Lynne Rossetto Kasper & Sally Swift

A “virtual” cream soup, this is a creamy soup made without the cream. We don’t want to oversell, but this soup comes together in a blink and proves simple really can fly.   The spicing opportunities in this recipe are limitless. If you skip the puree, the soup takes on a totally different life. The essential finale is fresh lemon and generous spoonfuls of whole milk yogurt.

Every single year for as long as I have known Sally, she has planted zucchini. She is typically a very sensible person, but somehow she is unable to remember in May exactly how many zucchini will appear in July. This pasta is her retaliation. It's cooked in one pot, with mostly raw ingredients, and is perfect on a hot summer night or served at room temperature for a "pasta salad" that even the Italians would approve of.

Once, while traveling along the north shore of Oahu, The Splendid Table team stopped for lunch at Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck for an island favorite, shrimp scampi--the most garlicky, luscious scampi we’d eaten. This is our divination of the recipe.

Talk about a centerpiece dish, with the first slice this dome of dark glossy greens turns into pure Technicolor. You've got yellow and red peppers with tomatoes, corn in the form of hominy and black beans. In the taste department you've got shots of fresh lime and a new spice blend straight from the Caribbean.

Thanksgiving is usually all about the turkey (and it's offered in our menu as an option), but I think vegetarians and vegans have been politely surviving on cranberry sauce, creamed onions and mashed potatoes far too long.