Zucchini Salad

When zucchini is at its freshest and most plentiful, make this salad; the feta, pine nuts, fresh herbs and tomatoes are all fantastic with it.

According to Choi, the idea for the wacky yet delicious combination of ingredients in this salad came to him in a dream about Italian grandmothers cooking on Saturn. He balances the flavors with a salsa that gets a double dose of tartness from rice vinegar and purple grape juice.

In addition to salt, Tyler Florence uses miso--the creamy Japanese soybean paste'to season his crisp salad of zucchini ribbons tossed with toasted sesame seeds and crackling strips of nori (dried seaweed). Be sure to serve this zucchini salad as soon as it's ready because it can get watery while it sits.

One of the wonderful things about winemaker Louis-Michel Liger-Belair's lemony salad is that it's so quick to make. Since the zucchini is served raw, be sure to use the smallest, freshest ones you can find. The salad can be garnished with pistachios, which add a little sweetness, or Italian pine nuts.

Armand Arnal uses ingredients from his restaurant's enormous organic garden to create seasonal Provencal dishes like this salad of chicken tossed with pine nuts and lemon-marinated zucchini.

This simple, lively salad is an incredible mix of flavors and textures. The key, according to South American chef Francis Mallmann, is to be generous with all of the components. "Everything you see on a plate, you have to taste it. If you have mint, you have to have a lot of it so that you can taste it," he says.

Roasting zucchini tuns them soft yet concentrates the flavor. Chunks of them are tossed with nicely chewy fregola and crunchy pistachios, then powerfully seaasoned with lemon (both the zest and the juice), super fragrant basil leaves and a hit of crushed red pepper.