Tuna

Dijon mustard and lemon peel give the dressing lots of zip. This salad can also be spooned into pita halves.

Either potato salad or bulgur salad would be lovely with these summer kebabs.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

(Provençal Tuna and Vegetable Sandwich)

Here, turkey stands in for the traditional veal in a do-ahead entré. Have your butcher bone, roll and tie the turkey breast.

Preserved tuna, packed in extra-virgin olive oil, is paired with white beans in Tuscany, a speedy dish to assemble if you've got beans on hand. Canned beans work well and simplify this preparation — open a few cans and chop an onion. Quality tuna makes a big difference in the success of this dish. Leftover grilled or poached tuna can be used instead of canned, but it should be marinated in extra-virgin olive oil. All choices will work better than insipid tuna packed in water. Scallions can be used in the spring, red onions for the rest of the year. Torquato, my farmer and muse, suggested combining green beans with tuna during his glorious green-bean season, a fantastic variation.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Tuna is delicious when it is cooked like steak with a reduced wine gravy made in the pan. Add any fresh herbs you have on hand — chives, tarragon, basil, parsley, oregano. Here the steaks are accompanied by fragrant thyme-scented white beans. Wine for Cooking and to Drink This is a household dish, or more precisely a wine merchant's dish, hence the title. An obvious choice would be a California merlot, but if you are feeling more experimental, a red wine from a less familiar source like Connecticut, North Carolina, or Texas could also work well. Two such wines made from French-American hybrid grapes that would suit this dish and are worth a try are Chambourcin and Maréchal Foch.

Start with pear slices wrapped in prosciutto; offer a radicchio and fennel salad and breadsticks alongside the pasta, and rich tiramisè to end the meal.

Cafe Vesuvio in St. Charles offers an absolutely delicious dish of angel hair pasta topped with tuna. We'd like to know how to make it. Nancy and John Noble St. Charles, Illinois

A sophisticated, Spanish-style salad.

Here's a light way with stuffed vegetables.