Root Vegetable

Pelaccio flips the kebab script by cubing luxurious cuts of steak and marinating them in coconut milk, garlic, and chiles. Try this with tri-tip, top sirloin cap steak, or rib eye; just make sure a strip of fat is still intact; you'll use it to thread onto the skewers.

Fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff shared this recipe for one of her favorite salads—it's an updated take on a salad her Mom made when she was growing up in San Diego. We've included quantities for all the ingredients, but Minkoff encourages you to make this dish your own and to taste as you go. For more on Minkoff and to take a video tour of her New York City kitchen, see In the Kitchen with Rebecca Minkoff.

Creamy white beans, fresh basil, and crunchy young vegetables are combined in a light but substantial salad that takes advantage of the first fruits of the spring garden. Use a mild honey, like clover or wildflower. —Chef Sam

Lentils, rice, olive oil, and onions—this Middle Eastern standard is the ultimate pantry recipe. It's also the classic example of a dish that's greater than the sum of its parts. There are literally dozens of recipes for mujadara out there—each country, possibly even each family, seems to have its own version. The one I like best is adapted from Claudia Roden's Book of Jewish Food. The crispy onion topping is the best part, so go ahead and make a lot. NOTE: Lentils, like all dried beans, vary in their cooking time depending on several factors, including age. Yours may take longer to become tender, but they shouldn't take much more than an hour. Hard water can also affect the cooking time—if your water is hard, use bottled water.

All the flavors of chicken pot pie, but handheld!

No-fry zone: We let the fish 'n' chips fave go au naturel.

Every spring people make a hullabaloo about ramps, the wild leeks that grow in the forests of the East Coast, for good reason: they're wonderful, with a garlic-heavy leek flavor and a subtle sweetness. I pickle the ramps, put them in just about everything we eat (they're particularly great in omelets), and give them away by the armload. This pasta is a simple way to highlight their flavor.

Garlic scapes are the soft, lime-green-colored stems and unopened flower buds of hard-neck garlic varieties. Scapes have a mild garlic flavor and a slight sweetness, which makes them a prized addition in the kitchen. You can find them in the early summer and midfall at farmers' markets. If you grow your own garlic (which is easy), trim the scapes off before their flowers open. This forces the plant to focus on bulb production and increases the size of the garlic cloves. My Aunt Denise introduced me to the idea of garlic-scape pesto. Here I use it to sauce pasta; you can also spread it on crostini or use as a pungent dip for crunchy vegetables. If all you have are salted pistachios, forgo the salt in the recipe and add salt to taste at the end.

The keys to this dish? Use as many types of squash as you can, and heat the oil in the skillet until it's almost smoking.

Wear gloves when making this searingly hot sauce.

A few simple spices are all you need to transform ground pork into a fantastic taco filling.

Make a batch of these easy, fast pickled red onions, and use them the whole week (or two) on everything you’re eating.

Michael Lindley, Public House, Chattanooga: "Cucumbers are great in picnic food, something you can take with you anywhere."

Ask your butcher for thinly sliced cross-cut short ribs, a.k.a. flanken or Korean style. If you can't find them, flank steak is a good substitute.

Be gentle when washing new potatoes; their tender skins scrub off easily.

This steak tastes best when marinated overnight, so try to start the recipe a day ahead.

This creamy, smoky filling of roasted poblano chiles and charred onions will make your vegetarian—and carnivorous—friends happy.