Salad

In Malaysian cuisine, at least one pickled dish (acar) is offered with every meal — it provides a bold flavor contrast to the other dishes. Our recipe isn't traditional, but it serves the same purpose.

If you're making your vinaigrette with white-wine vinegar, use 1/2 teaspoon sugar (instead of 1/4 teaspoon) to balance the higher acidity.

Traditionally used to enclose a savory filling, wonton wrappers are cut and fried into crisp triangles here, lending crunchy texture to soft crabmeat.

Food Editor: Shelley Wiseman
Father: John Wiseman, Somerset, England
When my father and stepmother moved from Mexico to England, my father started to help with the cooking. The first thing he learned to make was this Caesar salad.

Vinaigrette is the French word for oil and vinegar dressing. At the restaurant they have an olive oil tasting every year to decide which kinds to buy, because each year's crop of olives tastes a little different. Olive oils come from Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Mexico, and California. The dark green "extra virgin" oils taste the most like olives. The cooks use extra virgin olive oil for salad dressing, not to cook with. The paler, yellow oils labled "pure olive oil" taste milder, and those get used for cooking.

This hot chicken casserole is perfectly seasoned. Lots of celery and almonds give it a nice crunch. You may be inclined to leave off the potato-chip topping, but believe me, it won't be the same without it!

In Venice, this salad would most likely be made with local crab from the lagoon.

Puntarelle are the inner hearts of cicoria catalogna, a kind of chicory — and one of the greatest treats of springtime in Rome. The hearts are trimmed out of the large heads and cut into thin shreds that curl up when immersed in ice water. Since puntarelle are not easy to find in this country, a mix of Belgian endive and celery serves as a wonderful substitute: Together, they have the same addictive bittersweet-crisp quality.

Shelling and skinning the raw peanuts for this recipe can be time-consuming. You might prefer to buy them at an Asian market, where you'll often find the work has been done for you. Some shelled peanuts (with skins) come already blanched. We found the best flavor came from those you shell and skin yourself.

This Sicilian-style salad is more heavily dressed than other green salads, so that there's extra oil and vinegar to soak up with bread.