Saute

Roasted baby potatoes and steamed asparagus with blue-cheese dressing make appealing sides. Layer sugared sliced strawberries and whipped cream in goblets for dessert.

Bottled vinaigrette adds a tangy twist to the chicken. This stylish dish goes well with couscous. Molasses cookies and vanilla ice cream sprinkled with chopped crystallized ginger would be a lovely finish.

This salmon is wrapped in rice paper, which gets very crisp when sautéed.

These can be cooked two hours ahead, then rewarmed in the oven just before serving.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Three classic heartland ingredients — corn, smoked sausage and wild rice — combine to give this appealing first-course soup its sweet-spicy flavor and interesting texture.

This may not be as good as a true foie gras, but it's similar enough in flavor for a dish that costs only pennies to make. Not only can the pâté be served on toast — it can also serve as a finish for a classic Beef Wellington or enhance a stuffing or a meat loaf.

This quick dish gets its flavor from fresh tangerine peel as well as the fruit's juice. To make easy work of grating the peel, choose tangerines with firm skin and store them in the refrigerator. Then use a hand grater or a Microplane grater-zester to grate the peel.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Ground almonds create texture and thicken the sauce of pollo almendrado—our homage to New York's large Mexican and Central American population.

Here's a quick and elegant entrée for spring.

This is a rich, filling way of serving mussels. Make sure to have a lot of good bread to sop up all the juices.

(Spinaci con Pinoli e Passerine) Spinach with pine nuts and raisins is a classic Sephardic dish that appears on tables in Greece, Spain, Turkey, and Italy, where it is a staple on Venetian and Genoese menus. It is a perfect accompaniment to delicate fish or poultry dishes and is often served at room temperature.

A veg-forward main or gets-along-with-everyone side.

Fully loaded, meal-prep friendly, and ready to be dressed up, down, or sideways.

The summer salad stalwart gets a makeover.