Vegetarian

This one-pot dish is comfort food made healthful. It can be served on its own or over brown rice.

MAKE AHEAD: The stew tastes even better after a day’s refrigeration; it can be refrigerated for 3 or 4 days.

RECIPE SOURCE: From Elaine Gordon, a master of public health professional and a master certified health education specialist. Her Web site is EatingbyElaine.com.

Pan-frying and then glazing tempeh with a sweet-and-sour mixture of miso and mustard gives it a big hit of flavor. This dish pairs tempeh with collard greens that are quickly cooked so they keep more of their color and texture.

From Washington Post Food editor Joe Yonan, author of "Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook" (Ten Speed Press, 2013).

Serve this sauteed zucchini, turmeric, and yogurt dip as an appetizer with toasted pita or flatbread or as a sauce with kebabs.

Loving the flavor and look of Hasselback potatoes, I knew it wouldn't be long before I found myself grilling them again. This time around I went with a sweet potato rather than a russet since they're one of my favorite winter foods.

I kept the process exactly the same: slicing, washing, then jump starting the potato cooking process in the microwave. Then the partial cooked spuds were finished on the grill, where they fanned out and got crisp around the edges, while being soft and smooth on the inside.

Of all the Thanksgiving staples, I've never been able to get behind candied sweet potatoes. These orange tubers are one my favorite fall vegetables for their warming sweet flavor, and I can't understand why you'd want mask that sweetness with more sugar, and then top it off with marshmallows? In contrast, if I were doing a sweet potato dish, it'd be something more in line with this sweet potato and corn salad.

I was psyched about this recipe from the get-go. I have a growing affection for vegetarian Indian cuisine, and thought the pairing of sweet potato and eggplant couldn't possibly go wrong. This recipe also included a heartwarming little story of a guest bringing this meal over with a few roses for the author, Aum Shanti. I was so locked in that I didn't bother to read the specifics—and when the finished dish emerged, it was a perfectly dry mix of sautéed vegetables. It wasn't repulsive, but nothing was really there to bring it all together.

For a baba ghanoush recipe that would fulfill its potential as a dip full of redolent, smoky eggplant flavor and brightened with garlic and lemon juice, we grilled the eggplants directly over a hot fire until they were wrinkled and soft. To avoid watery texture and bitterness in our baba ghanoush recipe, we drained the flesh of excess fluid before combining it with flavor-enhancing ingredients. 

For potent garlic flavor in our grilled potato recipe, without bitterness or charring, we needed to introduce the potatoes to the garlic-oil mixture not once but three times. So in our final grilled potato recipe we brushed on the garlic mixture before cooking, after parcooking in the microwave, and after grilling.

The most important step in making a lentil salad is perfecting the cooking of the lentils so they maintain their shape and firm-tender bite. There turns out to be two key steps. The first is to brine the lentils in warm salt water. With brining, the lentil’s skin softens, which leads to fewer blowouts. The second step is to cook the lentils in the oven, which heats them gently and uniformly. Once we had perfectly cooked lentils, all we had left to do was to pair the earthy beans with a tart vinaigrette and boldly flavored mix-ins. 

Impatience was the main reason I failed at searing tofu. For years, I had given in to the temptation to poke it, turn it, examine it, annoy it. Then I finally learned that, like any very moist ingredient (fish, mushrooms, tomatoes), the less you bother it, the browner and crisper it will get.