Lettuce

The great flavor of toasted cumin adds a nice dimension to this easy side dish. It's an extra step that is definitely worth it.

Active time: 15 min Start to finish: 30 min

Great on its own or served alongside grilled fish, chicken or steak.

This recipe makes more dressing than you'll need. The remainder makes a great everyday dressing for any type of green salad, or a delicious dip for chicken wings or raw vegetables.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

(Warm Potato Goat-Cheese Salads with Thyme and Niçoise Olives)

A vegetarian takeoff on the classic Chinese minced squab dish. Chopped raw vegetables, not fried noodles, add crunch.

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.

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.

"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.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Artichoke hearts and hearts of palm combine in an elegant salad.