My friend Michelli came up with this simple recipe one early-summer afternoon as a way to use up a big pile of chiles and some honey that I had recently taken from the beehive. The dish soon became a favorite. Chicken tenders cook very quickly, which helps keep them juicy, and the honey in the recipe caramelizes in no time. Remove the jalapeño seeds for a less spicy version. If you don't want to grill the tenders, they can be broiled about 5 inches from the heat for about 6 minutes.

I wanted to call this recipe "Zuppa di Ceci con Pomodori," but my copy editor insisted that it be in English. But doesn't it sound better in Italian? For optimum flavor, use dried beans to make this hearty dish. However, the beans do require overnight soaking before being cooked, so in a pinch you can use canned garbanzos. Orzo is a small, rice-shaped pasta that lends itself well to this soup, but feel free to substitute any pasta you happen to have on hand.

Carolina Gold rice “grits” from Anson Mills are short, uneven pieces of rice that have been broken during the threshing process. They cook up creamier than long-grain white rice, which can be substituted in this recipe: pulse it in batches in a spice mill or clean coffee grinder for 5 seconds to create the same effect.

My favorite way to use them is in a “tomato tasting” salad: Assemble as many varieties, colors, shapes, and sizes of very ripe tomatoes as you can find. Choose a few different “cuts” for variety; for example, cut small yellow pears in half lengthwise to reveal their curves, big beefsteaks in large rectangular chunks, small ridged ones crosswise in thick slices, and some of different colors in small wedges. Arrange them in groups on a long shallow platter and season generously with salt, fresh pepper, and olive oil. As your guests hover expectantly, let the tomatoes sit for at least 30 minutes and up to an hour. Serve with a spoon for the juices.

My dad, Vince, prefers his tomatoes in big rounds, seasoned generously with sea or kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, and layered on top with thinly sliced red onion, a good quantity of olive oil, and a little red wine vinegar, with bruised fresh oregano leaves strewn over the top. With the tomatoes, Vince serves a grilled flank steak that he has marinated in spicy mustard since morning.

Transfer the cream from the freezer to the refrigerator three hours before serving.
Equipment Needed: a candy thermometer, a free-standing mixture--or if using a hand-held mixer, another pair of hands

Blurring the lines between ice cream and mousse, simplicity and finesse, nostalgia and novelty, this is the kind of dessert that’s hard to categorize but easy to love. Billows of softly-whipped cream and meringue give it loft. Raspberries, pureed and whole, give it rosy tang. Brandy, black pepper and a pureed whole vanilla bean--tricks from a Venetian cook--give it depth and brawn. This dessert needs a commitment, though once it’s safely stashed in the freezer you can forget about it completely for up to two months.

Any fruit can stand in for the raspberries, and do play with the presentation. Try freezing this in a ring mold, lining the bottom with the extra berries so they glisten like a crown of rubies when turned out.

Cook to Cook: The key here is the Italian meringue, a mixture of beaten egg whites cooked with hot sugar syrup (think airy, whipped marshmallows) that gives frozen desserts exceptional texture and stability. It’s a little fussy but not difficult; just follow the instructions carefully and you’ll be home free. And not only will you feel like a pro for having conquered it, suddenly you’ll find a whole universe of frozen creations at your fingertips.

Keeps in a sealed jar in refrigerator for a month or more.

Bitter greens with candied lemon peel, pine nuts, balsamico, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese become a salad destined for the holidays. The idea of this salad began in a favorite source--an Italian Renaissance cookbook from 1570, The Opera Bartolomeo Scappi, (now in translation from the University of Toronto Press, 2008). What charms me about the dish is how new it feels.

Wine: Salads can be very tricky with wines, and this one is particularly so because of its sweetness, and the intense zestiness of the vinegar. However, you can make a terrific match with a German Riesling made from ripe grapes (look for “Kabinett” or “Spätlese” on the label), but finished dry (“Trocken”) or off-dry (“Habltrocken”).

Keeps for several weeks in an airtight container.

