Weeknight Meals

A chicken that's allowed to run will provide the full flavor necessary to support the tangy Stilton cheese and tart sweetness of the apples in this dish. Talk to the purveyors at the farmers' market or your butcher, and they'll be happy to tell you about the chickens they sell.

Serve with pasta, polenta, or rice. Accompany with steamed broccoli or braised escarole or kale.

These zucchini fritters are the perfect way to start the meal. Serve the keftedes, grape leaves , octopus , and feta and olives as mezedes (appetizers).

This dish only looks indulgent: A serving has a mere 7 grams of saturated fat, and the pasta and peas help deliver 40 percent of your daily intake of folate, a nutrient that aids the body in forming red blood cells.

A hearty Italian bread salad serves up good-for-you omega-3 fatty acids (thank you, salmon!) along with vitamin C–rich green beans.

We swapped salmon for the crab in these tasty cakes. Sauteéing provides the same crispy texture as deep-frying but with less saturated fat.

Fresh herbs abound here—as does niacin, an energizing B vitamin: One serving of salmon dishes up nearly 70 percent of your daily niacin needs.

Thai red curry paste, unsweetened coconut milk, and fish sauce are available in the Asian foods section of most supermarkets. Serve this curry over steamed jasmine rice.

These tasty steaks are served on a bed of spinach, which earns them their name. Both round and butt steaks are full of flavor, and they are so well appreciated all across America that we think of them as "American cuts." They are chewier than sirloin or tenderloin but full of great beef flavor. If you can find prime beef, buy it, but choice will do just fine here.

Not all cream sauces are super-rich. This pasta gets its creamy sauce from a combination of part-skim ricotta and pasta water, which come together to make a really easy, lighter cream sauce. Don’t leave out the lemon zest; it brightens the flavor and adds a wonderful lemony aroma as well.

These little warm onion tarts are lovely amuse and get any winter meal off to a good start. Vary them with different kinds of onions. Julia Child has commented that cooking would be in a sorry state indeed if it weren't for onions. I agree!

Kale goes by another name, one much more dashing, especially in Italian. Cavolo Nero, black cabbage, may not evoke superhero status, but it's close. Kale does seem invincible and it's known to make the eater more so, too. It's also called dinosaur kale (also called lacinato), maybe because its leaves look like the back of a lizard. Those thin knobby leaves squeak. Do not confuse cavolo, accent on the first syllable, with cavallo, accent on the second, or you'll be ordering black horse, and in certain parts of the world will find it. Hearty and good for the spirit. I like soaked and cooked cannellini better than canned ones.

This dish is exceptionally easy to make and worth every second. That said, there is one thing to note: Be careful when checking the chicken for doneness. The tomatoes will likely drip into the chicken. If you cut into the chicken or poke it with a fork to test for doneness, be sure it’s not the liquid from the tomatoes making the chicken look pink even if it’s not.

A nice thick bone in steak is our favorite kind of splurge. Uncle Bubba loves to gnaw on a steak bone, so we came up with this simple recipe for steak rubbed with brown sugar and spices especially for him. Rib eye is Bubba's favorite cut, but you use this rub on your favorite cut, too. It's also great on grilled chicken.