Vinaigrette

1-pound piece of boneless, skinless salmon, preferably wild, cut into 2 even pieces Kosher salt ? cup extra-virgin olive oil; more for drizzling 1 small shallot, finely diced 1 tablespoon Champagne vinegar; more as needed 1 teaspoon prepared horseradish; more as needed Freshly ground black pepper ? cup creme fraiche 1 tablespoon minced fresh chives 1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon 4 handfuls arugula (about 4 ounces total)

When the weather turns hot, we all look for fast ways to get food on the table without having to cook. In the summer, a chicken main course served cold is enticing - and doesn't heat up the kitchen. Cold-chicken dishes range from a mundane plate of leftover take-out chicken straight from the refrigerator to a classic chicken chaud-froid. That French entree is complex, involving a thick veloute sauce usually enriched with cream and mixed with consomme and gelatin. When I made chicken chaud-froid at La Varenne Cooking School in Paris, the chefs instructed me to garnish the dish with elaborate decorations made of sliced black truffles and the whites of hard-cooked eggs.

Dear Polly: What are the proper proportions for a good oil-and-vinegar salad dressing? I always get it too vinegary, but when I add more oil, it turns bland. - Gayle Dear Gayle: The perfect recipe for vinaigrette, or oil-and-vinegar, dressing is really a matter of taste. Some like a more vinegary dressing, while others prefer a higher proportion of oil. However, a good formula to start with is to use twice as much oil as vinegar. You'll find wine or cider vinegar gives a gentler, more pleasing flavor than regular white vinegar.

  It's not often you can dine on celebrity crustaceans. But the Alaskan king crab - served as salad or in the shell - at Oceanaire Seafood Room stars on two counts. These critters are so big that a single leg is a 15- to 18-ounce serving with easily half a cup of sweet, succulent crabmeat. And they are TV stars of sorts, part of the catch of the Time Bandit, the crabber featured on the Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch . Oceanaire snared the Time Bandit's entire catch for its 15 restaurants.

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)

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.

WEIGHT WATCHERS ULTIMATE 200 FROZEN ENTREES OR SANDWICHES. 16 varieties. $1.99 to $2.59 per 4- to 9.12-ounce box. BONNIE: I'm concerned about Weight Watchers new Ultimate 200 products. Not because they contain additives such as monosodium glutamate, vegetable gums, emulsifiers, preservatives and artificial colors and flavorings (which people who buy frozen dinners have come to expect), but because consumers might believe that these are meant to serve as a meal. Even the folks at Weight Watchers agree that this just isn't so. Each of these entrees of 200 calories or less could be part of a meal, but none supplies even close to a third of the nutrients needed in a day. The London broil in mushroom sauce, for instance, has a mere 110 calories, which isn't enough to even sustain a toddler!

In their final months at the William Penn Inn, where they worked to save for their big debut, it must have been a challenge for Joe and Amy McAtee to imagine the flight of modern fancy that would become Honey. The William Penn, in Gwynedd, is as classic as it gets - an enormous 1714 inn where the service is stodgy black-tie and the culinary high points (veal Oscar and snapper soup) are fossils from the Prime Rib-a-zoic era. The McAtees are grateful to the William Penn for the work, and respectful of its tradition.

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.

KRAFT LIGHT SINGLES. Yellow or white American flavor. $1.95 per 6-ounce and $2.89 to $3.25 per 12-ounce package of 16 slices. BONNIE: Kraft's new Light Singles are slices of pasteurized process cheese that have one-third less fat than regular Kraft slices. Like Kraft's regular and most other processed cheese products, the new Light Slices are high in sodium, especially compared to natural cheese. (One 3/4-ounce slice of the light contains 310 milligrams.) If you need to watch sodium while reducing the amount of fat in your cheese, try Borden's Lite-line Reduced Sodium Pasteurized Process Cheese Product.