Hali Bey Ramdene

Quick meals to the rescue.

Sauces are the magic touch that makes vegetables more satisfying, and grains even more exciting. Here are 16 easy sauces to learn, memorize, and enjoy.

The minimalist dessert gets a maximalist upgrade.

Baguette layered with thinly sliced ham, Gruyère cheese, and cornichons — très délicieux!

I’m in the habit of picking up a can of tomatoes every time I head to the grocery store, but I hardly amass more than two or three cans. Inevitably, I’ll come across a recipe that calls for canned tomatoes and, lucky for me, all I have to do is stroll to the pantry and pull them out.

Chicken biryani is a dish for celebration. If you need to feed a crowd or host a dinner party, choose this biryani which will excite your guests with the aromas of the dish made in a slow cooker. The biryani is made with par-cooked rice and marinated chicken before they go into the slow cooker. The traditional method for cooking biryanis includes covering a large brazier with dough to trap the heat. In this recipe, the slow cooker is sealed with foil to produce a similar steamed effect.

Tangy, buttery perfection.

How often do you order a salad or soup solely based on the promise of delicious croutons? I’ll be the first to admit I do. But as such, I have high expectation for these golden morsels. I want crunch, flavor, and intrigue. Yep, intrigue. Which is exactly how these 10-minute pizza-flavored croutons came to be. Stovetop croutons are, in my opinion, the very best way to make croutons.

Scene-stealing sides are part of the tradition of the great steak dinner. So when you're making steak for dinner at home, take note and follow suit.

From tequila-doused fajitas to elote rice, author and blogger Vianney Rodriguez shows you how to make all your Tex-Mex favorites in the slow cooker.

Q: New mom here. I am looking for recipes that I can stop and start throughout in case the baby wakes. For example, making anything that requires more than five minutes or so of continuous hands-on time will not work. My oven has a timer that will shut the oven off after a specified amount of time, so that is helpful in case I get stuck in a feeding. Sent by Andrea Editor: Hands down your best option is going to be the slow cooker.

Sometimes I shy away from ordering salads at restaurants because I fear they won’t be flavorful enough — I just can’t handle the possibility of that kind of disappointment — but when something sounds colorful and crunchy, and includes peanut butter, I’m far more inclined to leap. If that sounds like you, or if you’re a lover of a good peanut butter dressing draped over a bowl of broccoli slaw and crispy baked tofu, then this salad is for you.

Q: I love the new wedding section of Apartment Therapy; it has great articles I have come to trust and send to those involved in my own wedding this fall. One question still lingers: What are some fun gluten-free dessert options for a wedding? Sent by Liz I have several family members with severe autoimmune diseases that make any consumption of gluten a disaster. I want a traditional wedding cake for myself (playing the bride card), but what are ideas for others?

High up on the list of dishes that impress in both presentation and flavor yet require very little effort is panzanella. This bread salad — fashioned from day-old bread, along with a slew of ingredients including tomatoes, herbs, and dressing — is a summer meal that can be stretched to feed many. All of these reasons make it food for a gathering — especially a casual one on the porch, where friends drop by for a bite to eat and a glass or two of wine.

I often forget how easy it can be to make fish a weeknight option. For some reason it carries an air of fuss, but when you’re in the kitchen with it, the ease of preparing it almost smacks you in the face. This recipe delivers on ease and flavor, serving up golden-brown fillets of cod with a buttery, briney pan sauce. For the crispiest, golden-brown fish, make sure the fillets (whether you begin with fresh or frozen-then-thawed) are extremely dry.

When it comes to holiday drinking, eggnog is only the beginning. Many cultures and cuisines proudly claim a Christmas punch and this week we’re bringing you The Global Punch Bowl with five festive punches, each with a story of their own. It takes time to realize the importance of some traditions and flavors in your life. That’s how I feel about sorrel punch, the drink my dad always insisted we make at Christmas, even though we very rarely got around to it.

My favorite way to eat fruit and cheese with a bit of buttery, flaky pastry on the side.

Perhaps the most time-intensive element of this recipe is waiting for the tofu to dry out. That’s when you do the rest of the prep — making the sauce and cutting the veggies — so by the time you pop everything into the oven to cook, the 10 minutes or so it takes goes by in a flash. Would you expect anything less from a recipe from Damn Delicious?

I feel like there are people who like all the food on their plate to touch and people who like the different dishes to maintain their own space into carefully managed sections of the plate. I am firmly in the first camp and unsurprisingly a great fan of food in bowls for this very reason.

Imagine a recipe that combines the two things we love about cold-weather cooking: the toasty, caramelized notes of roasted vegetables and a steaming vegetable broth.

Almost any cooking technique you apply to salmon shows off its impressive versatility. After all, this rich and fatty fish is called “the king of fish” for a reason. Poaching takes advantage of salmon’s high fat content, slow transforming the flesh into a seasoned, buttery-tasting dish you can actually make on a weeknight in under an hour with 10 ingredients or less — and that’s including the salt and pepper!

Perhaps after the egg, the best food to exhibit the true triumph of sous-vide cooking is salmon. The already-tender fish is rendered nearly translucent when cooked in the low, steady heat of a water bath. But how many of us actually have the equipment on hand to make this for a weeknight dinner? Thanks to this technique from Diane Morgan, it’s probably more of us than you think. Do you have an oven, a thermometer, and a Dutch oven or roasting rack? Then you can make sous-vide salmon.

Salmon’s second life can take many shapes — croquettes, patties, a salad Niçoise, you name it — but any extra that shows up in my house is now going the way of this herby potato and salmon hash. While this dish lends itself to good eating any time of the day, I’m going to have to agree with Diane on it being an excellent choice for breakfast.

Just short of eating a fruit by hand, a summer cobbler is on the short list of stunningly simple desserts. In this rendition, blueberries are cooked with both lemon and orange zest, and lightly spiced with nutmeg before being topped with fluffy whole-wheat biscuits. While this cobbler (or any cobbler, really) is a delicious after-dinner treat, something about the combination of whole-wheat biscuits and blueberries makes this feel distinctly appropriate for breakfast.

Next time you’re at the grocery store or farmers market and spot some super-ripe tomatoes, snatch them up quickly for this vinaigrette. You need half a pound of those juicy gems to make this dressing. My favorite part is squeezing them over a strainer — you end up with a pool of the finest, freshest tomato juice.