Salad recipes

This soup is a complete meal when served with a green salad and French bread.

Fat-free grapefruit vinaigrette with garlic, basil, thyme, parsley, and vinegar. A completely oil-free, low-fat salad dressing using unsweetened grapefruit juice as the base.

Fish fillets are cooked on a bed of mushroom-bread stuffing in this dish. Just add a salad or vegetable, and dinner is served.

This is a great dinner side dish to accompany almost any kind of meat, poultry, or fish. Or serve for lunch with a salad.

Wine-poached chicken tossed with rigatoni, fresh basil, sweet red peppers, and olives in a bright garlic-lemon dressing. A chilled Italian pasta salad built for hot summer nights.

Chunky pesto with two kinds of basil, leftover chicken, pecans, and anchovies for depth. A no-cook sauce that turns pasta salad or hot pasta into a full meal.

Penne alla malefemmina, a no-cook Southern Italian pasta sauce of raw tomatoes, kalamata olives, capers, and garlic marinated in olive oil. Tossed with hot pasta or served cold as pasta salad.

Here is a kind of throw together recipe I came up with: If you are entertaining you can garnish with fresh parsley and serve with a caesar salad, garlic bread and a nice chablis. The vegetables can vary. I've used mushrooms, spinach, cauliflower etc. Grouper works well with this because it has a lot of flavor. I've used fresh tuna and halibut but prefer grouper.

There is a bit of confusion about these two plants. For some reason,the fennel plant, which resembles celery with fern like tops, has been called sweet anise in produce markets. The true anise is cultivated only for its seeds. So what you see labelled "sweet anise" in your market is probably fennel, but no matter what you call it, this is a highly interesting vegetable. Every part of this aromatic plant has a taste and aroma similar to licorice. The stems are eaten like celery,uncook, or cooked and served as a vegetable (heavenly with apples in waldorf salad) available from September to May.

This is lovely, fresh, simple, quick and easy pasta dish that can be served as fast as the spaghetti can cook. Fresh Italian flavor rings through and the ingredients are perfectly matched.

Jumbo pasta shells stuffed with ricotta, Parmesan, and egg, baked in a homemade basil tomato sauce and topped with melted mozzarella. Classic Italian comfort food.