Andrea Strong

There's no need to set up a deep fryer to make great potato chips—the oven is just fine.

Somehow, the addition of oatmeal to these chewy, gooey cookies makes me feel like they must be good for me! They certainly taste good, and that's usually my yardstick for making cookies — or anything else, for that matter.

What is a country salad? In my mind it is a thoughtful blend of greens — Lola Rosa, frisée, red oak leaf, tatsoi, endive, mâche, arugula, and mizuna — combining different tastes and textures, topped with a ripe cheese and an artisanal cured ham, and garnished with seasonal fruit and vegetables. A well-balanced vinaigrette and spiced walnuts make it impossible to resist.

This salad was always a bestseller at Quilty's, the small restaurant in SoHo where I created my contemporary American seasonal cuisine. It was always on the menu — tweaked a bit every few months. It was fun to march around the year with this salad, the seasons reminding me when to change from the last, dark red blood oranges of the winter to the first tender spears of asparagus, from the voluptuous fresh Black Mission figs of the summer to the delicately perfumed Seckel pears of the fall.

The same technique I used at Quilty's can easily be used in your home kitchen. Look around at the markets, and take your cues from the seasons. Making this salad is not so much about a recipe as it is a framework, helping you to build your own best-selling salad for your family.