Cookbooks

To give this velvety vegan soup a tiny bit of crunch and extra visual appeal, chia seeds are stirred in after the soup is pureed.

As thick and smooth as a milk shake, this berry freeze actually gets its creaminess from chia and avocado, not milk and ice cream. Using frozen berries keeps the drink icy cold (and allows you to make it when berries are out of season), but if you prefer to use fresh, just add a couple of ice cubes when blending.

Instead of tossing all of the ingredients together in this healthy, mayonnaise-free take on potato salad, the potatoes are served on a bed of the creamy avocado-chia dressing. The contrast of the purple potatoes against the green dressing is a real showstopper. If purple potatoes aren't available, this recipe also works well with red-skinned potatoes.

Chia gel replaces eggs in this recipe, helping keep these chicken meatballs light and fluffy. The sauce is creamy and lemony, a combination that simply melts in the mouth. As an option, try spinach linguine, which pairs nicely with the flavors in this dish and looks beautiful.

Although this sweet-tart cheesecake is great with a homemade graham cracker crust, which you can whip up pretty quickly, to make this easy cheesecake even easier, use a 9-inch ready-to-use all-natural graham cracker piecrust. If you like a limier flavor, add a teaspoon of lime zest to the batter (which you can sample before cooking because, thanks to chia, there are no raw eggs to worry about).

Chipotle aioli and sushi-grade tuna crown these modern tostadas, which come from Contramar, a lauded Mexico City seafood restaurant.

Everyone has his or her favorite Tacolicious taco, but this is mine, hands down. These short ribs cooked slowly with guajillos break down into the perfect braised meat: rich, a tad spicy, and appropriately messy—a true sign of greatness. You can ask your butcher to bone the ribs for you, or you can just cook them with the bone in and then bone them before shredding the meat. You'll need 5 pounds of bone-in short ribs to yield the required 3 pounds of meat. This dish can be on the spicy side, so if you're really sensitive to heat, cut back a little on the chiles.

Like some sort of drug dealer, Joe (aka the big boss) has been known to keep a small plastic bag of this addictive Mexican spice rub in his glove box. And indeed, it's never a bad thing to have on hand. Although the recipe has a few steps to it, it's well worth the effort. At the restaurant, we use it to season everything from corn on the cob to chicken to our Spring booty taco. When cooking with it, just beware that it's quite salty. Also, it keeps for a long time, which means that you may want to make a double batch.

Telmo grew up in a Mexican neighborhood in San Jose, California. On warm evenings, he could be found at a busy roadside seafood joint called La Costa spooning up refreshing bites of coctel de camarón, or "shrimp cocktail." Served in a tall Styrofoam cup, the La Costa cocktail combines a sweet (but not cloying), tangy, and spicy tomato-based sauce, briny poached shrimp, avocado, cucumber, and pico de gallo, all topped with some shakes of a salsa picante and served with tostadas or saltine crackers. Our version is made with roasted fresh tomatoes instead of the traditional ketchup to brighten it up. The resulting sauce is more like a gazpacho than the typical country club-style cocktail sauce. The cocktail can be assembled a couple of hours ahead of time, but not too far in advance, as the shrimp becomes rubbery if left in the lime juice for too long. To make this shrimp cocktail into easy party fare, spoon it onto small store-bought tostadas, garnish with a little cilantro, and serve.

Chilly as July and August can be in San Francisco, you know it's summer when this delicious corn hits the Tacolicious menu. (It is so good that it transports you to sunshine, even if the city is socked in by fog and you're wearing a scarf.) If you already have the recado ready to go, this recipe is a cinch to make. Although the smokiness of the grill imparts great flavor, you can instead briefly boil the corn ears, halve them, and toss them with the recado-lime juice mixture. With the lime and the spices, no butter is needed. Try swapping out the corn for another vegetable, such as summer squash. To keep this recipe in the snack realm, chop the ears into thirds.

Drummed up by our intrepid recipe tester Lauren Godfrey, this nontraditional taco, sweet with squash, earthy and nutty with kale, and crunchy with fried pumpkin seeds (pepitas), is—shhhhh—vegan. Don't tell anyone, but because it is so tasty, no one will care. The cashew crema can be replaced by store-bought crema or our Cumin-lime crema, but after polling both vegetarian and carnivorous friends, everyone preferred the nutty and rich nondairy cashew version (which must be made with raw cashews to work). To prepare the butternut squash, use a sharp peeler to remove the tough skin before slicing it in half and scooping out the seeds and fibers. Lazy cook's tip: Some markets sell butternut squash already peeled and seeded and ready to go.

Sugared, roasted lemons are edible from rind to flesh and give this salsa-like mix a bracing jolt of sourness.

Stir the mushrooms and leeks frequently enough so they caramelize without burning, then serve on top of steak.

Sandwich this burger between English muffin halves or serve with lots of arugula.

Between the rich chestnuts and the buttery rice, this dish has the chops to be a main.

Butter beans are among the late-summer treasures in Charleston. For this simple, satisfying side, use the small green kind (or frozen baby lima beans in the off-season).

An homage to the breaded and baked fish at Luby's cafeteria in Texas, this tilapia goes Tex-Mex with a salty corn-chip crust.

Crème fraîche delivers tang along with creamy butterfat to this deconstructed salad; Greek yogurt can be substituted if you wish.

We'd serve this dressed-down chicken salad for brunch, pack it for lunch, or make it as a light dinner on a hot summer night.

These croutons are very quick to make and are a great crunchy complement to both soups and salads. The bread can either be fresh or a few days old. Warning: They are so yummy they’ll make it hard for you to go back to store-bought croutons! I’ve started doubling the recipe because my husband, Drew, can happily nosh on a whole batch.