Broccoli/Broccolini

A light vinegar and dark sesame oil dressing brightens the flavor of broccoli. The sesame dressing is also delicious on other vegetables, such as bok choy, green beans, carrots, and asparagus.

Beer and Cheddar aren’t typical ingredients for risotto, but this dish sure is good!

Shelled edamame (fresh soybeans) are available in the frozen food section of many natural foods stores and supermarkets. Whole wheat pasta is especially good in this dish. If you think you’ll be lucky enough to have leftovers for lunch tomorrow, instead of tossing the walnuts into the pasta, sprinkle them on top of each serving.

In this recipe, I blanch the broccoli before sautéing it. I love vegetables sautéed in olive oil that’s fragrant with garlic, but too often, these sautés can turn fresh, crisp produce into something greasy and soggy. So for some thicker-cut vegetables like broccoli florets, the blanching step really helps: By boiling, you cook the veggies most of the way through, and then you finish with the sauté more for flavor and texture than to get the broccoli fully cooked. Less time in the oil, less chance of sogginess.

Sweet, pungent balsamic vinegar provides a subtle kick to this richly glazed dish.

Top oven fries with the works—tender beef, broccoli, brown gravy, and a bit of blue cheese. You can use leftover roast beef, such as part of the extra Tuscan Braised Beef (page 172), or buy the lowest-fat, lowest-sodium cooked beef you can find.

This basic stir-fry recipe gives you many options. You can choose between the Asian and Italian flavorings (see Italian Stir-Fry on page 147), and you can vary the meat by replacing the chicken with round steak, pork chops or tenderloin, firm-fleshed fish, bay scallops, or tofu. Save even more time by using precut vegetables or frozen mixed vegetables (no need to thaw before cooking). Even if you make only half this recipe, you’ll probably want to make the entire amount of sauce.

Choose fresh fruit salad or cold soup, such as Chilled Strawberry-Orange Soup (page 51), to complement this quichelike dish.

Everyone needs a tuna casserole recipe. Ours abounds with color, flavor, and crunch.

This sweet-and-sour side dish pairs nicely with Asian recipes, as well as with ham or turkey. On its own, the sauce enhances almost any cooked vegetable or meat and is good as a dipping sauce for potstickers.

Soup’s on! This colorful and creamy soup is a delicious way to eat your veggies.

You can chop the garlic if you like, but I prefer slices. They are mellower in flavor and become part of the texture of the dish. In most pasta dishes the idea is to make just enough sauce to coat the pasta lightly. When clam sauce is served with linguine, however, there should be a little extra broth. Other hard-shelled clams, such as Manila or butter clams, make a good substitute, but I love littleneck clams for this sauce. With this dish, as with many pasta dishes using long, thin pasta shapes, I prefer to cook the pasta very al dente and finish it in the sauce. It’s a balancing act—determining when the pasta is ready and the sauce is the right consistency—but you can always hold the pasta or the sauce for a minute or two, while the other one catches up.