Most people do most of their cooking at dinner, and it’s at dinner we most often eat straight cuts of meat. These, then, are the Food Matters recipes that are most obviously different from the standard (including my own) recipes, in which the proportion of animal to plant foods is literally turned upside down. Vegetables are always abundant and almost always in the forefront. Meat, poultry, and fish are often optional.

But it’s also at dinner where you are most likely to eat most of your calories, and in keeping with that, these are the heartiest recipes in the book; it’s not like you’re going to starve here. If I do say so myself, these recipes are fantastic.

The basic stir-fry is a less-meat classic; there’s an assortment of vegetable-first recipes cooked by different methods, many of which include a bit of meat for flavoring. There are more standard preparations, like kebabs (with a large vegetable component), pasta, and chili. Then there are redefined, modernized international standards, like cassoulet, paella, chicken “not” pie (no crust!), bouillabaisse, and eggplant and chicken parmesan.

And most of these recipes are extremely adaptable: You can take advantage of whatever is in season, and in every case I’ve given suggestions for substituting, so each recipe can be taken in a number of different directions.