EDITOR’S NOTE: Last week, we introduced you to Mark's latest cookbook, the completely revised and updated How to Cook Everything Fast. And now we're giving you some recipes from the book to try for dinner — or whenever!

In addition, we’ll be giving away three signed copies of our new cookbook to subscribers.

Become a member today and we’ll enter your name THREE times in this special drawing. Plus, you get two weeks FREE on us if you sign up to become a member by October 3.

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Take it away, Mark...

We know what eating well is but don’t always have the time to prepare meals at home, so we settle for some spin on eating fast. Yet as I asserted in 2014 with the first edition of this book, cooking remains an essential human activity. It can relax us after long, stressful days, bring us closer to our families, and put a lifetime of nourishment and endless eating possibilities right at our fingertips. The trick is to get food on the table faster — and better — than the abundance of restaurants and food companies jockeying to feed us.

Life may have become more complicated, but cooking can become simpler.

The fact is that you do have time to cook: You just need better recipes. Imagine a road map that captures the rhythm of the kitchen, where preparation and cooking happen seamlessly. Soup begins to simmer while you prepare more vegetables for the pot; oil shimmers in a skillet as you chop an onion; broiled meat rests while rice steams. This is naturally fast cooking, the kind experienced cooks do intuitively.

Fast cooking involves strategy not compromise. Smart, easy techniques, like cutting meat into smaller pieces for lightning-quick braises and harnessing the power of the broiler, give you all the pleasure of eating homemade meals with minimal work and — perhaps more important — time.

The result is delicious food prepared from real ingredients — quickly.

This completely revised and updated How to Cook Everything Fast is both a series of strategies and a collection of innovative recipes that do the planning and organizing for you. And this time, photographs both inspire and provide additional details.

Here are this week’s suggestions of what’s for dinner — all recipes from the new edition of How to Cook Everything Fast.

Read on for

• Provençal Chicken

• Tortilla Scramble

• Red Lentils With Apples

• and Reverse Risotto

Provençal Chicken

I’m a sucker for the flavors of Provence; olives, capers, garlic, and tomatoes are the makings of this hearty country stew. When I’m not in a hurry, I make it with bone-in parts and pay attention to browning the skin and all that. On busy weeknights, this recipe requires blissfully less focus. Serve with sliced baguette or buttered cannellini beans.