Vinaigrette

Simple but elegant, that's the recipe: 1 part vinegar, 3 or 4 parts oil, salt, pepper, a dash of mustard perhaps, and you and your salad are in business. Add some garlic, a minced shallot or two, a handful of fragrant herbs, and just about any basic food - vegetable or meat - will be deliciously dressed. A garlicky vinaigrette with a dash of walnut oil transforms leftover steamed broccoli into a first-class salad. Vinaigrette seasoned with chopped capers, horseradish and dill makes cold baked potatoes into the perfect complement for hot barbecued sausages.

Fresh salad greens deserve equally fresh dressing. And a simple vinaigrette - a quick blend of oil and vinegar with seasonings - is the freshest and purest of them. But vinaigrette, that most basic of dressings, the perfect complement to salads, can be so much more. It can serve as a marinade or full-fledged sauce with entrees as well. At Marigold in West Philadelphia, executive chef Erin O'Shea has come up with some innovative vinaigrettes. Inspired by the flavor of smoked salmon, which led to thoughts of fried green tomatoes, O'Shea came up with a buttermilk vinaigrette that ties together those two favorite foods on the plate.

When I was growing up, the only time we ate beets was when we made borscht. Preparing this soup was quite a chore because the beets had to be peeled when they were raw. So beets certainly did not come to mind when we wanted a quick supper. It was in Paris that I learned to appreciate beets as a vegetable for busy-day meals. At my neighborhood market street, Rue Cler, not far from the Eiffel Tower, beets were a popular item. They were always sold cooked. When you asked for them, the vendor would gently take each one with a fork and put it in a paper bag. Most Parisians served the beets dressed with vinaigrette.

GIVING THE typical salad dressing an oil change trims calories and fat grams, but the rest of the recipe needs to be tinkered with too, if you want to maintain the original flavor. Today's honey-lime vinaigrette makes a good example. To slim it down, I slashed the amount of oil in half but stirred in more rice vinegar and fresh lime juice to pump up the taste. Next, I used a mixture of honey and Splenda to keep the dressing's sweetness while cutting calories. This recipe also makes a nice marinade for chicken.

On hot summer days, one of my favorite lunch or supper dishes is a cool chicken salad. I don't mean the mayonnaise-dressed chicken salad that many of us grew up with. Instead, I mix chicken with rice, beans or a combination of both, and dress the salad with vinaigrette. This kind of salad contributes healthful grains and fiber-rich beans to my diet in an enticing way. Light yet satisfying, these salads enable me to have a main course ready with little time or effort. Generally I mix each cup of diced chicken with 1 to 1 1/2 cups cooked rice or beans.

Gourmet redux We were sad to see Andros Gourmet Foods decamp from the Reading Terminal Market. But its replacement, Everyday Gourmet, is more than filling its shoes, offering prepared foods that have the robust flavor that Whole Foods often fails to deliver. Chicken salad with pistachios and citrus vinaigrette, and a colorful sweet potato salad with cilantro and maple vinaigrette are two winners. And the root-beer-glazed pork chop survives rewarming. But a vegetarian special, shown here, has the panache - a stack of hearty, herb-roasted squash, eggplant and pepper over asiago polenta, a rosemary sprig stuck in its cap.

Grocery-store bins and farmer's markets are brimming with winter squash. It's hard to miss these versatile vegetables dressed in oranges and reds, light and dark greens, even pale cream speckled with green. For something different, try tossing some in a salad with quinoa and a lime vinaigrette.   Quinoa Salad With Squash Makes 6 servings 4 cups cooked quinoa 2 cups cubed winter squash, such as butternut 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 1/2 teaspoons cumin 1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder 1 teaspoon ground or rubbed sage Pinch of salt 1 cup toasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas)

An excerpt from the blog "My Daughter's Kitchen. " I have long wished for a good marinade for chicken on the grill. My requirements: that it be not too sweet, not too gloppy, not too complicated, not too expensive. I wanted a flavor profile that would appeal to adults and children, that could easily be expanded to feed a crowd, and would be an easy go-to, that could be thrown together with little effort, with ingredients already in the pantry. With this recipe, from Nina Simonds new cookbook, Simple Asian Meals , I have found the winner.

