Nut

In place of apples, you can use pears here or a mixture. In fact, this is a universal crisp recipe and will work with just about any fruit. Almost needless to say, it’s great with vanilla ice cream.

You can buy sun-dried tomatoes already reconstituted and soaked in olive oil, but they’re expensive. It’s certainly easy enough—and only slightly less convenient if you think ahead—to begin with dried tomatoes. They’re almost as tough as shoe leather when you buy them but can easily be reconstituted: Soak them in hot water to cover until they’re soft, about an hour. (You might change the water once it cools to hasten the softening.) Drain the tomatoes and marinate them in a good fruity olive oil to cover (a half cup or more) for at least an hour. After that, making the tomato paste takes just a moment. Traditionally, the tomatoes are pounded, usually with garlic, in a mortar and pestle. I use a small food processor and like the resulting texture very much.

Chestnuts and dried mushrooms have a wonderful affinity for each other. Their unusual flavors and textures seem distantly related; they are both meaty and complex, chewy but neither tough nor crunchy. With shallots and plenty of black pepper for bite, the combination makes a great pasta sauce. And though chestnuts are a pain in the neck (the fingers, actually) to peel, the good news is that their complex, fragrant flavor is so powerfully distinctive that just a few can have an enormous impact on a dish. So although it may take thirty seconds to a minute to process a single chestnut, if you need only a dozen or so for a dish, the work amounts to about ten minutes. And in a creation like this one, the time is well worth the effort.

Pesto has become a staple, especially in late summer when basil is best. But pasta with pesto does have its limits; it’s simply not substantial enough to serve as a main course. The Genoese, originators of pesto, figured this out centuries ago, when they created this dish, which augments the pesto with chunks of potatoes and chopped green beans, making it a more complex, more filling, and more interesting dish. Recreating this classic dish is straightforward and easy. Note that if you start the potatoes and pasta simultaneously, then add the green beans about halfway through cooking, they will all be finished at the same time and can be drained and tossed with the sauce in a snap. This technique may sound imprecise, but it works.

You might think of this as winter pesto, with a higher percentage of walnuts and the always-available parsley filling in for summer’s basil—though if you can find good basil, by all means use it.

Given that tofu itself does not add much body to a dish, you need a substantial sauce, like one with canned coconut milk as its base, to make up for the tofu’s blandness. Like heavy cream, coconut milk will thicken a sauce, making it luxurious in almost no time. The onion must be browned carefully and thoroughly: keep the heat high enough so that this happens in a timely fashion—it should take about ten minutes and in no case more than fifteen—but not so high that the onion burns. I call this level of heat “medium-high,” but all stoves are different; the oil should be bubbling but not smoking, and you must stir the onion every minute or so.

Stir-frying—the fastest cooking method there is—can change your life. You can use it for almost anything, and it can be so fast that the first thing you need to do is start a batch of white rice. In the fifteen or twenty minutes it takes for that to cook, you can not only prepare the stir-fry but set the table and have a drink. For many stir-fries made at home, it’s necessary to parboil—essentially precook—“hard” vegetables like broccoli or asparagus. So in this fastest possible stir-fry, I use red bell peppers, onions, or both; they need no parboiling and become tender and sweet in three or four minutes. If you cut the meat into small cubes or thin slices, the cooking time is even shorter. I include nuts here for three reasons: I love their flavor, their chunkiness adds great texture (I don’t chop them at all), and the preparation time is zero.

If you can find the rare (and shockingly expensive) true bay scallops from Nantucket or Long Island, by all means use them in this dish, but reduce the cooking time. Do not, however, try this dish with the tiny calico scallops (sometimes mislabeled as bays), which, despite your best efforts, will overcook before they brown.

As far a cry from iceberg lettuce and bottled dressing as you can imagine, this is a magical combination of powerful flavors made without cooking or any major challenges. Simple as this salad is, without top-quality ingredients it won’t amount to much. So use sherry or good balsamic vinegar to make the dressing, use pears that are tender and very juicy, not crunchy, mushy, or dry, and use real Italian Gorgonzola. It should be creamy; if you can taste it before buying, so much the better. This rich salad can serve as the centerpiece of a light lunch, accompanied by little more than bread. It makes an equally great starter for a grand dinner—followed by roasted meat or fish, for example—or a simple one, served with soup.

