Fruit

A side dish so good you’ll make it again and again. When the main dish is creamy and rich, these beans provide lightness and balance.

Warm and aromatic—like bouillabaisse without all the fuss. Mussels are best eaten right away, so call everyone to the table when you put the mussels into the pot.

This is one of the fastest yet most delectable fish preparations. Flounder is a delicate fish, so you need to use care (a wide spatula helps) when turning it to cook on the second side.

For a richer dressing, add half a cup of coconut milk and a couple of tablespoons of peanut butter to the dressing.

This elegant herbed couscous is a lemon lover’s delight. We like it best made with all of the herbs. The flavor develops beautifully overnight in the refrigerator.

This is a sweet fried rice with a pleasing bite of ginger. Before you begin to stir-fry, cook rice if you don’t have any left over, and have everything prepped and close at hand.

This delightfully tangy tofu pairs especially well with Greek or Italian dishes.

In Comfort Me with Apples, Ruth Reichl attributes the original recipe to Danny Kaye, but lemon and cream seems such a simple, natural combination that we suppose people were putting it on pasta long before Danny Kaye was born.

The classic combination of chocolate cake, cherries, and cream found in the traditional Black Forest cake was our inspiration for this cream’wich. In the summertime, fresh cherries can be used in lieu of dried. As is true of all of our ice cream sandwiches, we advise that you make them at least a short while in advance of when you want to serve them. Otherwise, the ice cream tends to squeeze out the sides.

We used pears in this ice cream’wich, but many other fruits would work well, too, such as apples, figs, or peaches. Because the fruit is poached, it won’t harden in the same way that raw fruit does when it is frozen. And not to worry if you do not like rum: you can simply leave it out of the ice cream recipe, yielding a simple and tasty vanilla ice cream.

Here, the brittle adds the excitement to the ice cream sandwich by providing the crunch. But don’t add the brittle too far in advance, as it will begin to dissolve into the ice cream. If pecans are not your favorite, you can substitute a nut that’s more to your liking.

Lamb is an underappreciated and underutilized meat. It’s better for you than other red meats; it’s generally raised under healthier, more humane, and more sustainable conditions; it’s fragrant, lean, and tender; and it has that slightly funky quality that makes it interesting to work with. Here, we’ve rubbed it with chopped lemon confit and olives. While the recipe calls for oven-roasting, roasting it slowly on the grill would work beautifully, too. In keeping with the great tradition of day-after-holiday leftovers and sandwich making, we think Easter Monday is when you’ll want to be eating this one.