Pine Nut

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

The contrast of textures and flavors—crunchy pine nuts, creamy goat cheese, acidic tomatoes, and spicy arugula—adds complexity to this simple salad. It makes a great side dish to steak or chicken or a light lunch for two.

China is the original home of the peach (a favorite fruit of its emperors), and pine nuts are grown in China and are used to garnish sweet fruit soups. The ginger-spiced peach sauce for this dessert can be prepared one day before serving.

Here's a simple and versatile pesto: It can be stored in the refrigerator for up to two weeks, and a spoonful of it enhances everything from soup to chili. Add three cups of diced cooked chicken to the pasta to make a satisfying main course that serves four.

Slices of prosciutto spread with goat cheese and wrapped around asparagus tips make terrific cocktail party fare. The leftover asparagus stalks can be cut up and used in soup, or toss them with pasta, olive oil and Parmesan cheese.

This traditional, regional vegetable side dish is utterly simple and absolutely delicious. The addition of raisins and pine nuts is distinctively Catalan.

(MEZZELUNE AI PIGNOLI) Cookies made with pine nuts can be found in bakeries all over Umbria, which probably isn't too surprising for a region filled with pine trees. These crescents have a wonderful chewy texture. The dough is very soft, so you will need to flour your fingers to shape it. But don't inadvertently use too much flour, or the cookies will be tough.

This recipe can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

This dish is a particularly good accompaniment to beef or lamb. Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 45 min

"I run a salon, and I’m an instructor at a cooking school," writes Sandy Ercolano of Ridgewood, New Jersey. "It seems that I’m always in the kitchen. At home I cook meals and come up with recipes for my classes. Of course, my family eagerly tries anything I make." To turn this main-course salad into a side dish or vegetarian entrée, omit the shrimp.

For this recipe the lamb racks are frenched all the way down to the eye of the meat. For decorative purposes, we asked our butcher to leave a 1-inch-wide strip of fat along the top of the eye of the rack.

"This is a recipe inspired by a salad I had as part of a sumptuous feast at Adriatica, an exquisite restaurant atop Seattle's Queen Anne Hill," says Lise R. Bonin of Austin, Texas. "Both the view and the food made for a most memorable anniversary dinner for my husband and me several years ago."