Who knew making candied peel was so easy, and frankly satisfying! They are quite beautiful when finished and a great gift to bring to a favorite hostess, so make extra.

Cook to Cook: Since you are actually eating the peel, please use organic lemons if at all possible. Be sure to save the lemon syrup, as it is delicious in iced tea.

Both the sauce and the gnocchi dough can be made up to 2 days in advance and refrigerated. Once cooked, serve and eat immediately.

Tender, milky and virtually foolproof to make, these gnocchi no doubt had clouds as ancestors-- they are that light. The saffron in the sauce opens up once the sauce and dumplings come together.

With so few ingredients, this dish hinges on their quality, which brings us to the ricotta. It’s tough to find good store-bought ricotta, so make your own. It’s crazily easy and the flavor will blow you away. Another advantage to your own ricotta is the dough becomes easier to handle than when made with store-bought. This is the homemade pasta to make with little kids; anyone who can work with Playdough can make these gnocchi with expertise.

Wine: Pair this delicate pasta with a light and delicate red from Italy, such as Barbera, Pinot Nero, Valpolicella, or a fresh, young Chianti.

Keeps up to 3 days covered in the refrigerator, and freezes for 3 months

For use in the Homemade Ricotta Gnocchi with Saffron Tomato Sauce recipe.

Can be made up to 2 days in advance and refrigerated. Because of the delicate cheese, these do not freeze well.

For use in the Homemade Ricotta Gnocchi with Saffron Tomato Sauce recipe.

Keeps up to 3 days, covered, in the refrigerator.

Cook to Cook: Rinsing the pot with cold water before pouring in the milk will save you some serious cleanup! The reserved liquid whey can go into soups, stews and curries, and be used to cook pasta and rice. It will keep refrigerated up to 3 days.

Inspired by an old 19th-century American recipe, these golden peaches or nectarines are stained crimson by port wine and served in an intense vanilla cream, drizzled with their ruby cooking syrup. Make two to three days ahead and keep chilled. Assemble at the picnic site.

From the An Early Summer Picnic menu.

This salad can be made and refrigerated for up to 3 days. Test before serving and adjust vinegar and seasonings if needed.

From the An Early Summer Picnic menu.

Serve at room temperature.

From the An Early Summer Picnic menu.

Seasoned in the style of ancient Greece, this dish benefits from marinating overnight in the refrigerator. Serve chilled and garnished with lemon wedges.

From the An Early Summer Picnic menu.

From the An Early Summer Picnic menu.

Maybe it's taking things for granted, but Alexander the Great would have liked these olives. The seasonings are straight from his place and time - Greece at about 320 BC. Besides being classic finger food, these are a good foil for the cheese and tomatoes, coarse bread and cool wine. Since the olives keep about two weeks in a refrigerator and leftovers will be welcome, it is a generous recipe.

From the An Early Summer Picnic menu.

Chard grows easily. How gratifying that it's cut-and-come-again. If you have a plot for chard, you learn to harvest a huge quantity and steam an enormous potful at once. Then you drain and cool the much-reduced clump of greens, squeeze out the water, and form softball-size balls. What a boon for the cook. You can freeze these balls individually in plastic wrap. They're then ready for soups or this very typical sauté. Always use most of the stems, cut into small hunks. Kale works just as well in this recipe.

This is a bowl brimming with the fresh, clear tastes of spring: sticks of carrots, slivers of garlic, handfuls of baby spinach, all married with the earthy meatiness of white beans and the citrus scent of fresh bay leaves.

The vegetables can be roasted a day ahead and the biriyani then assembled and baked the day of the feast. In fact, roasting the vegetables a day in advance only makes the dish better.

If the test of a great dish is that you taste something new and delicious with each mouthful, then this northern Indian masterpiece is in the first ranks. It’s special occasion food there and it should be for us too.

Here you will find our vegetarian take, easily made vegan by substituting soy milk and margarine. Vegetables are roasted in a ginger-garlic-cashew puree, stuffed inside a mound of spice-studded golden rice and garnished with raisins, more cashews and browned slivers of onion.

