Oven Bake

Orange marmalade brings a completely different taste to an already wonderful combination of seafood and citrus juices.

Some like it hot, so here’s the perfect spicy fish dish. While it bakes, you’ll have time to prepare corn on the cob and steamed zucchini.

No kneading or rising time is required for this mushroom-based pizza. Place it on a bed of arugula and watercress flavored with a feta dressing, and serve as they do in Europe—with a knife and fork.

A fragrant aroma will fill your kitchen while the chutney bakes over the salmon, ensuring moist and tender fillets every time.

This basic fish dish is so easy to prepare that it’s just about foolproof.

Serve this attractive side dish with your holiday meal or with roast beef for Sunday dinner. Baking at a high temperature slightly caramelizes the bottom of the squash for a delightful taste.

A seasoned cornmeal crust makes the zucchini so crisp that you could easily mistake it for deep-fried. Try the zucchini and dip for a party appetizer as well as for a side dish.

When the French cook en papillote, they steam the food in cooking parchment. Here we use aluminum foil to provide the same results. Both preparation and cleanup are super quick.

An attractive dish for entertaining, this recipe has a Middle-Eastern flavor. If you are really in a hurry, try the alternate cooking method.

This easy, no-mess weeknight dish simply requires spreading a bit of mustard over catfish fillets, sprinkling them lightly with a garlicky paprika-cornmeal mixture, and popping them in the oven.

Capture the traditional flavors of huevos rancheros with this any-time-of-day casserole. You can make it and bake it right away or prepare it ahead of time and bake it the next day.

As the apples bake, their juice combines with brown sugar and orange juice to create a light caramel sauce.

Keep a big can of pears in the pantry, and you can enjoy this simple, spicy crisp any time.

These nachos use mushrooms instead of high-fat fried chips as their base. Plan on having plenty around—they disappear quickly!

Okay, this recipe is simple, but last year when I told a friend I was going to write this book he said I had to include it. I’d never heard of doing this, nor had a number of my friends. In fact, though I found many friends who made a version including marshmallows over a campfire as a kid, I didn’t find one other person who’d actually made this. So I’m guessing that most folks won’t have had it before. Trust me; if you like bananas and chocolate, you’ll wish you’d tried it sooner!

It’s important to avoid buying spaghetti squash that isn’t fully ripe. A spaghetti squash that isn’t ready will be extremely difficult to cut in half and won’t yield a nice, soft texture when cooked. Look for a squash that is a bright, solid yellow (not pale yellow or white in parts). Once the rind is penetrated with a knife, a ripe squash is fairly easy to cut in half. Also, be sure you have all the ingredients ready to go once the squash is cooked. You’ll want to toss everything together when the squash is still hot.

It may seem odd to figure out how to slice a tube of polenta into fries, but it’s actually quite simple. Just follow the directions below, imagining the polenta halves are large potatoes. Then cut the fries as if you’re cutting them from potatoes.

If you can’t find 6-ounce potatoes or don’t have them on hand, you can simply use one 12-ounce potato. Add 1 minute to the microwave cook time if the potato isn’t tender after the 5 to 6 minutes, or an additional 10 to 15 minutes in the oven, and use all of the butter and brown sugar for the one large potato. A 12-ounce potato will make two servings, so the recommendation is to eat only half.

Potatoes have gotten a bad rap in recent years, but the hype is just that—hype. A 5-ounce potato with skin has only 110 calories and more potassium than a medium banana. It also contains 45 percent of the daily recommended value of vitamin C and is a significant source of dietary fiber. It’s the toppings that are the problem, not the potatoes themselves. If you don’t love steak fries as much as I do, feel free to make your fries any size—just be sure to watch them carefully, as the cooking time will vary.

It’s best to buy goat cheese that is precrumbled. This will save you time and make it easier to spread the cheese across the entire pizza, requiring less to get some in every bite. If you do buy it in a tube (it may make sense if it’s significantly less expensive that way), freeze it slightly before attempting to crumble it. It will crumble much easier.