Alison Roman starts the new year with brothy beans, garlic bread and bitter greens salad

It's the very first day of the New Year! Starting us off strong with satisfying recipe ideas, New York Times best-selling cookbook author Alison Roman is stopping by the TODAY kitchen to show us how to make hearty beans in savory broth, the very best garlic bread and a bitter, leafy greens salad.

Brothy Beans by Alison Roman

If you'd like to make a pot of beans and are looking for a recipe, know that this is more a method than a recipe. Also, please note that this is more my method, my recipe and not the only method or the only recipe. There are a million fantastic ways to cook beans; this is simply one. The beauty of these beans is in their ridiculous simplicity and how truly wonderful they are in just about anything you can think of. They are also highly customizable, which you know I love.

A Better Garlic Bread by Alison Roman

Garlic bread, when done correctly, is one of life’s finest, simplest pleasures, up there with a salt and pepper roast chicken and a perfect salad with lemon. It’s basic and should not be overthought. But do not, under any circumstance, treat it or mistake this as garlic butter on toast — or worse, soggy bread soaked in garlic butter — because garlic bread is neither of those things.

Garlic bread should be so buttery and garlicky that it borders on obscene. It should be golden brown in all the right places, like on the edges and also in the center, which should be shatteringly crispy, giving way to a tender, impossibly buttery center.

The secret to executing this better garlic bread is treating it like French toast. I don't mean, like, use eggs or sugar or anything, but in the sense that you really, truly do need to soak the hell out of it with your garlicky butter mixture. Enough so you say "Wow, this is the best garlic bread I've ever had" instead of "Is this toast with garlic butter?" Because now that I have made the distinction, I hope you see the difference.

Bitter Leafy Salad by Alison Roman

This is an extremely simple salad meant to provide clean, crunchy relief from the fantastically heavy things on the table. You can use whatever mix of herbs and sturdy greens you can get your hands on here, all with varying degrees of bitterness (escarole, endive, radicchio, castelfranco, even hearty arugula would be nice). Use plenty of lemon juice or vinegar to make it adequately tangy, and do not skimp on black pepper. Just avoid anything that wilts as soon as it's dressed, as this salad should stick around on the table as long as possible.

If you like those easy dinner recipes, you should also try these:

Celery Salad with Cilantro and Sesame by Alison Roman

Alison Roman's Very Good Lasagna by Alison Roman

This article was originally published on TODAY.com