Vegetarian

Weeknight Meaty Chili gets a lot of its taste from the same ingredients that go into traditional chili; onions, garlic, cumin, tomatoes, chili powder. Plant-based meats from companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have developed a faux ground beef that not only tastes like the real thing but it feels right too. Jack Bishop says the companies put a lot of research into giving the veggie meats just the right texture and chew.

The fake meats fall short, however, when it comes to protein. Four ounces of ground beef has about a third more protein than veggie meat.

Most sweet potato soup recipes call for so many other ingredients that the sweet potato flavor is muted. By cutting back to just shallot, thyme, and butter and using water instead of broth, we put the focus back on the main ingredient. We also puree some of the potato skins into the soup for extra earthiness. However, the real key to intensifying the sweet potato flavor was using only a minimal amount of flavor-diluting water. To do so, we let the sweet potatoes sit in hot water off heat for 20 minutes to make use of an enzyme that reduces their starch content.

In a spread of Greek appetizers, or meze, there’s often a warm feta dish like bouyiourdi (baked feta with tomato and hot peppers) or a saganaki (fried cheese). This recipe combines elements of these two classic appetizers into a sheet-pan meal. Softened feta provides a salty, creamy counterpoint to sweet, juicy tomatoes and chickpeas that are sticky from honey and spicy from dried chile. Try this version, then riff wildly: Switch out tomatoes for mini peppers, olives, dates or cauliflower. Swap the hot honey for anchovies, harissa, smoked paprika or turmeric.

For a vegetarian stew that was so flavorful and substantial even carnivores would be satisfied, we began with sweet, nutty farro and added mushrooms for meaty depth and butternut squash for substance. To start, we microwaved the mushrooms and aromatics with just a teaspoon of oil until the mushrooms softened, released some of their moisture, and were flavored by the aromatics. Vegetable broth worked well for the cooking liquid and provided a subtly sweet backbone. To give it a boost, we stirred in some white wine, which contributed complexity and brightness to our hearty stew.

Chicken adobo, the national dish of the Philippines, is made by braising chicken in a salty, sour and sweet mixture of mostly soy sauce and vinegar. In this vegetarian version, cauliflower, rather than chicken, is caramelized on one side, then simmered in the pungent but not prickly sauce until toothsome yet tender. The simmer mellows the vinegar and soy sauce into a sauce interlaced with pepper, garlic and something herbal but not immediately traceable — that’s the bay leaves. Serve the cauliflower and sauce over rice or another grain with something green on the side.

Carrots work beautifully in this simple tart, but onions, parsnips, beets, zucchini or pumpkin work just as well. The key is to cook the vegetables before putting them on the tart, since the moisture released by baking raw vegetables would make the puff pastry soggy and prevent it from rising. Once you remove the tart from the oven, let it cool for 10 minutes before cutting to allow the cheese to firm up slightly. The tart can be served warm, or cooled to room temperature, and would make a great addition to a picnic.

This smart weeknight dinner offers all the comforting flavors of a classic Parmigiana, but with minimal work. Earthy portobello mushrooms are used here, offering a perfect cradle for the red sauce and creamy mozzarella. Use good quality store-bought marinara sauce (vodka, arrabiata or amatriciana), a much-underrated pantry item that can turn around a meal quickly. This flexible recipe can be scaled up or down without too much fuss. It accounts for two portobello mushrooms per person, but if you’re serving them with pasta or a salad, you could reduce to one each.

Kwanzaa gatherings continue to go strong in community centers and at home in dining rooms, as they have since 1966. The seven-day holiday of self-reflection, often an extension of Christmas or the winter solstice, culminates with the karamu, or feast. The spread leans heavily vegetarian. In Atlanta, Folami Prescott-Adams dries, seasons, fries and broils pounds of tofu. Store-bought, tomato-based barbecue sauce provides the comfort factor. She is a 40-year veteran of Kwanzaa and maintains a spreadsheet of potluck logistics for her family and guests. Alongside this vegetarian barbecue, Dr.

To make crispy, flavorful tofu without having to press it first, use this smart method from Andrea Nguyen, the author of “Asian Tofu” (Ten Speed Press, 2012) and other cookbooks: Warm the tofu in a pan with a small amount of flavorful sauce. As it cooks, it will dry out and absorb the flavors of the sauce. Next, you add oil to the pan, which crisps the tofu. In Ms. Nguyen’s recipe, soy sauce is used, but here, the aromatics in Thai green curry paste and the sugars in coconut milk toast and caramelize on the tofu.

These noodles, adapted from the cookbook "The Wok" by J. Kenji López-Alt, and based on the noodle dish originally created and served by Helene An at San Francisco’s Thanh Long restaurant, are extraordinarily simple and delicious on their own, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fancy them up a bit. They go very well with seafood, and some raw, shell-​on shrimp stir-​fried along with the garlic right from the start would be an excellent addition. Recently, I’ve taken to adding a few spoonfuls of tarako or mentaiko — ​Japanese salted pollock roe.