Weeknight Meals

Salty sautéed peppers, especially those that are mildly hot, are delicious summer treats—irresistible bites with a glass of chilled wine.

This is a tangy, creamy, and herbaceous version of a classic dressing that is well paired with crisp and sturdy romaine lettuce. Use whole uncut leaves; if the heads are large, you may need to remove many of the outer leaves to get to the pale green sweet leaves at the heart. Little Gem and Winter Density are small tender varieties that are perfect for this dressing and for Caesar salad.

I don’t cook steak very often; but when I do, I choose grass-fed, organically raised beef and cook it on a grill over a wood or charcoal fire. A fine cut for steak is rib eye on the bone; a rib eye steak that is 2 to 2 1/2 inches thick will grill beautifully, crusty on the outside and pink and juicy on the inside, and there will be plenty of meat for two servings. Porterhouse steak is another substantial cut that serves two. For serving more people, try such flavorful, less expensive cuts as hanger steak, skirt steak, sirloin, and flatiron chuck steak. Individual fillet or tenderloin steaks are the most tender.

I like to roast a chicken with nothing more than a few herbs and seasonings. It is always satisfying, and the pan juices make a perfect sauce for the cooked bird.

Thomas likes to roast chicken and vegetables together in what he calls one-pot cooking. The vegetables make a bed for the chicken and prop it up so that it browns nicely, and the juices from the roasting bird permeate through the vegetables that caramelize on the bottom of the pot. He also removes the wishbone before cooking to make carving the roasted bird easier.

Oven-roasting is an especially good way of cooking winter root vegetables such as potatoes, turnips, carrots, parsnips, and celery root, as well as onions, unpeeled garlic cloves, squashes, and fennel. The crispiness and caramelization that develops in the oven brings out the vegetables’ natural sweetness and intensifies their flavors.

Polenta is ground corn cooked in water to make a thick and creamy porridge. Coarse, stone-ground dried corn makes delicious polenta and long, slow cooking allows its full flavor to develop. When hot and just cooked, it is soft; as it cools, it becomes firm and can then be cut into shapes and fried, grilled, or baked. Polenta is versatile; serve it with all kinds of roasted or braised meats and poultry, vegetable stews, tomato sauces and ragus, beans, mushrooms, and greens. This recipe adds the sweet taste and crunchy texture of fresh corn.

For Bryant, shucking and eating freshly picked ears of corn reminds him how for generations his family was intimately connected with their food sources—they ate what they grew. When you eat juicy corn on the cob, served straight from the pot and slathered with butter, it’s easy to imagine such a connection. Freshness really matters with corn—as soon as it is picked, the sugars in the corn start converting to starch. Choose ears that feel plump and fat with tightly closed, bright green husks and golden brown silks. Look for stems that are moist and pale green, and check for tight, small, plump kernels. Kernels cut from the cob offer other possibilities: sautéed, with sweet peppers, chiles, tomatoes, squash, or beans; or used in cornbread and griddle cakes, and in numerous soups and salsas. To prepare kernels for cooking, pull off the husks and cornsilk from the ears of corn. Rub the ears with a clean dish towel to remove any clinging cornsilk, and snap off the stems. Cut the kernels from the cobs: Hold an ear by the tip, stand it up vertically with the stem end down, and use a sharp knife to cut down the length of the cob, cutting just deep enough to slice off the kernels. This is messy; to contain the kernels, it helps to work in a large bowl, or on a small cutting board set inside a roasting pan.

This salad is especially good made with peppers roasted over a wood or charcoal fire.

Tangy and crunchy fresh vegetable pickles are a perfect foil to fried fish. They cut the richness of the buttery breadcrumbs and make a beautiful and colorful plate. This method of breading and cooking the fish is also excellent for chicken breasts.

Steaming is one of the simplest and most nutritious ways to cook vegetables. It is an especially good method to capture the delicate flavors of tender young vegetables such as turnips and turnip greens, carrots and carrot tops, peas and pea shoots, green beans, cauliflower, beets, and spinach. After cooking, the vegetables can be seasoned lightly with salt and perhaps a squeeze of lemon juice, or flavored with various vinegars, olive oil or butter, or a sauce.

Oliver likes to blanch his greens. Blanching vegetables means cooking them briefly in rapidly boiling water. Blanching is suitable for all sorts of leafy greens: chard, kale, beet greens, turnip tops, collards, cabbage, spinach, sea purslane, dandelion, and nettles. Blanched greens can be seasoned and served warm; chopped and added to stuffings, meatballs, soups, and stews; or dressed and served cold or at room temperature.

Leafy greens of all sorts are good simply wilted, cooked by a combination of steaming and sautéing. Tender greens such as spinach, watercress, and pea shoots cook quickly, in just a few minutes, uncovered. The sturdier greens (chard, kale, broccoli rabe, collards, cabbage, amaranth, beet greens, turnip tops) take longer. These are best cut into ribbons, or shreds, and covered to steam during cooking. It helps to have a large shallow pan that can accommodate a big mound of leaves at the outset, a tight-fitting lid, and a pair of tongs to stir and lift the greens to keep them moving and cooking evenly.

I make this soup year-round with fresh shell beans in the summer and fall, and with dried beans in the winter. The other vegetables in the soup vary with the season. It can be put together quickly if the beans are already cooked.

Dirty rice is a spicy Cajun dish typically made with sausage, chicken giblets, and vegetables—the meats color the rice and make it look “dirty.” There are as many versions of the dish as there are cooks. This one, contributed by Tanya Holland of Brown Sugar Kitchen, in Oakland, California, is spicy, light, and meatless.

This dish of Lidia’s is what I make for supper when I return home tired and hungry after traveling. I like it very plain, with lots of parsley, but you could spice it up by adding a pinch of dried chile flakes or chopped anchovy, and serving it with grated cheese.

When using smaller clams such as Manila and littleneck, make this pasta with the clams in their shells. When using larger clams, cook them first, remove from their shells, and chop, returning them to the pot with the tasty clam liquor.