Pea

Navain d'Agneau Active time: 1 hr Start to finish: 2 hr

Active time: 25 min Start to finish: 1 hr

This recipe was inspired by a dish that a group of our food editors enjoyed at Chez Maître Paul, a Paris bistro. As the name suggests, poulet à la fermière contains a farmwife's bounty—chicken, cheese, vegetables, and herbs.

The simplest of preparations and a sprinkling of fleur de sel — a delicate sea salt — are the only enhancements these naturally crisp sweet peas need. Fleur de sel is sold at cookware stores, specialty foods stores, and some supermarkets.

Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 40 min

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Umeboshi, or pickled plums, are not technically plums at all, but apricots. They are mixed with rice to make a popular summer dish in Japan. We've enlivened this salad with pickled ginger and sugar snap peas.

Active time: 25 min Start to finish: 30 min Peas, noodles, beef—everything you need for dinner in one dish.

Active time: 2 hr Start to finish: 3 1/2 hr (includes making stock)

For a thicker, more traditional soup, replace all the green peas with a half cup of drained canned white beans.

A satisfying all-in-one main course. The fatty acids in salmon make this recipe particularly healthful.

This low-fat rendition of the classic dish comes from Gil Martínez Soto of Restaurante Virrey de Palafox in El Burgo de Osma, Spain.

Serve this main-course salad with some crusty bread, and offer fresh fruit for dessert. To prepare the dish, use leftovers from the Roast Pork Loin with Garlic and Rosemary , or broil two 4-ounce boneless pork loin chops until cooked through and then dice. Note that nutritional numbers are for either cut of pork.

Gaze at rings on your left hand. Remember how, when you were single in New York and men made rude remarks to you on the street, you'd dream about the day your boyfriend would put an engagement ring on your finger. Those trips with your friend, Megan, to Tiffany's—how the diamonds sparkled under glass. And so, my friend, it comes to this: Orientalish pasta salad for the kabillionth time.

Shullie Neumark of Rancho Palos Verdes, California, writes: "I like cooking but I'm a little bit impatient, which is why I make dishes that can be done ahead of time — and quickly. I hate being rushed before meals, especially when guests are on their way over. Those guests are usually good friends or members of our large family. My husband and I emigrated from South Africa seven years ago. I am retired from preschool teaching, but I still keep busy by cooking for the family. A typical South African dinner is a barbecue with lots of grilled lamb chops and sausages."

Both easy and inexpensive, tuna-noodle casserole stretched proteins and carbohydrates to the limits and fed at least a generation of American kids very well. Canned tuna will never go away, but fresh tuna has joined it as a culinary staple, and it stars in this deconstructed version of the classic. All the elements that make tuna casserole so appealing and comforting are here, just slightly rearranged. And there’s no need to serve this on a cafeteria tray: It’s good enough for your best china.