Spinach

Active time: 15 min Start to finish: 15 min

Active time: 10 min Start to finish: 10 min

The lively dressing lends a little zip to this fresh-tasting, colorful salad.

Skillet-toasted fresh breadcrumbs tossed with Parmesan cheese add crunch to this terrific side dish.

Grilled Matambre Matambre (literally, "kill the hunger") is a classic South American meat dish. Every family has its own favorite combination of ingredients for the filling — some use vegetables, eggs, and nuts; others use ground pork, calves' brains, and spinach. We kept it simple and went with spinach and carrots. Traditionally, this dish is poached, but we decided to grill ours. After testing this recipe on both gas and charcoal grills, we found that we prefer the flavor that charcoal imparts to the dish. We used a 22 1/2-inch kettle grill, a large chimney starter, and a 10-pound bag of hardwood charcoal.* Active time: 2 1/2 hr Start to finish: 3 hr

This recipe was created to accompany Cold Poached Chicken with Ginger Scallion Oil .

Have your butcher order the veal breast, then ask him to bone, butterfly, and pound it, forming a rectangle that has the dimensions described in the recipe.

A yellow pepper purée gives these egg white omelets color and tenderness without adding fat.

This frittata is a marriage of ideas gleaned from two similar dishes tasted in the Piedmont: a delicious zucchini and herb "frittela" at the restaurant Guido in Costiglioli d'Asti and a spinach "frittatini" (both were miniature frittate) at the humble but superb Osteria dell'Unione in Treiso.

Although bay leaves in this recipe smell delicious and look enticing, they should not be eaten because of their sharp edges.

Fermented black beans are an essential ingredient to this soup. I couldn't find exactly the kind of beans Kunkhen used, so I settled for a prepared black bean garlic sauce, which was perfect and gave the soup the same earthy taste that Kunkhen's had. I recommend that if you are using black beans you begin by adding 5 teaspoons, then taste the soup for seasoning. If it needs more flavor, add more black beans. The tablespoon of black bean garlic sauce was perfect to season this amount of soup.

We adapted this gorgeous salad, full of intriguing flavors and textures and so colorful it looks like a fireworks display, from a recipe that Mexican chef María Dolores Torres Yzábal contributed to México, The Beautiful Cookbook.

Miso—rather than oil—lends body and flavor to the dressing.

This is based on a classic Italian dish, vitello tonnato, in which chilled slices of veal are topped with a puree of tuna, anchovies, capers, and lemon. Here, the veal is replaced by sliced turkey, and the sauce can be made up to a day ahead. (Buy good-quality turkey breast from the deli section of the market.)