Lime

Although this sweet-tart cheesecake is great with a homemade graham cracker crust, which you can whip up pretty quickly, to make this easy cheesecake even easier, use a 9-inch ready-to-use all-natural graham cracker piecrust. If you like a limier flavor, add a teaspoon of lime zest to the batter (which you can sample before cooking because, thanks to chia, there are no raw eggs to worry about).

The black pepper adds a surprising aromatic and spicy flavor to the sweet grilled peaches. The recipe here makes more syrup than you'll likely need but it will keep in the refrigerator for at least 1 week and is great in a cocktail or with sparkling water.

This slushy blender cocktail is perfect for whiling away the summer hours.

This fish is topped with cilantro, but it's also great with pickled ginger.

The Paloma—often made with store bought grapefruit soda—is Mexico'’s most popular cocktail. This fancified version uses grilled fresh grapefruit and grilled lime to give the drink a slightly smoky edge.

This simple sauce goes well with spring rolls as a dipping sauce. Also, it makes a good marinade for seafood. I once served grilled trout marinated in this sauce to a friend who disliked fish—it completely changed his mind!

Flavor Profile: Spicy, tart, aromatic, salty, umami-rich Try it with: Any Som Tam (Papaya salad and family) and/or Phat Khanaeng (Stir-fried Brussels sprouts). Needs Khao Niaw (Sticky rice). The recipe for steak salad is a classic, but naam tok made with mushrooms is less common. Yet mushrooms are everywhere in Thailand and echo the texture and even the umami-rich flavor of animal flesh. Thailand has a long history of vegetarian food, for strict Buddhists and those celebrating Buddhist holidays. And while I rarely spend time considering the needs of vegetarians, I figured that if I swapped out the fish sauce in the original for thin soy sauce, then they'd have something to eat at Pok Pok.

While waiting for a main course to finish cooking, you can make this simple salad with the remnants of a bunch of broccoli. Or, you can integrate the shaved broccoli, which is sweet, mild, and tender, into other lettuce-based salads, or julienne the strips for cabbage slaws.

Greetings, comrade. This quasirevolutionary sorbetto is so bone-chillingly good that there'll never need to be another cold war. It's one of the flavors we were developing for our "Dictators of Cool" collection, which included our old favorites Adolf Hitler (The Great Licktator), Colonel Gaddafi (Cone El Gaddafi), and David Cameron (Fake 99, after a British ice cream cone).

SUPERFOODS: Eggs, Kiwifruit, Oats, Pumpkin Seeds The tasty, tender graham cracker crust of this light pie subs pumpkin seeds and ground flax (both rich in unsaturated fats) for butter. You won't notice the difference, but your body will! These good-for-you fats readily burn fat off you.

Persimmons are one of the hallmarks of fall. From the time the temperature drops until the holidays, persimmons start making their way to the local farmers' market. The waiting game can be almost unbearable, but once they are finally ripe, the reward justifies the wait. My favorite thing to do with persimmons is to press the ultra-ripe fruit through a fine-mesh strainer, discard the skin and seeds, and shake the resulting pulp into my fall Margaritas.

The Suffering Bastard is a 1940s tiki standby that was originally made with bourbon and gin as its base. This variation utilizes cask-strength True Blue corn whiskey from Balcones Distilling in Waco, with a nod to that city's famous teetotaling population.

A blend of rums, exotic juices, liqueurs, aromatic spices, absinthe, and trepidation. One from the Soulshakers' greatest hits collection, this drink has been honed to a lethal edge over the past eight years at Gaz's Rocking Blues at London's Notting Hill Carnival and the Glastonbury Festival in southwest England.

I spiked this spiritous Michelada with smoky mezcal and seasoned it with celery bitters.

The tequila sunrise and the margarita come together in this frozen drink recipe that's bursting with citrus notes and a refreshing tang.

Bartender's Notes: As you read through this recipe, you'll notice that it mirrors pretty classic margarita proportions … with the addition of orange bitters. Bitters work their magic here, as they do in many drinks, by adding depth, complexity and balance to otherwise pretty simple ingredients. And when you're mixing a drink with mezcal, that depth, complexity and balance are the hardest parts to achieve.

Sugary mixes turn classic margs into calorie bombs. Limeade gives this boozy bev some sweetness without the sugar overload.

The problem with Franco-American food trends, like the current one with macarons—those pastel puffs of sweet air that seem to be everywhere—is that its good ol' American predecessor, the macaroon, gets forgotten. The truth is, though, we never stopped loving the coconut macaroon. In fact, we craved its dense, moist chew. Retrofit the macaroon as a bite-size sandwich filled with a pucker-worthy tart lime curd, and you've caught a new trend headed straight for the stars. Editor's Note: This recipe is part of Gourmet's Modern Menu for Holiday Cookie Craze. Menu also includes Pistachio Cranberry Oatmeal Icebox Cookies and Salted Brown Butter Cookies .