All of The Recipes You Should Make in April

“Basil vinaigrette is the recipe I turn to no matter what I’m making,” says cookbook author Gaby Dalkin. “It’s great on grilled steak and amps up any other kind of protein, pasta, vegetables, salad, crostini—everything except dessert! It’s easy to double, and it freezes. (I use silicone ice cube trays.)”

Rich-tasting and dense, kabocha is one of our favorite squashes and is becoming easier to find at local grocery stores. The umami flavor of the miso counters the squash’s natural sweetness.

Contrast the feathery textures of baby Asian greens with the crunch of quick-pickled onion, Asian pear, and sesame seeds. This salad is especially good made with red or green mustard, mizuna, and edible chrysanthemum, but feel free to experiment.

The citrus flavor in this recipe doesn’t just come from lemon juice, but instead from mincing the entire lemon and sauteeing it with butter before adding in the spinach.

Think of mild-flavored, juicy bok choy as an invitation to experiment in the kitchen. It’s especially good with earthy mushrooms. Thoroughly drying the bok choy before cooking ensures that you don’t end up with a watery sauce.

Fresh goat cheese, deeply flavorful Blenheim apricots (tangier and sweeter than Turkish apricots) and stubby, rich Marcona almonds are worth using here, because in a recipe this simple, the flavors are really noticeable.

Have all the ingredients prepped before cooking; this salad comes together quickly once you begin. Serve it with baguettes or crostini.

Serve these robustly flavored open-face sandwiches as a light dinner with a big salad, or as appetizers, using small slices of baguette.

Deceivingly simple and remarkably delicious chicken skewers from Yunnie Kim, can be the foundation of a family-pleasing weeknight dinner when served with steamed rice and a simple salad. The traditional addition of grated Asian pear is entirely optional, just use slightly more brown sugar to keep the salty-sweet balance just right. If you’re not up for grilling (or don’t have a grill) you could just as easily cook the chicken, unskewered, in a wok or large skillet.

Chef Harveen Khera serves a whole golden trout and stuffs it with sprouted beans. Our recipe substitutes trout fillets for a simpler, everyday approach. If trout is sold whole at your fishmonger; ask for boned, trimmed fillets.

This delectable sweet-savory sandwich is an homage to Cheryl Dobbins, who led tours of Cowgirl Creamery’s cheesemaking rooms in Point Reyes Station, California. The recipe is adapted from one in the book Cowgirl Creamery Cooks by co-owners Sue Conley and Peggy Smith.

San Francisco chef Melissa King uses this broth for hot pot, a celebratory dish that’s also an event unto itself.  When serving other, meatier broths, it’s especially nice to have this flavorful, Japanese-style vegetarian option. Out of courtesy, meat-dippers should cook their morsels in another broth if vegetarians are using this one.

For this summery pasta, Berkeley chef and cooking teacher Samin Nosrat cooks down half of the tomatoes into a savory jam, then adds fresh ones at the end. “I like to layer flavors, to have two levels of deliciousness.” If you can’t find ricotta salata, fresh ricotta works well, too–just drain it and stir in some salt.

This dish checks all the boxes of what dinner should be with juicy and quickly cooked skirt steak, a crunchy green salad, and a green garlic sauce to drizzle on top of the whole plate.

When she first tried a similar dish at Kuleto’s Italian Restaurant in San Francisco, Sunset recipe editor Amy Machnak was shocked at how well this unusual flavor combination complements mussels.

Light, lively green garlic and a little cream make this a perfect winter-into-spring pasta dish. The thin noodles soak up the sauce fast, so serve it immediately.

“Grilled chicken is an excellent humble family meal, although the marinade in this recipe adds an incredible glaze worthy of a restaurant meal,” Matt Horn says in his cookbook, Horn Barbecue. “The brown sugar speeds up caramelization and deepens the flavor of the finished poultry.”

Now’s the time to use spring herbs with abandon, adding them by the handful to salads, eggs, and pasta. This quick vegetarian main dish combines your choice of herbs with a little cream and some goat cheese, which melts in the heat of the pasta to lightly coat each strand. Crumble more cheese on top.

Serve these tempura vegetables from Arizona’s Castle Hot Springs with an aioli base and drizzle soy glaze on top, plus it’s easy to use any vegetables you may have on hand.

A metal cooling rack set in a rimmed baking sheet makes bi-level cooking possible–squash below, chicken above–so the meat’s glaze stays nicely charred, while the juices drip into and moisten the squash.

Inspired by the flavors of Chinese orange peel beef, this gutsy one-dish meal is made with fresh tangerine peel instead of the traditional dried. As you stir-fry, add 1 to 2 tbsp. water if the pan bottom starts to get dark.