Banana peppers are a Southern favorite and you can fry them either fresh or pickled. This is a perfect accompaniment to roasted ham or fried chicken. Since banana peppers are mild, use yellow wax hots for spicier fried peppers.

This is an all-purpose filling that is used here in a to make a breakfast meal wrapped in a warm flour tortilla, but it is also great as a filling in taco shells. In fact, the eggs taste great all by themselves. Whichever way you eat them, they make great breakfast sandwiches.

East meets the Southwest in this recipe, which illustrates the fact that the basic stir-fry technique can be applied to just about any cuisine.

Using a commercial salsa as a base for this soup makes it quick and easy to prepare as well as allowing you to choose your spice level from mild to wild. The heat of the salsa will intensify, so I won’’t use anything that is too hot or a salsa that is habanero based. This simple soup can also be expanded to a more hearty soup, with the addition of ingredients such as cooked pinto or black beans, chicken or turkey, or even whole kernel corn. Add these to the soup after it has been pureed. For a taste of green chile, chicken enchiladas in a soup bowl, just use green chile salsa and chicken.

Traditionally served at Easter time, cabrito (young goat or kid) is sometimes smoked in a pit in the ground, but this recipe is far easier. To find kid, ask an independent butcher or locate a goat ranch in your area. There really is no substitute except, of course, a young sheep.

I usually add chopped green New Mexican chile to this recipe but since the only fresh green chile I could find were Anaheims that were too mild, I decided to use the juice from the serranos since I knew it was hot.