Cheese

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

A terrific appetizer for parties.

Here's a new take on calabacitas, a traditional Mexican side dish with zucchini, onions and peppers.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Pick up stuffed grape leaves, marinated mushrooms and crusty bread from the deli to round out the menu. Finish with an almond tart and brandied espresso.

The chef's salad is a familiar yet fading star in the salad world. In delicatessens, diners, and airport snack bars everywhere, we find its faithful components: lifeless leaves of iceberg lettuce, suspiciously blue-hued slices of hard-boiled egg, wedges of pallid tomato, and rubbery chunks of cheese, ham, and turkey. To top it all off (or perhaps sitting alongside): gloppy, high-calorie dressing. But this still-beloved salad may have had a noble beginning. Though nobody has ever stepped forward to claim the title of the chef in "chef's salad," the dish has been attributed by some food historians to Louis Diat, chef of The Ritz-Carlton in New York City in the early 1940s. He paired watercress with halved hard-boiled eggs and julienne strips of smoked tongue, ham, and chicken. (The concept of the chef’s salad dates still earlier; one seventeenth-century English recipe for a "grand sallet" calls for lettuce, roast meat, and a slew of vegetables and fruits.) No matter how the salad has evolved, its underlying virtue remains unchanged. This is a no-cook meal that satisfies our cravings for greens and protein. And, in these dog days of summer-when cooking is sometimes the last thing we'd like to do-a main-course salad is especially appealing. In our updated take on the classic recipe, we used a selection of lettuces (early chef's salads were not always made with iceberg alone), and, in a twist on the norm, small but flavorful amounts of sugar-cured ham and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Feel free to improvise with ingredients depending on what looks good at your farmers market. Summer savory or dill can flavor the dressing in place of the mixed herbs, and many kinds of ham and cheese will work well.

In Italy this classic peasant soup is known as aquacotta, or "cooked water."

What to drink: Delicate blanc de blancs Champagne pairs well with these hors d'oeuvres.

Saturday night is typically pizza-making night for my family, and one of the standard features of these evenings is pizza with pesto and fresh tomatoes. I use a good store-bought pesto, and, although I once made the dough in my bread machine, I now purchase excellent dough at our local Bertucci's restaurant and keep plenty on hand in the freezer. The dinner is simple and delicious. A pizza stone is a worthwhile investment if you're partial to pizza with a crisp crust that doesn’t droop. For this recipe we used a large pizza stone (about 14 inches across). But don’t despair if you don't have one; we also achieved good results when we baked the pizza on a baking sheet.

"Cooking with friends — that's pretty much what my life has been about," writes Louise Pickerel of Muskogee, Oklahoma. "When I moved here from Texas ten years ago, it was hard to leave the people I'd known for so long, but I've probably met two hundred new people since then. I have always entertained, but now that I'm retired, I finally have more time to play bridge and cook." Louise likes to serve this chunky soup with ham or roast beef sandwich wraps.