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Soy-free: Recipe doesn’t include tofu, tempeh, soy milk, soy sauce, edamame, or any other soy-derived product. Always check labels on items like vegetable broth to make sure.

minutes or under: For when you need dinner on the table pronto. Of course not everyone cooks at the same pace, but if you know where all your spices are and aren’t distracted by crying babies or Dancing with the Stars, you should be able to complete these recipes in 30 minutes or less. If you’re a little bit slower than that, remember practice makes perfect!

Downtime: These are some of my favorite weeknight recipes, even more so than the faster recipes; prep is generally easier. Downtime simply means that you have 20 minutes or more where you don’t have to do a thing, and dinner is either peacefully simmering away on the stove or baking away in the oven.

One more thing! About cooking spray: I call for non-stick cooking spray in many of the recipes. Of course that “0” calorie info on the label is a big lie. In cases where the spray is absolutely required, I worked an extra teaspoon of oil into the nutritional info. According to one brand’s web-site, there is 1 gram of fat and 7 calories in a one second spray. So if you’re using a careful hand and not spraying like a graffiti artist, then don’t worry about it.

CHAPTER 1

Full-On Salads

THERE WAS A TIME—A LONELY, LONELY TIME—WHEN SALADS were a pale and limp affair, relegated to the side of your plate, practically weeping. I think those dark days were also known as the ’80s. Then all of sudden, salads came alive. Rich dressings, sumptuous vinegars, toasted nuts, roasted veggies, beans, grains, berries... the line between salad and entrée was blurred. The walls came down, the arugula came up.

Salads are only as good as their ingredients, so choose the freshest, brightest vegetables you can. That may sound like obvious advice, but just take it as a reminder not to just rush through the produce aisle, grabbing lettuces and tomatoes devil-may-care. Instead, stroll around, touch the produce, smell it, make sure it’s the most vivid color it can be. After a while you’ll notice that the lettuce bin has become your domain and people are asking you questions like, “Is this arugula or spinach?” Roll your eyes and tell them to read the label. Your good deed is done for the day.

But for real, salads can be real meals if you treat them as such. Not “real meals” like how supermodels consider cigarettes and lemon water a real meal, but truly satisfying real meals, the kind that make you lick your plate and dream about leftovers.

The salads in this chapter are mere suggestions for flavors and textures that I think pair well. I’ve listed the dressings as individual recipes, as a reminder that you can play around and create your own salads out of components in this book, or out of the ingredients you already know and love. And of course you can just pour the dressings over some greens and enjoy (just because salads can be entrées doesn’t mean they always have to be). Sometimes it’s nice to time travel back to those days when haircuts were asymmetrical, Axl ruled the airwaves, and a salad was just a salad.

Anatomy of a Salad (or, the Salad Dissected)

DRESSING UP AND DRESSING DOWN

For many of us, the dressing is our downfall. It’s become a cliché that a typical American salad can have more fat and calories than a burger and fries. And sadly, low-fat salad dressings are often chock-full of chemicals and sugar, and boy, does it ever show. I’ve had upward of ten bottles of low-fat dressing languishing in my refrigerator door, barely used, unwanted, unloved. So I finally gave up even trying and now my dressings are exclusively homemade. Does it take a little extra time? Yes, but usually no more than ten minutes. Is it worth it? Oh, heck yes.

I take a few approaches to salad dressings to get the most out of the ingredients without adding lots of oil. Pureed nuts—especially raw cashews—are my