Sometimes the simplest, last-minute meals turn out better than something you’ve planned for ages. I was making a healthy dinner for my Mom and a couple of my siblings last weekend. I had chicken breasts, some cornmeal, and some fresh Roma (plum) tomatoes from my patio container garden.

Feeling in a Mediterranean mood, I first cooked up some polenta, which seemed like a nice change from pasta. Then I cooked the chicken breasts with olive oil, lots of garlic, some onion, some tomato sauce, and fresh garden tomatoes. It tasted divine and was a big hit.

Here’s a recipe, of sorts (I didn’t really measure anything). Feel free to improvise. You could add chopped fresh parsley, chopped black olives, or some chopped bell peppers to the chicken. And of course, you can save a lot of time by buying ready-made polenta, or by substituting pasta.

Chicken and Fresh Tomatoes on Polenta

Makes 4 to 6 servings

To make the polenta: Bring 3 cups of the water and salt to a boil. Add the remaining cup of water (cold) to the cornmeal and stir to moisten it. (This step is optional, but helps keep the cornmeal from lumping when you add it to the boiling water. If you prefer to skip this step, bring all 4 cups of water to a boil.) Gradually stir the cornmeal into the boiling water. Continue cooking, stirring frequently, for about 30 minutes, or until the polenta is thickened but still creamy and comes cleanly away from the sides of the pan when you stir it. If the polenta begins to thicken too much, add a little more hot water. Polenta doesn’t need to be served hot, so you can set it aside while you make the chicken.

To prepare the chicken: Heat the olive oil in a large skillet and add the onion. Cook over medium-high heat until translucent, then add the garlic and cook a few seconds until fragrant. With a slotted spoon, remove the onions and garlic to a plate.

Add the chicken to the skillet and brown well on both sides. Then add the onions and garlic back to the pan, along with the tomato sauce and Italian seasoning. Cook for another 5 minutes or so, until the chicken is cooked through. Stir in the chopped fresh tomatoes and season with salt (if desired) and pepper.

Serve the chicken over scoops of the polenta.

One of my favorite summer dishes is my version of Salade Nicoise, the French salad made with tuna, eggs, tomatoes, potatoes and green beans. It doesn’t require much cooking, it’s served cold, and most importantly, everyone in our family likes it.

The French original is a composed salad, with the various components kept more separate. Mine is a bit more of a mishmash, with potato salad sitting atop greens and tuna salad atop that.

I generally make my own vinaigrette, flavored with a bit of garlic and mustard, but a good bottled vinaigrette or Caesar-style dressing would work just fine.

It is a bit of work to prepare all the ingredients, but you can prepare them in advance and assemble the salad just before serving.

The recipe traditionally calls for canned tuna, but for a really nice flavor, you can substitute grilled fresh tuna, cut into chunks.

Ginger’s Salade Nicoise

Makes 4 to 6 main-course servings

Place the potatoes in a pan with cold water to cover. Bring to a boil and cook for 20 to 30 minutes, or just until they can be pierced easily with a fork. Rinse under cold water. When cool, peel potatoes and cut into chunks or slices. Set aside.

Meanwhile, cook green beans in boiling water until tender-crisp, about 7 to 8 minutes. Rinse under cold water, drain and set aside.

Just before serving, assemble salad: Make a bed of the lettuce or greens on a large platter. Top with green beans, arranged end to end around the edges of the lettuce. Arrange tomato wedges, eggs and olives decoratively around edge of platter.

Toss the potatoes with vinaigrette, salt and pepper to taste. Mound in the middle of the platter.

Moisten the tuna with a little of the vinaigrette and mound it on top of the potatoes.

Scatter chopped parsley or capers over salad.

Serve immediately.

The absence of Dino was the first sign that the owners of my favorite Italian deli, Minelli’s, have passed the torch to a younger generation.

Not too long ago, Minelli’s moved to new quarters. One thing that apparently didn’t move with them was the bobblehead Dean Martin doll that used to watch over the meat case.

You pretty much gotta be over 45 to remember who Dean Martin was. (For the youngsters among you, Dean Martin, born Dino Crocetti, was an Italian-American singer, actor and comedian who was very popular from the ’50s through the ’70s. He was part of the Hollywood “Rat Pack” that also included such luminaries as Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.)

