American

This stunning sweet from Spago Beverly Hills can be assembled ahead of time, then baked at the last minute. Note that the dessert needs to be frozen at various points, so plan accordingly. When preparing the meringue disks, use a six-ounce tuna fish can as a template.

Thin and delicate, these chocolate chip cookies are spiced with ginger.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Try tucking this simple make-ahead salad into pita bread halves and adding some ruffly-edged lettuce for color.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

The reader who requested a recipe for buttermilk sherbet the way his mother used to make it was moved by more than nostalgia. This preparation is so light and so refreshing that it deserves a new vogue in the nineties.

"Benne" is the Carolina Low Country word for sesame seeds, which came to the United States from Africa. This biscuit dough is made a day or so ahead, then formed right before baking. Angel biscuits, so called because of their tender, light texture, will not keep well at room temperature once baked

At Thanksgiving, rice stuffings are standard on many southern tables. This one, a combination of white rice and wild rice, gets more regional notes from collard greens, pecans and ham.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

The chef's salad is a familiar yet fading star in the salad world. In delicatessens, diners, and airport snack bars everywhere, we find its faithful components: lifeless leaves of iceberg lettuce, suspiciously blue-hued slices of hard-boiled egg, wedges of pallid tomato, and rubbery chunks of cheese, ham, and turkey. To top it all off (or perhaps sitting alongside): gloppy, high-calorie dressing. But this still-beloved salad may have had a noble beginning. Though nobody has ever stepped forward to claim the title of the chef in "chef's salad," the dish has been attributed by some food historians to Louis Diat, chef of The Ritz-Carlton in New York City in the early 1940s. He paired watercress with halved hard-boiled eggs and julienne strips of smoked tongue, ham, and chicken. (The concept of the chef’s salad dates still earlier; one seventeenth-century English recipe for a "grand sallet" calls for lettuce, roast meat, and a slew of vegetables and fruits.) No matter how the salad has evolved, its underlying virtue remains unchanged. This is a no-cook meal that satisfies our cravings for greens and protein. And, in these dog days of summer-when cooking is sometimes the last thing we'd like to do-a main-course salad is especially appealing. In our updated take on the classic recipe, we used a selection of lettuces (early chef's salads were not always made with iceberg alone), and, in a twist on the norm, small but flavorful amounts of sugar-cured ham and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Feel free to improvise with ingredients depending on what looks good at your farmers market. Summer savory or dill can flavor the dressing in place of the mixed herbs, and many kinds of ham and cheese will work well.