Erin O'Shea could have been the "Taboon Mistress," queen of the flatbread hearth that is the centerpiece at Zahav, the splashy new Old City Israeli from Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook. "But I wanted Marigold," O'Shea said. "I didn't want to leave. " She had been working behind the line for two years at Marigold Kitchen, and toiling for nearly a decade in all for the chance to show the world her grits. A longtime Southerner, she had found her drive for cooking in Texas and Virginia before coming North.

1 pound snow peas, ends trimmed 1 tablespoon mild white miso paste 2 teaspoons tamari 2 teaspoons sesame oil 1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar 1/4 cup scallions, rough chopped 1 small garlic clove 1/4 cup water 1 teaspoon canola or peanut oil 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon black pepper 1. Lightly steam, boil, or water-sauté the snow peas until they turn bright green. Then drain the water. 2. Combine the rest of the ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth.

An excerpt from the blog "My Daughter's Kitchen. " I have long wished for a good marinade for chicken on the grill. My requirements: that it be not too sweet, not too gloppy, not too complicated, not too expensive. I wanted a flavor profile that would appeal to adults and children, that could easily be expanded to feed a crowd, and would be an easy go-to, that could be thrown together with little effort, with ingredients already in the pantry. With this recipe, from Nina Simonds new cookbook, Simple Asian Meals , I have found the winner.

I promised my daughter when we started this learning-to-cook blog that I would provide simple recipes. On that pledge, I think I have delivered. But I also told her that the recipes would be quick. And on that front, the first few recipes have not lived up. I guess I felt that a few basics were in order, to get her thinking like a real cook. But now that she has mastered roasted chicken, meatballs and tomato sauce, and homemade lentil soup, it's time for something really quick and easy: tuna and white bean salad.

Grocery-store bins and farmer's markets are brimming with winter squash. It's hard to miss these versatile vegetables dressed in oranges and reds, light and dark greens, even pale cream speckled with green. For something different, try tossing some in a salad with quinoa and a lime vinaigrette.   Quinoa Salad With Squash Makes 6 servings 4 cups cooked quinoa 2 cups cubed winter squash, such as butternut 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 1/2 teaspoons cumin 1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder 1 teaspoon ground or rubbed sage Pinch of salt 1 cup toasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas)

Mike Stollenwerk's Fish has swum into its own lately as the city's best destination for serious contemporary seafood, bobbing up to a new three-bell rating after a recent meal that was inventive and vivid with intensely seasonal flavors from chef de cuisine Justin Petruce. The spirit of moment doesn't get any more fleeting than this plate of spring - seared scallops with white asparagus panna cotta and new spring potatoes tossed with ramps (both pickled and buzzed into bright green vinaigrette)

One needn't subscribe to a vegetarian diet to find pleasure in lightly smoky, caramelized vegetables prepared on the grill. Numerous varieties - squash, mushrooms, onions, bell peppers, eggplant, and fennel, to name a few - take extraordinarily well to this method of cooking. Vegetables are largely ignored once they hit the grates, when in fact they require, and sometimes deserve, the most attention. With the right treatment, they can easily be the star of the meal. And, because their time on the grill is short - most need just about 10 minutes' cooking time - even a last-minute barbecue can come together quickly.

Over the course of Clark Gilbert's meandering career, one that in the last 15 years has seen him cook at no fewer than nine different restaurants (plus three stints at Taquet), the erudite chef has also tried his hand at food writing. One essay I particularly relished was his screed a few years ago against the BYOB scene, which he found generally overrated considering the underwhelming experiences often presented: "If you can't produce superior food in a 40-seat restaurant that's only open five days a week," he said, "then you suck.

GIVING THE typical salad dressing an oil change trims calories and fat grams, but the rest of the recipe needs to be tinkered with too, if you want to maintain the original flavor. Today's honey-lime vinaigrette makes a good example. To slim it down, I slashed the amount of oil in half but stirred in more rice vinegar and fresh lime juice to pump up the taste. Next, I used a mixture of honey and Splenda to keep the dressing's sweetness while cutting calories. This recipe also makes a nice marinade for chicken.

IF YOU CAN'T stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Sure, it might be too steamy to cook, but you still have to eat, right? Take a page out of the cookbooks of six area chefs and keep it light, simple and flavorful the next time you make a summer supper, best enjoyed outside in the garden, on the deck or patio. Any chef worth his or her sea salt will agree that cooking with lots of fresh, seasonal ingredients is the place to start. Use the grill for just about everything, and when you turn on the oven, keep the cooking time short.