Cheese

You've been doing it in the car when nobody's looking...but you don't have to hide anymore. It's time to come clean—and this finger-licking-good burger is so much more satisfying than those greasy drive-through hockey pucks. Plus grass-fed beef is leaner and lower in calories than conventional beef. It even contains a unique fat that may help prevent cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. Talk about an afternoon delight.

I live in New York, where Greek salads are a reliable diner staple. I love the combination of briny Kalamata olives and salty feta cheese mixed with crisp romaine lettuce and refreshing cucumbers. This somewhat deconstructed, twenty-first century version applies the "warm goat cheese salad" method to a Greek salad, coating fresh feta slices in egg wash and quinoa and then pan-frying. The result is incredibly delicious—and as good as it looks in the picture!

These dumplings have a light texture, thanks to the addition of fresh ricotta cheese. Drain the ricotta in a sieve for two hours before starting the recipe.

Years ago in Veracruz, I bought sweet corn from a guy in a bike cart. Mixed with mayonnaise, lime juice, ground chilies and queso fresco, it was one of the most exciting street foods I'd ever eaten.

When I put these ingredients in my rice cooker, I knew the flavors would complement each other, but I wondered what the dish would look like. It was lovely! The soft, melting goat cheese mingled with the asparagus and creamy eggs. The frittata makes a great light supper or lunch dish; serve it with a fruit salad.

This risotto is dotted with beautiful green spring vegetables and makes a lovely vegetarian lunch or dinner. Delicious with a roasted beet and arugula salad, it's simple to make. There is no arduous stirring; the rice cooker takes care of everything.

Sweetgreen partnered with Kendrick Lamar in order to create this limited-edition salad. Available at sweetgreen locations until May 31, 2015, 10% of proceeds will go to FoodCorps. After that? You can always make Beets Don't Kale My Vibe at home with the recipe below.

Both guanciale and Pecorino are quite salty; Leonardo Vignoli, the chef at Da Cesare al Casaletto, recommends undersalting the pasta water to give you more control.

The colorcoded salad is one of Babylonstoren's signature dishes and always features a mix of fruits and vegetables on the same plate. Engelbrecht says produce that looks good together tastes great together, too, and she's developed specific vinaigrettes to complement the red, yellow, and green options.

Babylonstoren's chef Maranda Engelbrecht uses exotic tamarillos. If you can get them, great. If not, tomatoes are your best swap.

At Rioja, half of the bacon is replaced with ground fatback, a step that makes this excellent burger even better.

Bubbling cheeses and tender spinach elevate store-bought gnocchi (look for it in the dried-pasta section).

Once a way to make use of stale tortillas (by toasting and/or frying them), tostadas are so good that it wasn't long before people simply started using fresh tortillas. After biting into these layers of flavor—crunchy, creamy, luscious—you'll see why.

This entire dish is right out of Rose and Ruthie's River Café playbook, with just a few tweaks of my own. They taught me how to make fonduta, a silky sauce rich with crème fraîche and egg yolks. It takes less time and just a bit more effort than tomato sauce, and turns a plate of pasta into an elegant and impressive meal. Get yourself some asparagus spears that are as thick as your pointer finger—not those thin or sprouty ones—and you'll enjoy the juicy slivers in each bite.

Here, the building blocks of Scottish cranachan are brought together in a different guise, layered into an alternately crisp, creamy, and fruity cheesecake. It's not as rustically simple as the dessert that inspired it, but it does, I think, stay true to cranachan's ingredient-centric ethos, with honey, raspberries, whiskey, and oats in perfect balance.