Weeknight Meals

Salt-and-vinegar chips and Guinness will turn this into a pub dinner.

At Matt's Rancho Martinez in Dallas, they have an appetizer called fried avocados. The deep-fried wedges are served with romaine lettuce "taco shells," cilantro, slivers of carrots and jicama, and other fixin's. "I got the idea from Vietnamese restaurants," said Marco Martinez, son of the late Matt Martinez Jr. "The lettuce rolls are great for people on the Atkins diet, too; they put their fajitas on them. We use soy sauce on the fajitas—we borrow lots of things from Asian cooking." Making Viet-Mex salad rolls is sort of like making lettuce tacos. Put all the ingredients out on the table and let everybody "roll their own."

Quickly wilted arugula, canned beans, and toasted walnuts add heft to this vegetarian main course. Try spinach in place of arugula and pine nuts instead of walnuts.

This dish isn't a makeover, per se. But there are so many beloved— and believe it or not, unhealthy—seared tuna dishes out there in the restaurant world that I thought I should offer at least one healthy version. The tuna is never the problem. Tuna is rich in nutrients, low in fat, delicious, and just a good bet all around. It's the stuff that's put on top that's the problem—anything from seared foie gras to deep-fried tempura crispies. Sure, it tastes great, but those additions turn a healthful dish into an artery-clogging one.

This clam chowder has been an American classic since the early 1800s, and it’s easy to see why. Cream—strike one! White potatoes—strike two! Bacon—should be strike three, you’re out! Here’s the good news: By replacing whole milk and cream with skim milk and yogurt, I had a calorie deficit—which I used to include some bacon.

Enjoy this soup-stew as is or, for a one-dish meal, ladle it over brown rice. Pass the hot-pepper sauce, please!

Making a parchment envelope in which to steam a fillet of fish surrounded by aromatic vegetables may sound a bit fancy for just one, but cooking in parchment is actually one of the simplest and most effective ways of steaming, because it seals in the flavors. What a treat it is to have that golden-tinged, puffed-up half-moon of parchment on your plate, and then to tear it open and breathe in all the heady aromas. Moreover, you’ll have no cleanup afterward; just wipe off the Silpat mat and throw away the parchment after you’ve scraped and scooped up every last delicious morsel and its jus. If you want just one meal out of this, get about a 6-ounce fillet of flounder, halibut, salmon, red snapper—whatever looks good. Or, as I did recently, try tilapia, which is quite readily available these days and at a reasonable price. But bought almost twice the amount I needed, so I could play with the other half of the cooked fillet a couple of days later. I learned from Katy Sparks, whose book, Sparks in the Kitchen, is full of great cooking tips from a chef to the home cook, the trick of pre-roasting several slices of new potato so they can go in the parchment package. This way you have a complete, balanced meal-in-one cooked all together.

The dressing is also a great dip for broiled shrimp or chicken.

The product: Rich yogurt with great flavor.
The payoff: No need to drain regular yogurt.

The Product: A delicious oil that’s a good source of healthful fat.
The Payoff: Rich, buttery flavor.

If sake is unavailable, substitute dry vermouth. Miso paste tastes surprisingly good with butter. The red variety has a more pungent flavor than yellow or white miso and is a terrific match for meat.

Not only is our mash low-cal, but it also provides more than a quarter of your daily requirement for cell-building vitamin B6.

Swap that tired casserole (you know which) for this elegant hazelnut version. The string beans help boost immunity with infectionfighting vitamin C. Oh, snap!