Chestnuts have a subtle but distinctive flavor; another, less-well-known attribute is their ability to lend a rich, creamy texture to anything in which they’re pureed—making cream completely superfluous. This soup is a perfect example, and if you can find frozen, peeled chestnuts, it’s the work of a moment. But even if you cannot, the chestnut-peeling process takes about twenty minutes start to finish, and much of that time is unattended; you can use it to chop and cook the vegetables. In a way, starting from scratch with whole chestnuts is preferable, because they gain a bit of flavor as you toast them lightly to remove the skins.

We love to laze about in our pj's over a big breakfast, but we love it even more if our jeans still zip when we get dressed. That's why we're wild about these yummy yet healthy cakes, created by SELF contributing experts stephanie Clarke, R.D., and Willow Jarosh, R.D. These beauts pack whole grains for energy, plus fruit for extra tang. Pass the maple syrup! —Lindsey Palmer

A classic stir-fried noodle dish, just about the paradigm. You can make this with pork, chicken, shrimp, or any other bit of meat or fish you have or keep it entirely vegetarian; it’s eminently flexible and an important part of every home cook’s repertoire. The variation that follows is a traditional dish for New Year’s celebrations and wedding banquets. E-fu noodles, which are long, thin, flat egg noodles, symbolize long life. Most Asian groceries carry them, but if you cannot find them, regular egg noodles are fine too. The meat will be easier to slice thinly if you freeze it for 30 to 60 minutes first. (This is always the case with any boneless meat or poultry.)

An ancient and delicious dairy substitute, useful in baking but also good as a straight cold drink.

A basic stir-fry and—like every other—one that you can vary however you like. Cashew nuts or peanuts are also great here. Start with Spicy Cold Celery (page 17) and serve this with rice.

You can find this dish at almost any Chinese restaurant, but it is easy to make at home—and usually better, too. Some people deep-fry the chicken first, but stir-frying is much quicker and less complicated, and the results are still great. Serve with plain rice.

Like Ginger Chicken (preceding recipe), a Thai-style stir-fry that is super fast and very flavorful. If you use a mild, fragrant curry powder, like the one on page 593, this will appeal to many kids; it’s more sweet than spicy. Serve with jasmine or other white rice. Thai fish sauce (nam pla) is discussed on page 500.

This dish incorporates many of the distinctive elements of Spanish cuisine: almonds, garlic, saffron, and sherry. The addition of hard-cooked eggs to poultry dishes, traditional and still popular, is called pepitoria. Serve with Yellow Rice (page 518) or any other rice or potato dish and whatever vegetable you like.

An ancient dish that is made almost everywhere nuts and grapes are grown. Serve with rice or bread.

A classic Sicilian preparation, with exotic, contrasting flavors. Domesticated rabbit is sold in many supermarkets these days, but since it really does taste like chicken, you can use that if you prefer. Either way, start the meal with a simple pasta dish or serve this with bread and a cooked vegetable.

When you open the lid of a pot containing good biryani—the Indian equivalent of arroz con pollo or paella—the smell should drive you wild: chicken (or lamb), butter, and spices should dominate, followed by the subtle aroma of basmati rice. When it’s prepared correctly, it seems to me, you can even smell the salt. This is one of India’s—indeed the world’s—great dishes, and yet too often in restaurants it is underwhelming, underspiced, and made without care. The spice mixture makes the dish exotic, but though it must be made carefully it isn’t difficult. (The chicken isn’t browned, which actually makes it easier than many similar preparations.) One key is to use real butter (in sufficient quantity; I’m sure the ultimate biryani has more butter than this version) and good spices: cardamom in the pod, whole cloves, cinnamon stick, and real saffron. Good coarse salt doesn’t hurt either and, needless to say, the better the chicken, the happier you’ll be when you bite into it. It’s also important to leave the lid on as much as possible. I’m not one of these people who believes that rice must be cooked undisturbed (on the contrary, I think it stands up to all kinds of abuse), but in this instance you want to make sure the chicken cooks fairly quickly and that as much of the aroma as possible remains in the pot. The goal, remember, is to smell everything. Serve with Dal (page 433) or any Indian-style vegetable.