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My introduction to the joys of room-temperature farro salad came years ago in Boston, when I wrote an article about two chef-couples’ different approaches to an outdoor dinner party. Gabriel Frasca and Amanda Lydon, who have since taken over the storied Straight Wharf restaurant on Nantucket to much acclaim, cooked the farro in the oven, then combined it with, among other things, fresh cherries, blanched and sautéed broccoli rabe, and pecans. Besides scaling it down to single-serving size, I stripped down their method considerably, standing in fresh arugula for the broccoli rabe so I don’t have to cook it, adding protein in the form of chickpeas, and using dried cherries instead of fresh because I can get them year-round.

True Bolognese sauce takes hours to simmer and deepen. Since the Yucatan-Style Slow-Roasted Pork (page 66) is already deeply flavored from all those hours in the oven, all you need to do is take it on a brief trip to Italy. This makes a very hearty all-inclusive serving for one; you could easily stretch it to serve two by boiling up a little extra pasta and including a salad and some bread on the table.

This recipe was inspired by my discovery of single-serving-size butternut squash the size of hand weights at my local farmers’ markets. Roasted butternut squash is a great thing to have on hand for use in various other dishes, though, so feel free to roast a larger one and use 1/2 cup of the flesh here, refrigerating the rest for up to a week or freezing for several months in an airtight container.

The best thing about kimchi is this: It packs so much flavor and complexity, you can use it to make lightning-quick meals that taste as if they took hours to prepare. This fried rice, for instance, comes together in mere minutes. Cutting up the cauliflower might be the most time-consuming part. And yet this dish is downright addictive. If you don’t have a wok, you can use a large nonstick skillet for this fried rice, but it will take a little longer to cook.

I’m a longtime fan of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, cookbook authors who produce glorious books with a journalistic approach to food writing. Their stories and stunning photographs illuminate the culture behind the food of such places as Southeast Asia and lesser-known parts of China. They’re also great fun to talk to, and when I interviewed them about their ways with fried rice (which they often make for themselves at home when one or the other is traveling), they insisted that for my own eating pleasure I make sure to always have nam pla prik in my refrigerator. This Thai condiment is simply fish sauce and chiles, which sounds like an almost lethally pungent combination, but when you make it, something magical happens. Each ingredient tames the other one, an effect that increases the longer the sauce sits in the refrigerator. This recipe is designed to use leftover rice, such as the stuff that comes in spades with Chinese takeout orders. Fresh rice doesn’t work as well because it sticks. If you don’t have a wok, you can use a nonstick skillet for this recipe, but it will take longer and won’t be as much fun.

Like so many other American cooks, I learned to make risotto from Marcella Hazan—not directly, of course, although wouldn’t that be great? This is a quintessentially summertime recipe; make it when fresh corn, tomatoes, and basil are all converging on your local farmers’ market or farmstand. Risotto is one of those dishes that makes great leftovers—especially to form into balls, stuff with cheese, roll in bread crumbs, and fry to make arancini. So if you like the thought of that in your future, feel free to double or triple this recipe. Eat this with a vibrant green salad and some chewy bread for a filling supper.

Some of my favorite sandwiches need very little prep work, just the right combination of top-notch ingredients. This is one of them. Dark bread, smoky fish, tart apple, and complex Gouda make magic together. All you have to do is slice, spread, cut, eat, and smile.

This is not the tuna sandwich of your childhood, but it hits all the right notes: richness from the oily tuna, starchy goodness from the chickpeas, bitterness from the arugula, a little tang from the artichoke hearts, and a hell of a tang from the Herbed Lemon Confit (page 4). If you don’t have some of the latter in your refrigerator, store-bought preserved lemon slices will do.

One of my go-to sandwiches in Washington, D.C., is the chicken cutlet at Taylor Gourmet, where the owners hail from Philadelphia and the sandwiches are all homages to the way things are done in the City of Brotherly Love. Their sandwiches are studies in simplicity: not too many ingredients, but they’re high-quality ones, treated well. I love their combination of crunchy chicken, bitter and spicy broccoli rabe, and slightly melting provolone. But at home I like to jazz things up by adding a mayonnaise spiked with peppadews, those miniature red peppers from South Africa that are pickled to sweet-and-sour perfection. If you can’t find them, substitute your favorite bread-and-butter pickle

If you think this sounds something like a reconstructed salade Niçoise on bread, well, you’d be right, but the truth is, I got the idea in Italy, not France. On my first trip there, in Venice, I quickly became addicted to eating while standing up at one of the city’s many bars. Besides melanzana (eggplant) pizza, my favorite dish was a sandwich that seemed the ultimate in decadence, because it consisted of potato salad on one side and tuna salad on the other. When I started making it for myself, it seemed only natural to combine both salads into one, and then to throw a hard-cooked egg in there (who doesn’t like egg salad, after all?), along with a couple of olives for briny tartness.