Feel free to put your imagination to work on this biriyani. Substitute any vegetables you like, just remember to roast the hard ones with the hard ones and the tender with the tender.

Cook to Cook: If you have candied ginger at hand, chop up a tablespoon or two and add it to the garnishes at the end.

Wine: Both red and white work with this dish. Try a Pinot Gris or a Pinot Noir from New Zealand.

Lemon curd whizzed in a food processor for a minute or so becomes a lighter-than-air, creamy sauce for these sweet and tangy dessert crêpes, which were created by pastry chef and cookbook author Kir Jensen of The Sugar Cube food cart in Portland, Oregon. If you're using fresh rhubarb, pick out the darkest red stalks you can find -- they have the best flavor and color.

Kir Jensen, a pastry chef and owner of The Sugar Cube food cart in Portland, Oregon, created these crêpes to go with the roasted rhubarb and lemon cream recipes. But these nutty crêpes would be great in many of the sweet recipes in this book, or eaten on their own with just a smear of butter and a drizzle of honey. Look for almond paste and almond meal in the baking section of your local supermarket. (When choosing almond paste, avoid marzipan, which is not the same thing.) Almond meal is very finely ground almonds; it's like a coarse flour.

Serve with the Roasted Rhubarb and Lemon Cream.

This is the quintessential spring luncheon dish, all about the sweetness that's finally bursting up in gardens -- long-awaited asparagus, shallot and carrot -- made rich with sweet cream. It's also about the way that sweetness seems more pronounced against the salty ham and the tangy mustard.

I can't let July 4 go by without putting into print once again my favorite baked beans for the holiday. They, too, are sticky sweet-tart and smoky from practically being candied as they bake with their bacon, brown sugar, garlic and vinegar.

Note: You could do this recipe a couple of days ahead and reheat the beans 40 minutes before serving.

Man, do I love Australia. First, my oldest daughter was conceived there on our honeymoon…and while we're on the subject, have I ever shared with you that we almost named her Sydney as a nod to her... um... point of origin? In the end, I chickened out, though -- I thought that might be a little corny. Or awkward to explain. Or…nevermind.

I also love Australia because of food writer Jill Dupliex, who first introduced me to these delicious smashed taters years and years ago. (Thank you, Jill, for changing my life with these little treats.)

I also love Australia because of Russell Crowe. But that's another story for another time.

A celestial trio of Italian ingredients -- dried figs, sliced prosciutto, and creamy Gorgonzola -- makes an irresistible filling for boneless chicken breasts. Once stuffed and skewered, the breasts are pan-seared, then quickly roasted until golden brown. A glaze made with honey and balsamic vinegar gives the chicken a polished look and complements the distinctive flavors of the stuffing.

Ever eat a tree? I know, I sound like Euell Gibbons. But really, you can eat the fresh growing tips of spruce or fir trees in any number of ways. My favorite is steeped in a simple syrup. The syrup smells like a pine forest, tastes a little citrusy — moreso if you add lemon juice — and adds a wonderful woodsy note to glazed pheasant, grouse or chicken.

Spruce tip syrup is even better mixed with ice cold water, carbonated or no, and a hint of lime or lemon juice. And it makes a fascinating cocktail mixed with gin.

To gather spruce or fir tree tips, look in springtime for the light-colored ends of the trees: These are the new growth shoots from the tree. Older shoots get too resinous to be very tasty. Work your way around the tree and pick from scattered places so you don’t damage the tree — and never pick the top of a young tree, or you can possibly stunt its future growth.

This syrup should be kept in the fridge, where it should last about 4 months.

This is one of the cooler dishes I’ve ever made. I’d heard about Chinese tea eggs before, but had never made them. Then I found myself working with madrone bark, which peels off in cinnamon-like curls every summer. The Indians here in California used madrone bark tea medicinally, and I’ve been experimenting with the concoction, which tastes like a combination of cinnamon, mushrooms, woodsmoke — and something I can’t quite pin down.

