Weeknight Meals

Whole wheat couscous, a newcomer to supermarket shelves, gives this dish a nutty flavor—though standard couscous works just as well. Serve it with Slow-Baked Salmon or Miso-Glazed Salmon Steaks .

When I first visited Portland, Oregon, I left with two regrets: that I didn’t plan on more days (so I could eat more) in that glorious food-obsessed city, and that I didn’t pack an extra duffel for all the edible stuff I wanted to carry back home. On that last point, I limited myself to dried sour cherries and dry-roasted hazelnuts. When I wasn’t scarfing them out of hand, I threw them into dishes, alone but often in combination, proving the validity of the saying, “If it grows together, it goes together.” For this dish, I turned the hazelnuts and dried cherries into a sauce that can be made with Mulled Wine Syrup (page 6) or Pinot Noir (another Oregon specialty) to pour over pan-fried Cornish hen. I like to cook it al mattone, which means “with a brick,” a quick method that results in even cooking, a crisp skin, and moist flesh.

Robert H. Cobb, owner of the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood, is said to have invented this salad in the 1930s as a late-night snack for himself. No wonder it has remained an American classic. With the crunch of the iceberg and onions, the soft richness of the avocado, the saltiness of the bacon, the sweetness of the tomato, and the bite of the blue cheese, this salad has it all! And it is beautiful to boot.

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.