Make-Ahead Summer Dishes

In this salad, tender haricots verts get tossed with crunchy strips of carrot, red pepper and parsnip. The salad can also be made with bacon, but it’s just as delicious without.

Before she opened Vergennes Laundry, Julianne Jones sold savory tarts at the local farmers’ market. This one is made with the vegetables that are in ratatouille.

Ethan Stowell lightens up traditional potato salad by adding plenty of radishes and celery and skipping the usual mayonnaise in favor of a Champagne vinaigrette.

An almost-instant crust, made with vanilla wafer cookies and smoked almonds, is the secret to this simple and unusual tart.

Willi Galloway steeps lemon and rosemary for this tea. “Herbs are great for balcony gardens,” she says.

A lovely way to serve raspberries, blackberries and blueberries: suspended in a hibiscus gelatin.

Quick-pickled cucumber slices give this delicate, fresh-tasting soup a little zing.

Most Paris bistros serve at least one verrine: a multi-textured salad or dessert layered in a glass.

It’s not easy to make a healthy crisp: The topping always has lots of butter and sugar. John Currence makes his streusel with a mix of oats, whole wheat flour and brown sugar and a little butter-oil blend to keep it crumbly.

This salad from F&W’s Grace Parisi brilliantly combines pickled vegetables, uncommon produce, ancient grains and a cross-cultural dressing that includes miso and chipotle chile in adobo. If ingredients like lime radishes and baby orange cauliflower aren’t available at your farmers’ market, use equal quantities of similar vegetables.

Make-Ahead Tip: The assembled gratin can be refrigerated overnight. Bring to room temperature before baking.

Bulgur makes a hearty base for a salad. Here, it's tossed with corn kernels, tomato, red onion, and a bit of hot pepper, dressed with lime vinaigrette, and then topped with slices of sautéed chicken breast for an ideal summer meal.

“Ask anyone on my staff their favorite summer dish, and they’ll tell you it’s this one,” says Hoss Zaré. Filled with herbs, nuts and raisins, the soup is delicious with grilled bread.

This healthy, zippy Provençal classic is known as artichokes barigoule. Served over whole-grain brown rice or buckwheat couscous, it makes a lovely vegan main course.

Sangria, a Spanish variation on traditional punch composed of wine, fruit and brandy, was formally introduced to America at the 1964 World's Fair in New York City.

Chef Eric Skokan grows hundreds of vegetables at his farm, analyzing each variety for its best use. He prefers the Zagross Persian cucumber for this tangy soup.

A French take on strata, or savory bread pudding, this simple summer dish contains zucchini, onion and tomatoes layered with slices of baguette, then baked with chicken stock and a little cream.

This tart is a favorite dessert at Jacques Pépin’s house. You can make it with any seasonal fruit, such as rhubarb, peaches, cherries, apricots or apples. The dough is buttery, flaky and very forgiving. And it comes together in 10 seconds in a food processor.

This refreshing gazpacho—made with apples, grapes, almonds and cucumber—is a perfect balance of sweet and tangy.

"This is an easy way to bring height-of-summer cookout mojo to our favorite vegetables without fussing with a charcoal or gas grill," The Lees say. Cooking the corn and okra on the stove in a heavy skillet gives them a superb char.

Wendy Leon says these rolls, filled with bell pepper and slivers of avocado, are an effective way to get her grandchildren to eat vegetables.

This smoky, zingy salad is popular in northeastern Thailand because of the irresistible flavor of its subtle char. Long, pale-green Asian eggplants are best, as they are less bitter than other varieties; choose the youngest, firmest ones you can find.

Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Brent Ridge make yogurt from the goat milk produced on the Beekman farm. They blend the tangy yogurt into this herb-flecked soup.

Make-Ahead Tip: The pasta salad can be refrigerated overnight in an airtight container. Bring to room temperature before serving.