Watercress Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette

Reliable cabbage is cooked in the punchy sauce and then combined with store-bought baked tofu and roasted cashews for a salad that can also be eaten with rice.

A bed of charred cabbage speckled with chopped giardiniera makes the perfect landing place of sweet Italian sausages and plenty of basil.

A punchy vinaigrette of preserved lemon and hot chile animates seared zucchini. A simple solution for summer's most prolific vegetable.

A Sicilian-inspired kale salad with creamy almond dressing, raisins, and pine nuts. Excellent for meal prep and packing as a desk lunch.

Oyster mushrooms are a strong all-rounder in the kitchen, seeming to straddle both plant and meat worlds in what they look and taste like when cooked. Here they’re coated in a marinade my mother used to use when cooking Chinese food at home—honey, soy, garlic and ginger—and roasted until golden, crisp, and juicy.

An accidental recipe (sbagliatio means mistaken in Italian) yields a delicious herby tahini dressing that is excellent poured over lightly blanched green beans.

This speedy Spanish dish of shrimp cooked in olive oil and garlic can be a main or appetizer. It all depends on how you dress it up.

Consider this dish—made with refried beans and crunchy vegetables—an affirmative answer to the question, “Can dip be dinner?”