The result is a warm and lovely hard-boiled egg that, if you crack the egg after an initial boil, will be covered in a latticework of madrone tea marks. It is beautiful; looks like a spiderweb.

Once cooked, these tea eggs will last in the fridge for 10 days, but they are best within three days.

This is the quintessential Italian pasta dish, especially in Naples and Rome. The clams are the smaller ones-- vongole veraci-- and they are always cooked in their shells. Once they open, the sauce is done. Here in the States, linguine with clam sauce is made with chopped clams, and I guess this adjustment makes sense, especially since the clams here can be quite large, from littlenecks (small to medium) to topnecks (large) to quahogs or chowder clams (very large). Today, thought, one is ever more likely to find smaller cockles on the market; if you find them, by all means use them.

The beauty and delight of this dish is that it is so fresh and clean -- and it is a cinch to make. It’s important to make the pesto with the best ingredients then just toss in the hot cooked spaghetti to coat it and enjoy.

Gould farm in Monterey, Massachusetts, is a farm like many others in some respects -- there are acres of organic gardens along both sides of the narrow road and cows that greet you with their kind stares. Up the hill there are pigs and chickens, and there is a dairy where Cheddar is cultured and aged before traveling to stores all over this part of the state. Poke your head into any door or walk through the garden beds and you will find staff and volunteers hard at work.

C. J. Walton came to Gould Farm as a volunteer in his early twenties. After a time at the Culinary Institute of American, he returned to the farm to develop his bread and pastry skills. He and the Harvest Barn team make bread, bagels, pastries, desserts, and yogurt for both the people who live and work at the Farm and the visitors who come to the café at the barn. I always end up talking to C. J. during my visits; whether it's his latest discovery on how to make ice cream more shelf stable or what new flour has improved the pizza crust; we get to talking and the girls always have to pull me out of there. C. J. also takes on the challenges of re-creating store-bought foods, and one Saturday I went into the café to buy croissants and I walked out with this recipe. If you are a veggie burger lover, try this one, and I'll wager that you'll never need another box of veggie burgers again. This comes together quickly, so have all of your ingredients chopped and ready to go.

I love the versatility of asparagus. Here it gets a bit of an Asian treatment with the addition of fresh ginger and garlic. The cod has a nice chewy flake to it and is a good foil for the ginger.

Mackerel is very similar to tuna in flavor, so I thought to try this substitution one day. I loved the results. Serve with a salad for a light lunch or with Pecan Quinoa Pilaf and Sautéed Greens with Orange, Anchovy, and Red Onion for an easy dinner.

The second and third day the dish gets better and better.

This doubles easily.

Here’s a one-pot supper for friends, or for a work night when you want something quick.

This pan roasting technique infuses flavors so quickly, especially when the chickpeas brown and begin tasting a little like hazelnuts. Boiling down a little vinegar with them makes for a subtle snap. Serve the pan roast hot or warm with a salad of baby arugula or an orange salad with red onion.

Cook to Cook: The larger the pan, the faster this cooks.

For the canned vegetable broth, I wish I could recommend an organic broth, but all I have tasted so far are packed with carrots and/or other sweet ingredients, which makes them so sweet they throw off the balance of most recipes. This adds up to my suggesting College Inn or Swanson’s vegetable broths, not ideal, but the best choices found so far.

I’d tell you to stick a Post-it right here because, once you try these, you’ll be making them often—but they’re simple enough that after one time through, you’ll probably remember how to make them forever. These green beans are cooked to falling-apart-ness in what’s essentially a garlic-tomato confit. Every bite is imbued with flavor—garlicky, a little hot, meltingly tender; the kind of good that, with your first bite, you close your eyes and grow silent.

The traditional Greek recipes in which this method is rooted use as much as three quarters of a cup of olive oil—too much for me. The few tablespoons here give flavor and allow the green beans to caramelize. Pretty they are not, but with one bite that is moot. Back in my restaurant days, I once received a proposal of marriage from a guest on the basis of these green beans.

Pay careful attention to the details here. Technique is all.