I’ve eaten Wedge Salad at a lot of restaurants around the country, and I’m not sure I’ve ever had it as good as this recipe. Sometimes I make it with butter lettuce instead of iceberg, and it’s just as good. You might want to make a double batch of candied pecans because it’s too hard to save them all for the salad without snacking on them until they’re all gone. Trust me on this.

I’ve been making this egg casserole since long before I had children. I love it because it uses roasted green chiles, and it has no meat or bread.  There have been times I have added cooked sausage, and it was good, but I prefer the cheesy goodness with green chiles on their own. I have doubled and tripled this recipe many times to feed a crowd. It reheats really well for several days, and sometimes I freeze individual portions and pop them in the microwave whenever I need this to get my day started.

In northern India there are spicy delicacies alongside exquisitely rich vegetarian dishes. This masala dish is made with paneer, a cheese that has a very mild flavor, but doesn’t melt. When paneer is added to curries, it absorbs the rich flavors and adds a creamy texture to the dish.

I love making this rice! It is so full of good flavors, and is delicious on its own or served with meats or curries. If you can find mustard oil it adds a very nice depth of flavor to this dish.

In the heat of summer, sometimes the only relief is biting into a beautiful ripe tomato. I like to stuff them and bake until they’re juicy and blistered. You can fill them with just about any ground meats or vegetables, but I like to use rice or other grains mixed with a variety of roasted vegetables, cheese, and nuts.

I love orzo pasta! It looks like rice and tastes like pasta! This is a good way to use the veggies in your fridge that need somewhere to go. Just roast them up with olive oil, salt and pepper and toss them into the pasta with cheese and basil. I can eat this warm or cold, and it keeps in the fridge for several days. It’s perfect for a picnic or side dish at brunch. Let’s be honest, it’s perfect anytime.

In Indonesia sambals are sauces made from pounded chiles and other fresh ingredients like garlic and ginger. Sometimes they are cooked and sometimes they are left raw. Either way, they add a punch of flavor to any dish they are served with. One of my favorite sambals is made with mostly green ingredients, and I use it in many different ways. It’s delicious on its own with peanut crackers or raw vegetables, but it’s also tasty cooked into stews and roasted meats.

Some of my fondest memories of childhood were when I visited my grandmother, Mammaw. When my sisters and I spent the night at her house one of her favorite sayings was, “Is everybody happy?” She wasn’t much of a cook, but on special occasions she made a dessert called Mystery Pie.

Every summer the Hatch chiles from New Mexico hit the grocery stores and market stands in my hometown. I stock up on pounds and pounds of them, roast them over a hot flame, peel, and freeze. That way, I’ve got roasted green chiles at my disposal anytime I need them. 

In the port city of Essaouira, I cooked with a woman named Alison at L’Atelier Madada. We spent the morning shopping in the spice souk for ingredients to prepare a fish dinner and ghriba (almond cookies) for dessert. We purchased plump almonds which we ground into flour for the dough scented with orange blossom water. After the meal, Alison wrapped the remaining cookies in paper and sent them with me for the long ride back to Marrakesh.

In Bali, there are street cafés called Warungs, where an open fire with burning coconut husks are spitting under racks filled with bamboo sticks packed with flavorful chicken. Unlike the chicken skewers we often make with large chunks of meat, satay is small pieces of meat, sometimes minced with spices, that are threaded onto bamboo sticks, lemongrass stalks or sugar cane.

Naan is a light and bubbly flatbread well-known in India, and best when made in a tandoor oven. I happen to own a tandoor because I fell in love with naan on my first trip to southern India. On the beach in Goa there were tents with delicious naan baking in make-shift tandoor ovens.

My sister, Jill owned a Bed and Breakfast in Canyon, Texas for ten years called The Hudspeth House. Every morning she served granola and fruit in pretty little parfait dishes at breakfast. At Christmas everyone in our family hoped to get a bag of her granola as a gift because it was just so good. Last year she and her husband sold The Hudspeth House and she allowed me to share her recipe for granola.

I learned to make delicious hummus from Chef Nir Feller in Tel Aviv. It really makes a difference if you cook dried chickpeas, instead of using the ones in a tin. It takes some time to cook them, but you can cook a huge batch and freeze them for using later. Be sure to freeze the cooking liquid separately to use also.

One of the best days I spent in Istanbul was cooking in the home of Ela, and then shopping in the Spice Market. Ela lived in the modern neighborhood just across the Galata Bridge in Istanbul. Her apartment overlooked the Black Sea, and we sat in her living room drinking hot tea while she told me stories of cooking with her grandmother as a child.

While visiting the Emilia-Romana region in Northern Italy, my friend Marcello took me to the town of Faenza, best known for the ceramic factories. After an afternoon of shopping for hand painted dessert plates to take home, Marcello took me to his favorite restaurant, Villa Golini where Chef Nicola let me cook with him.

Some of the sweetest strawberries I’ve ever eaten was at a trattoria just outside Rome. It was the beginning of summer, and the tiny berries were just going out of season. In fact, the chef told me I had been given the last ones he had in his kitchen.

When I was in high school home economics class, we spent two days making fried pies. At that time, I thought fried pies only came in little packages at the convenience store. I had no idea you could actually make them yourself. Although I love nearly everything fried, I prefer my hand pies baked with coarse sugar on top. Blueberry hand pies are probably my favorite dessert of the summer, especially when blueberries are ripe and sweet at the farmers market.

When I was in college I studied abroad for a semester. One weekend, my friend Piper and I went to Greece. We spent a day on a boat visiting three Greek islands. When we were at Hydra we found a small estiatório serving fresh bread and fried feta. It was covered in sesame seeds and honey that had been harvested on the island.

Oh how I love a perfectly sweet and ripe peach during the heat of the summer! I also enjoy plums and nectarines, as well as other stone fruits. When I’ve got my grill fired up I love to throw on some fruit so they can absorb a smoky flavor that elevates just about any dish, whether sweet or savory.