Cured Meat

(Salade de Lentilles Vertes aux Lardons) Smoked ham and bacon give this lentil salad a rich, robust flavor. Serve it alongside roasted meats or poultry.

Team this hearty side dish with a pork or chicken entrée, or just add some crusty bread and make a meal out of it.

Rich and sweet, these onions are adapted from Angela Shelf Medearis's recipe for Honey-Baked Onions in The African-American Kitchen. They're great with baked ham, pork roast, or broiled chicken.

Active time: 15 min Start to finish: 30 min

Active time: 40 min Start to finish: 40 min

Tender Iowa corn was the inspiration for these terrific biscuits. They are best eaten the day they are baked; extras can be warmed up the next morning for breakfast or brunch. Be sure to serve them with plenty of butter.

Although these are called fritters, they more closely resemble pancakes. Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

"On my last birthday, I enjoyed a special dinner at Brasserie Le Coze in Atlanta," says Diane Sullivan of Alpharetta, Georgia. "The entire meal was fabulous, but the white bean soup with truffle oil was absolutely divine." White truffle oil, should you happen to have a bottle of it, is a delicious "garnish" for this rich and hearty soup.

Slow-cooked garlic combines with bacon and mushrooms to give this first-course pizza a smoky, woodsy and oh-so-satisfying flavor. Serve a crisp green salad alongside.

Pine nuts provide a buttery contrast to the tart capers in this sophisticated veal dish.

Pitted prunes replace the more customary mushrooms in this delicious variation.

At the restaurant, the gnocchi are shaped in a time-honored manner that includes pressing each short dough piece against the tines of a fork. Home cooks may find it simpler to roll the dough along the wires of a whisk, as outlined here. Also, if you can't get ground chuck, buy a boneless chuck roast, and ask the butcher to grind it for you.

If you're from the South, you're probably used to collards cooked long and slow. What makes this simple, flavorful Brazilian dish unusual are greens that are finely sliced and barely cooked. Active time: 25 min Start to finish: 25 min

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Toasted coriander seeds and radishes give this salad — a twist on the classic frisée aux lardons — an appealing spiciness. In typical French fashion, the salad is served after the main course and before dessert. Accompany this with fougasse, a large Provençal flatbread, or other French bread.

This salad yields generous portions. Combined with a loaf of crusty bread, it’s easily a meal in itself.

Alice Marcus Solovy of Skokie, Illinois, writes: "Although I'm retired now, I like recipes that are fairly quick. Usually I'm just cooking for my husband and daughter, but occasionally we're joined by our eldest daughter and her family. When it comes to getting dinner ready, I have a system. While the main course is cooking, I'll prepare the potatoes and other side dishes. When guests come over, I'm not too fond of letting them help in the kitchen. I'm kind of a tyrant that way. I'd rather make dinner myself and have it all ready." To cut down on the cooking time, these potatoes are cooked in the microwave first, then stuffed and rewarmed in the oven.