Pea

This pleasant pasta salad is even tastier the second day. Enjoy it as an entrée for six or a side dish for twelve.

As an accompaniment for anything from roasted turkey at a holiday feast to grilled burgers on the patio, this side dish is hard to beat.

With its sweet and sour crunch, this salad is sure to be a winner at your table.

This light, garden-fresh soup is double-quick to fix. Just bring it to a boil, remove it from the heat, and let it stand for a few minutes!

As with other nuts, you may find a variety of pine nuts available in your local grocery store. Toasted, salted, dry-roasted, raw, and even seasoned varieties are available in markets today. Be sure to look for pine nuts that are raw or dry-roasted, which means they’ve been roasted without any added oils or fats. Though I normally prefer dry-roasted, here they’ll toast in the pan, which will give the dish great flavor. To trim peas, just break off the stem end and strip the string away from the edge. It’s a great project for the kids.

Snow peas with tomatoes—it may seem an odd combination at first, but everyone in my office was really excited about this dish. Between the crisp peas and juicy tomatoes, it has a great texture and flavor, and it’s definitely different from the traditional veggie sides we’re used to.

Gina: Ladies! The things we go through to please our men! You should be fully aware that Aunt Faye is Pat’s favorite aunt, so you know I had to get this recipe down right. Pat: My dear and favorite aunt, Faye, is my late father’s oldest sister. She lives in Chicago, and for a while, when we were children, we lived there, too. During those years, Aunt Faye would cook us chicken and dumplings. Needless to say, it became one of my favorite dishes (and the fact that my favorite aunt was preparing it made it all the better!).

Gina: Few dishes are as soothing or as comforting as this creamy stew of poached chicken and tender egg noodles. As kids, when any of us were feeling low, we could always count on my mom (these days she’s known as Grandma Jean) to have a pot of this soup on the stove. It seemed to me that anytime I had a bowl of it I was instantly cured. I’m not sure if it was the combination of ingredients, or the love my mother put in every pot, but I know that now, when I make it for my family, they feel the same way. Grandma Jean would simmer a whole chicken for hours (Grandma Jean took her time with everything). We, however, who always seem to be pressed for time, have thankfully found a way to create similar flavors with a shortcut (don’t tell Grandma!). We poach sliced chicken breasts to juicy perfection in the stock, and then add green peas and lemon juice for a final layer of fresh flavors and color. This one comes with our Neely guarantee: One bowl of this stew and you are on your way to recovery. Thanks, Mom!

The “riga” in “rigatoni” means “stripe.” It is those stripes and rigatoni’s wide, hollow shape that make them perfect for a chunky sauce like this one. You can make the sauce a day or so in advance; just don’t add the ricotta and grated cheese until the last minute.

Stir-fry is a perfect work-night dish. You cook every ingredient from start to finish in the same pan and make the sauce in the pan as well. This all happens in a matter of minutes, when you have all of your ingredients prepared ahead of time, because you are working with high heat. There aren’t many home stoves that have the BTUs of a real wok in a Chinese kitchen, so use a heavy-bottomed skillet like cast iron or a stainless steel pan with a clad bottom, and get it very hot before you start. Gather your ingredients and wait until the pan is almost smoking before you begin cooking. High heat = high flavor and less need for fat. It’s the original nonstick cooking technique.

This was originally a rich chicken dish made with lots of cream and sherry, peas, and pimientos, and served on hot buttered toast points or in pastry shells. There are as many stories about its origin as there are versions of the recipe. It likely made its debut at the Brighton Beach Hotel in New York at the turn of the 19th century, created by the chef in honor of the owner, Mr. E. Clark King II. I went with a green-pepper version and added celery seeds to the sauce because that’s how I like my à la king. If you can’t live without the pimientos, feel free to add them—they will have virtually no impact on the fat and calorie content.

I remember the first time I had “Chinese” chicken salad. It was at a trendy West Hollywood spot on Sunset Boulevard, and it could have been/should have been a lot better than it was. Fried noodles only do not a Chinese chicken salad make. In this recipe, textured vegetable protein, or TVP, replaces the noodles for crunch and bite. TVP is made from defatted soy flour, a by-product of making soybean oil. It’s high in protein and low in fat. TVP flakes are available in the health-food aisle of most major supermarkets.

A hollowed-out mushroom cap makes an ideal little edible bowl, perfect for filling with cream cheese and bacon, creamed spinach and ham, Italian sausage and cheese, or crabmeat. These—made with fresh crab, a little bit of low-fat mayo, and real bacon—are a real caloric bargain. A single serving (4 large mushrooms) nets you only 4 grams of fat and just under 120 calories.

This one is for Howard Stern. Howard loves the ground turkey. Here ya go, baby!