Leafy Greens

Try tucking this simple make-ahead salad into pita bread halves and adding some ruffly-edged lettuce for color.

Easy to prepare and impressive to serve, this dish is perfect for an impromptu week-night dinner party.

A little pork goes a long way in this Chinese dinner. Chicken breast can be used as a substitute for the pork. Chinese crepes are available frozen in most Asian markets, but easy-to-find tortillas work, too.

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.

At Thanksgiving, rice stuffings are standard on many southern tables. This one, a combination of white rice and wild rice, gets more regional notes from collard greens, pecans and ham.

A hearty meal-in-a-bowl for blustery March days. Short ribs add flavor, while sliced cabbage contributes texture. At the end, the only things you need are a dash of vinegar and a dollop of sour cream.

Beets--both pickled and boiled--have long been a popular German side dish for meats. The sour cream dressing gets a kick from vinegar and mustard.

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.

If desired, grate a little extra Parmesan cheese for passing; a sprinkling over the soup will echo the flavor in the meatballs.

"Many of the everyday dishes I made when I was raising my daughters are recipes I learned from my mother while I was growing up in the suburbs of Paris," writes Fanny Carroll of Eugene, Oregon. "She was quite a cook, and with a husband and seven kids to feed, everything had to be fast."

For this traditional Asian fondue, raw strips of chicken are cooked quickly at the table in a pot of boiling broth. Guests then place the cooked chicken strips on lettuce leaves, add noodles and whatever garnishes they choose, roll up the leaves and complete the packages with a bit of the Sweet-and-Spicy Dipping Sauce. When all of the chicken has been eaten, divide the remaining broth among the guests.

As all southerners know, eating Hoppin' John—black-eyed peas and rice—on New Year's Day ensures good luck. But it is the collards, traditionally eaten alongside, that bring good fortune! An added bonus to cooking up a mess o' greens is the resultant pot liquor—the delicious, nutritious broth left in the bottom of the cooking pot or serving dish. It is usually served as an accompaniment to that last piece of corn bread.

Mushrooms and cashews give a slight seventies flavor to this terrific salad.