Bell Pepper

If you cannot find smoked chicken, use smoked turkey instead.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

A nice hors d'oeuvre teaming fresh vegetables with a simplified version of rouille, the spicy red pepper and garlic sauce that typically accompanies French fish soups.

From Jane Butel's cooking school in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Brussels sprouts sautéed with bacon are good served alongside. Pour a Zinfandel, Syrah or Chardonnay during the meal.

This colorful blend of bell peppers is as delicious at room temperature as it is hot, so it could be several hours ahead.

If you have cooked lamb, beef, or turkey on hand, use it instead of the chicken.

Offer some crusty bread with this lovely main-course salad.

At many places in Italy, roasted peppers are dressed with bagna cauda, the classic warm anchovy and garlic sauce, but our cooks especially enjoyed it at La Contea, a restaurant in Neive, a village in the Piedmont. In this variation, potato slices have been added.

Leaping off the backs of onion-soup-mix boxes and showing up at cocktail parties everywhere, Lipton’s sour cream-and-onion dip took the country by storm. Convenient and quick, the dip also tasted great on potato chips, without which, in the fifties anyway, it wasn’t a party. These days it isn’t a party without little toasts topped by something Mediterranean-hence this zesty update.

At La Porteña, an Argentine restaurant in Jackson Heights, New York, spicy chorizo sausage is used to give this frittata-style omelet its heat. If you can't find chorizo, hot Italian sausage makes a nice substitute.

Serve with grilled chicken or fish. Also great with light goat cheese and French bread as an appetizer.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.