Salad

"Our family vacations in Albany, New York, wouldn’t be the same without one dinner at Nicole’s Italia in nearby Guilderland," says Stephanie Clauson, Wayne, New Jersey. "I’d love to get the recipe for the spinach salad.'

"I usually make way too much barbecued chicken and devised the following recipe for leftovers," says Louise A. Peterson of Brooklyn, New York. We tested this recipe with barbecued chicken and also with plain grilled chicken and found both to be delicious. You might even just buy a rotisserie chicken.

Active time: 1 3/4 hr Start to finish: 5 hr

Drizzling sweet pickle juice over the warm potatoes is the secret to this delicious salad.

Familiar sides meet in a fresh, colorful salad.

"While driving along the California coast, we stopped at River's End, in Jenner," say Susan and Malcolm Duncan of Waco, Texas. "The fennel slaw was addictive, and we're not even fennel people. Do you think you could get the recipe?"

Use packaged prewashed mixed baby greens to make this salad in practically no time. A chilled Sauvignon Blanc pairs well with the dish's fresh, bright flavors.

Fine-grain bulgur, sometimes labeled "good for tabbouleh," is essential to this recipe, because coarsely ground bulgur will not soften when soaked in boiling water. A late-season tomato salad or sautéed cherry tomatoes with Indian flavors complete this meal.

Veracruz-style mixed seafood is the centerpiece of a festive meal that's rounded out with rice and vegetables. To present it as pictured, mound the seafood salad over the Mexican Rice and surround with the Tricolor Vegetable Sauté . A piquant dressing is drizzled over the seafood and mixed into the rice.

Inspired by the classic Sicilian winter salad of blood oranges and fennel.

Root vegetables have always been popular in Scandinavia because they store well during the long winter months and are therefore available year-round.

This salad is wonderfully refreshing even without purslane, but if you can find the green at your produce market, it's worth using for the nice crunch it adds. Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 30 min

This is great warm or at room temperature.

We use this dressing with our Onion-Crusted Fried Chicken Salad, but it's great, too, as a dip with pieces of fried chicken, vegetables, or best of all, with fried frogs' legs. It's a real thick dressing that gets even thicker when chilled.

Buy cooked fresh lobster meat and you can whip this salad together in about 30 minutes. Cooking your own lobster, however, not only ensures the freshest flavor and the tenderest meat, but you get more bang for the buck—you can use the lobster shells to make stock and lobster oil.