Simple Cooking

Portland-based Salt & Straw adds a drop of vinegar and a hint of pepper to balance the sweetness in this strawberry shake, plus a splash of rum to make it deliciously complex in flavor. If you're making this for non-drinkers, just omit the booze.

Small, sweet wild Maine shrimp are sold frozen from brownetrading.com when not in season. You can also substitute other shrimp cut into 1/2" pieces. This recipe makes extra horseradish mayo. Put it out to spread on other sandwiches.

Use this orange-tinted sauce on sandwiches with salmon or cucumbers.

Create endless riffs on this salad by using the bright herb dressing with your favorite grains and vegetables.

Serve this chunky, all-purpose tomato sauce with fish, chicken, pasta, or disks of polenta (shown here).

Store-bought rotisserie chicken adds protein to this lively, aromatic dish; omit it for a satisfying vegetarian main course. If you can't find spelt, use semi-pearled farro or whole wheat berries.

Toasted seeds and nuts add bite to this nutrition-packed salad. We use dried sprouted legumes, which are even more healthful than ordinary beans and more convenient than sprouting your own. (Cooked lentils and mung beans work well, too.) A vibrant chive vinaigrette brings it all together.

Mixing visually striking black barley with raw and cooked vegetables creates lots of flavors and textures. Feel free to substitute the more readily available pearl barley instead.

Follow our step-by-step guide and you'll never look at supermarket tortillas the same way again.

Chicken thighs are more succulent than breasts and stand up to reheating without drying out.

Polish sausage gives the onions and chiles a rich, smoky flavor.

Stew fruit in parcels to infuse it with vanilla and bourbon, then serve it with a dollop of Greek yogurt (or ice cream).

Toasting the dried chiles first brings out their deep flavor.

This is a gem from my mother's notebook of Nonna Mary's recipes. I remember Nonna Mary serving these tomatoes along with assorted grilled meats during the summer in Cesenatico. They are also a perfect accompaniment to veal cutlets, and together they make a great sandwich, one of my favorite lunches that my mother would pack for me to take to school.

When I was growing up in New York, from third grade through high school, I was blessed with the opportunity to spend my summers in Italy. I would stay with my grandmother in Cesenatico, hang out at the beach with my friends, and eat the wonderful food my grandmother cooked. I have never become accustomed to the traditional American breakfast of eggs and fried pork products, or even cereal. Some fresh bread with butter and jam and caffèlatte is my preferred breakfast, with the proportion of coffee to milk increasing as I have gotten older, from just a drop in a large cup of milk when I was little, to mostly coffee with a splash of milk as an adult. But even better than bread and butter is a breakfast sweet such as my grandmother's ciambella. She always seemed to have some on hand. It's very easy to make and keeps wonderfully on the kitchen counter for as long as a week. It may well keep even longer, but I've never been able to resist eating it for long enough to find out. The classic shape of a ciambella is a ring; in fact, there is a saying for when something doesn't work out: non tutte le ciambelle riescono col buco, which means, "not all ciambelle come out with a hole." My grandmother always made hers in the shape of a loaf—it was no less delicious for it, and that is how I still prefer to make it.

Soft, creamy risotto topped with warm roasted vegetables makes a complete meal in a bowl. If you don't like the idea of standing at the stove and stirring risotto to a perfect consistency, this is the method for you. Thirty minutes in the oven and this risotto comes out cooked to perfection while you and your beloved wind down from your day. If you've made Roasted Winter Vegetables earlier in the week, you can reheat leftovers as a topping here. If not, roast a favorite combination {mine is winter squash, yellow onion, and tomato} in the oven with your risotto.

{for a small crowd} I grew up thinking strata was my mom's signature dish, until I realized every mother has her own version. You should know how to make it too, but {just between us}, yours can be much more elegant than your mother's, especially when you make it in a small dish to serve two and pair it with a large salad.