Weeknight Meals

When shopping for this salad at the market, pick heavy, aromatic cantaloupes with stem ends that yield slightly when pressed.

This twist on the traditional Italian peperonata omits the tomatoes, but the bell peppers are hearty and colorful enough on their own. Serve as a side dish or pour over steak.

Oh, the inherent stress in choosing the perfect avocado. The “ready to eat” ones can go from ripe to rotten quickly, so buy uniformly firm Hass avocados instead. Let them sit at room temperature until they have a slight give, usually a day or two (plan ahead!). This goes great with quesadillas, grilled snapper, and pork.

You can substitute any crisp vegetables and small pieces of protein, just make sure not to overstuff or the wrappers will split.

Make sure to cut the onions and peppers into big pieces so that they don’t fall through the grill grates.

If you’re using a charcoal grill, you’ll want to actively monitor the heat in different spots and shift the pan this way and that as needed.

A perfect cube is not essential, but try to get the lamb into roughly the same size pieces so they cook at the same rate.

How to choose corn: Look for tight, squeaky, green husks and rows of kernels that feel taut and full when you run your hands over the cobs.

Not to break your heart or anything, but good luck finding Toma, a cow’s-milk cheese. We didn’t just go rogue: Chef Cámara okayed the cheddar substitute.

Be patient with these; they need to stay over indirect heat the whole time to minimize flare-ups. If you try to rush them, they’ll burn to a crisp.

A crunchy, salty salad that proves (once again!) that it’s worth having a mandoline slicer.

We’re just obsessed with using asparagus as a condiment! Try sprinkling this crunchy mix over eggs or tossing it into pasta.

Translation: Garlic shrimp. Which explains why there’s a clove of garlic for every shrimp in this saucy dish.

De Laurentiis uses Peroni, an Italian beer, for this 20-minute dish, but any light-bodied lager will work and make a perfect drink pairing as well.

The pungent garlic notes in ramps make them the perfect accompaniment for any pasta dish.

"Curry" rhymes with "hurry" for a reason. A few shortcut ingredients yield a gently spiced, deep-flavored sauce that’s ready in under an hour.

When things in the crisper drawer aren’t looking so crisp anymore, make this soup.

This fresh take on tabbouleh eliminates the bulgur entirely and uses the golden seeds of millet instead, which give a nutty, cornlike taste to the salad. (Here's how to master millet). But it's really all about the green herbs: Feel free to add too many!

These fast-cooking legumes, high in protein and fiber, pair delightfully with our healthy sockeye salmon.

The secret to juicy, tender, delicately steamed white-meat chicken and squash? Going slow.

A doubly crunchy topping marks a breakthrough moment for creamy roasted fennel.

Like all good leafy greens, the giant pile of escarole leaves will wilt down dramatically as they cook.

Thick slab bacon is key to this dish. Buy it packaged if you can find it or from the butcher.

Make sure the vodka cooks for a full minute or two to evaporate all the booziness.