The ginger packs a double-edged spicy punch in this sandwich, as fresh pieces in the chicken-poaching liquid and in powdered form in the avocado spread. Mango adds its sweet-tart, cooling magic.

Besides the Cochinita Pibil Tacos (page 95), this is the purest, least messed-with application of leftover Yucatan-Style Slow-Roasted Pork (page 66). In a riff on the North Carolina tradition of pork with a tangy coleslaw, I’m using green mango, which sounds exotic until you realize that it’s just . . . green mango. Unripe, firm, not-yet-ready-for-prime-time mango. It’s super sour, which is one of the reasons I like it. The other is that, depending on your supermarket, it might be even easier to find unripe mango than ripe mango. Of course, one turns into the other if you wait long enough.

This is a pie that you can put together in a flash, because it depends on the idea that you’ve got some great condiments and accompaniments already made and just waiting for such a use as this. Like all my favorite pizzas, it depends on relatively spare but high-quality toppings.

To my mind, flatbread always calls out for eggplant or hummus, so why not eat the two together? I like to add to the complexity by frying up some extra chickpeas—something that, in greater quantities, makes for a fantastic party appetizer. Look for za’atar spice in Middle Eastern markets or buy it online from spice purveyors such as Penzeys.com.

When I asked friends for their favorite pizza-combination ideas, this one, from former Boston Globe Living Arts editor Fiona Lewis, jumped to the front of the line. First, I’m a freak for figs: fresh when they’re in season, of course, but dried at other times of the year. Second, when Fiona mentioned it, I had just started yielding to an addiction to Taleggio, the pungent, slightly bitter Italian cheese that tastes of mushrooms. I immediately thought walnuts would be a perfect crunchy addition to this party, and I invited along my old friend radicchio to add even more bitterness. Once I got the layering order right (walnuts need to go on the bottom, under the nest of radicchio, to avoid burning under the broiler), this was a keeper. Obviously, if you want to make this when fresh figs are in season, by all means do so; skip the soaking-in-wine step and you’ll be good to go.

I came up with this pizza idea when sampling the beautifully made charcuterie of Nathan Anda, who sells at farmers’ markets in the Washington, D.C., area. When he pulled out a package of fatty German-style speck and suggested that it would melt on top of pizza, I had to try it with a bagful of mushrooms I bought from a nearby vendor. He was right: The fat from the speck basted the mushrooms in richness. If you can’t find German-style speck, substitute Italian lardo raw, thinly sliced bacon.

The only liberties I’ve taken with the classic margherita is to let one of my favorite pizza cheeses, smoked mozzarella, provide that extra, haunting flavor, to echo the smoke from a wood-burning pizza oven. And, of course, there are the 12-Hour Tomatoes (page 2) that I hope you have in your fridge just waiting for this moment to shine. (If you don’t, substitute 1/3 cup canned diced tomatoes, preferably San Marzano, drained, plus a little salt and pepper to taste.)

I make fried rice with kimchi, ham, and egg so often that you’d think this pizza combination would’ve occurred to me in a flash. It almost did, but not quite: I knew I wanted to make a kimchi and ham pizza, but it wasn’t until I hosted a pizza party and friends tasted it that I asked, “What does it need?” One guest said, “An egg?” Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? I tried it again, and that runny-yolk richness pulled everything together. It always does. Now I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Shrimp and citrus make such a natural match, I often combine them in tacos, but they call out for something with a little heft, such as black beans. Depending on the size grapefruit you use, you’ll probably have more than you need for this recipe, but that’s not a problem. Just eat the remaining sections for breakfast with a little yogurt, for dessert instead of the oranges in the Yogurt Parfait with Mulled Red Wine Syrup (page 161), or in a smoothie with banana and milk. I like to sometimes double up the salsa on this taco, drizzling on a little Salsa Verde (page 14) in addition to the on-the-fly grapefruit–black bean salsa, but these tacos are plenty flavorful without it.

I’m as intimidated about making fish tacos for California friends as they would be to make chili for me. But I’ve learned the rules: No baking the fish, no guacamole (makes the fish soggy), no flour tortillas (although there’s some dispute on that point)? And you should hear the unprintable things they say about versions that include mayonnaise! It just so happens that I agree on all those points, except for one, which my Cali-friends will discover when they read this: I have actually made pretty darn crisp catfish in the oven. When it’s just you alone in the kitchen, and you don’t feel like frying, I won’t judge.