavor. They can be roasted at higher temperatures as well (400° to 500°F), in which case the roasting time is short (8 to 10 minutes). If you are roasting meat or poultry at 375°F, that temperature will be fine for the asparagus, too. Don’t add the asparagus to the oven too soon or it will be overcooked.

There’s nothing quite so delicious as salmon roasted with soy-flavored butter as a final baste. In the convection oven it cooks amazingly fast. Remove from the oven just when the fish is done.

This is a quick and easy main dish. Although most shrimp you buy have been frozen, this dish is absolutely superb made with fresh shrimp, the largest you can find.

It takes a very hot oven to roast this fish, and the results are incredible! The halibut is gently browned on the outside. You’d never be able to accomplish this “blast of hot air” in a conventional oven because the circulating heat hits everything at one time. Sometimes I add a few baby potatoes, scrubbed and quartered, or a quartered fennel bulb, tossed in melted butter and scattered around the fish. They’ll be done at the same time as the halibut.

When I roast salmon steaks, I often like to start a pan of root vegetables in the oven 5 to 10 minutes before the salmon. I toss quartered potatoes and 1-inch chunks of parsnips and carrots with a small amount of olive oil. A complete meal is cooked in less than 20 minutes!

This is a fast and easy method for preparing firm, thick fish fillets. A heavy skillet with a ridged bottom will produce nice grill marks when preheated in the oven. Serve this fish with stir-fried Asian noodles or spaghetti tossed with sautéed bok choy, green onions, and any type of sprouts, seasoned with minced garlic, ginger, rice vinegar, and sesame oil.

Tuna steaks are delicious when the exterior is browned but the center is rare. These steaks can be done on an outdoor grill, but when that isn’t feasible, the convection oven does a wonderful job.