Quick

You can make the sauce with other fruit spreads, such as peach, apricot, or strawberry. Make extra sauce—it will keep in the refrigerator for several weeks.

There must be as many recipes for chili as there are cooks. This one has the surprising addition of lentils and the smoky spiciness of chipotles.

Is this really dinner? It is casual, messy finger food, but it has beans, grain, and cheese, it’s quite filling, and kids love it. We like Cheddar, Monterey Jack, or Mexican cheeses such asadero and queso quesadilla for this recipe.

Black beans and rice with an interesting twist: fuchsia-colored pickled red onions. Make extra! They’re a flavorful condiment for sandwiches, soups, and salads, and they keep in the refrigerator for several weeks.

Sesame-crusted tofu is firm and flavorful enough to please even the tofu-phobic. (See photo)

Coleslaw mix (shredded cabbage and carrots), one of our favorite simple suppers convenience foods, is available in the produce section of most supermarkets.

Tofu, ever the chameleon, lends itself to pairings with a multitude of sauces for nutritious and easily prepared meals. This is a favorite.

Feta cheese, garlic, and artichoke hearts are some of our favorite ingredients; here, they’re combined in a very simple pasta dish that packs a lot of flavor. For this dish, we make an instant creamy sauce by stirring hot pasta-cooking water into feta.

Rich and delicious Walnut Pesto can be made in minutes in a food processor or blender—it will be ready before the pasta has cooked. Make extra; it keeps well for 3 or 4 days in the refrigerator and is good on boiled potatoes and steamed fish.

Fresh summer herbs release an intense, splendid aroma when you stir them into hot oil. (See photo).

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.

Mustard greens and broccoli raab (also called brocoletti di rape, rape, and rapini) are somewhat bitter, a good counterpoint to creamy, subtly flavored ricotta cheese.

So easy to make, yet simply delectable—if you keep an assortment of good deli olives on hand, supper is only minutes away. (See photo)

In Comfort Me with Apples, Ruth Reichl attributes the original recipe to Danny Kaye, but lemon and cream seems such a simple, natural combination that we suppose people were putting it on pasta long before Danny Kaye was born.

This sandwich came about in our favorite way: by visiting the greenmarket, picking up the cheese, and then meandering through the farmers’ stands to see what fresh offerings might be paired with it. It was June; we came away with beautiful asparagus, red onions, basil, and a rustic bread—all the fixins for an open-faced sandwich on the grill. (If you don’t have an outdoor grill, you can use a grill pan.) Thinking back to the days when cooks in diners put hubcaps atop burgers as they cooked, to steam them a bit, we recommend either closing the grill or inverting a metal bowl over the sandwich to keep the heat in and help melt the cheese. By the way, if you can’t find or do not care for Vacherin, substitute any good melting cheese.