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Crêpes are easy indeed to make and are a most useful resource for simple but dressy main courses and desserts. What is helpful, too, is that you can make a good number while you are at it and freeze the extras, ready almost at once for many a quick meal.

Rather than broiling a chicken in pieces, which is easy to do but not wildly exciting, and rather than roasting it whole, which takes an hour or more, butterfly your chicken. It cooks in half the time and makes a great presentation.

You can bake this in a 4-cup mold with a paper collar, into which the soufflé will puff 2 to 3 inches over the rim and hold its puff when the collar is removed. Or bake it in a 6-cup mold, which will give you a more stable soufflé but less puff.

The perfect omelet is a gently oval shape of coagulated egg enclosing a tender custard of eggs. It can be a plain breakfast omelet flavored only with salt, pepper, and butter, or it can be a quick main course luncheon omelet filled or garnished with chicken livers, mushrooms, spinach, truffles, smoked salmon, or whatever the cook wishes—an attractive use for nice leftovers, by the way. And you can make an omelet in a number of ways, such as the scrambled technique, the tilt-and-fold method, and so forth. I have always preferred the 2-to-3-egg omelet made by my old French chef teacher’s shake-and-jerk system, as follows. If this is your first attempt, go through the movements of the jerk—and note it is not a toss, it is a straight jerk toward you—and practice the unmolding technique. Serve the whole family for breakfast, so you’ll be making 4 or 5 omelets or more and will get the feel. It’s a very fast lesson, since an omelet takes only about 20 seconds to make.

Roasting time at 325°F: 2 hours for medium rare—internal temperature 125° to 130°F (about 15 minutes per pound).

Traditional chowders all start off with a hearty soup base of onions and potatoes, and that makes a good soup just by itself. To this fragrant base you then add chunks of fish, or clams, or corn, or whatever else seems appropriate.

Of all main-course salads, the Niçoise is my all-time favorite, with its fresh butter-lettuce foundation; its carefully cooked, beautifully green green beans; its colorful contrast of halved hard-boiled eggs, ripe red tomatoes, and black olives; all fortified by chunks of tunafish and freshly opened anchovies. It’s a perfect luncheon dish, to my mind, winter, summer, spring, and fall—an inspired combination that pleases everyone.