I was happy to see that a portrait of Jesus and a statue of St. Joseph (patron saint of Italy) still presided over the meat case. One of my food rules is to never trust an Italian deli where Jesus and/or Joseph are nowhere to be seen.

Thankfully, Dino’s absence hasn’t affected the quality at Minelli’s. The deli serves up unpretentious, reasonably priced, good Italian foodstuffs. Homemade meatballs and ravioli. Mama Minelli’s olive salad. Mortadella that even the counterman swoons for. (”Try this,” he urges, offering a piece. “It melts in your mouth. It won’t go sour.” ) Hot Italian sausage that strikes just the right flavor balance among the fennel, garlic and hot pepper. Provolone that tastes like real cheese instead of flavored plastic. Sicilian rice balls and tiramisu and Italian amaretti.

Thank you, St. Joseph, for places like Minelli’s. With or without Dino.

In cooking, as in life, sometimes the simplest things can be the most vexing. Take the perfect boiled egg. If you have not quite mastered this skill, you know how unappealing a pitted, rubbery, sulphuric, green-yolked egg can be.

With Easter on the horizon, a lesson in how to boil eggs seems in order.

First off, the egg isn’t really boiled–or shouldn’t be. Briskly boiling water will crack the egg and toughen it. It’s more accurate to refer to it as a hard-cooked egg, but since just about everyone calls them boiled eggs, I will too.

The perfect hard boiled egg has a firm but not rubbery white, a velvety yolk, and an uncracked shell that doesn’t cling to the egg white with the stubbornness of glue when you try to peel it.

As for technique, the most foolproof I’ve found is this:

1. Place the eggs in a heavy-bottomed pan with enough cool water to completely cover them.
2. Place on medium-high heat.
3. As soon as the water comes to a boil, turn off the heat.
4. Cover the pan and let the eggs stand for 15 minutes. Subtract 5 minutes if you like your yolks on the soft side. Add 1 to 2 minutes if you like the yolks harder or if you’re cooking jumbo eggs.
5. Drain the eggs and rinse under cold water. (I fill the cooking pan with cold water and ice to immediately cool down the eggs.)

Starting the eggs in cold water and heating them gradually makes the egg shells less likely to crack. Turning off the heat allows them to cook without overcooking. And putting them under cold water stops the cooking and makes the shells easier to remove.

It’s important to pay attention so you know when the water begins to boil. When you hear the eggs begin to rock in the pan, it’s time to turn off the heat.

If you plan to dye the eggs for Easter, be sure to add vinegar to the dye-water mixture (most dye packets will instruct you to do this). The acid helps dissolve the eggshell’s natural waxy coating so the dye can permeate the shell.

Have a bunch of Easter eggs to use up? Try using them in my recipe for a rich, buttery cookie.

I had a friend whose 4-year-old son would eat only white foods. As many mothers can relate, this is not an unusual phase for young kids to go through. For a year, she gritted her teeth and served him nothing but pasta, rice, potatoes, white bread, and chicken breast.

I was thinking of this recently when I encountered yet another rant against “white” foods, the evil food du jour. You know, that whole glycemic index thing. Avoid white bread, white potatoes, white sugar, pasta, white rice. They’ll make you fat and lead to heart disease and foggy brain and no sex and who knows what else.

It’s like toddlerhood in reverse.

There’s a delicious spoof of the no white foods trend (killer potatoes! killer milk!) on a witty new blog by the earnest but nonexistent organization The Health Institute of Nutrition (T.H.I.N.—get it?).

I love whole grains. Always have. I actually prefer whole-wheat bread and whole-grain pasta. (I do confess to a weakness for sugar, white and otherwise.) For diabetics, refined carbs can indeed pose a problem. And people in America and the rest of Western civilization probably eat way too many refined starches. (I do have to wonder why there aren’t more fat people in eastern Asia, given the vast quantities of white rice they eat.)

But I can’t help but notice that even as the diet books trumpet the glycemic index and your sister-in-law refuses to eat any vegetable with eyes, the “frozen treats” aisle in the average American supermarket keeps getting bigger. And bigger. And bigger. Any day now, “ice cream novelties” will engulf the entire store. Call me suspicious, but I have the sneaking feeling that maybe just a few of the folks who shun white aren’t counting the white sugar in Fudgesicles.

Come to think of it, the friend’s kid who would eat only white foods did make exceptions for things like, say, chocolate and red licorice.

I guess we never really outgrow toddlerhood.