We all know that the margherita is the benchmark when it comes to pizza. What you may not know about us is that when we first opened the restaurant, we were so clueless about what we were doing (and clearly overwhelmed) that when our friend Kyle ordered a margherita, we brought him a margarita cocktail instead. It wasn’t even on the menu. It’s embarrassing to admit, but thankfully we’ve gotten a lot better at taking orders and making pizza since that first night. This is a great margherita.

I remember when I decided to truly take the plunge and start a food blog. Few were doing it for fun, and even fewer were making an actual living from it. Someone once told me, “You discover who you are when you take a path less traveled.” The decision to make a career out of sharing my family’s legacy recipes, as well as recipes I’ve leveled up, didn’t have a road map and has been more difficult than people might think. It requires many skills, from photography to styling to recipe development, which just happened to be one of my favorite parts.

Take these meatballs, for example: They are the quintessential Black folks’ party app, and my family always served them for festive gatherings, like my prom send-o‑and college trunk party. They’re typically made with ground beef—here I give them a remix with lamb, but all in all, I stay true to what made them special in the first place: that unbelievable sticky-sweet spiced sauce. I hope that when someone makes this recipe for the first time, it’ll t right into their life, like a well-made glove. It’s moments like these, being invited into someone’s space when they make one of my recipes, that have made me truly grateful for all the blessings that food blogging has provided me.

This lemony polenta cake is the perfect treat to share at a summer gathering. Topped with toasted almonds and ruby red strawberries, it looks impressive, but it’s delightfully simple to make. The moist, tender cake is wonderful on its own, but you could certainly dress it up more with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a dusting of powdered sugar.

When you’re cooking in the summer, the last thing you want is to be stuck in the kitchen all day, and this is an impressive salad that takes only minutes to put together. The key here is to shave the zucchini wafer-thin, ideally with a mandoline, but if you don’t have one or are intimidated by it, with a vegetable peeler. You also want to shave the zucchini at the last possible minute and in elongated pieces rotating around the core, so you’re not getting that spongy middle. The long, thin ribbons soak up the flavors of the herbs, olive oil, and lemon.

No other outdoors dish says party quite like paella. Paella is meant for feasts, for gatherings, for wood-fired cooking. And if you break it down into steps and pay attention as it cooks, truly great prep-ahead camp paella is remarkably straightforward.

While the main recipe is for the showstoppiest of showstoppers—firecrisped rice under a tangle of squid and smoky seared shrimp—I’ve also included a chicken and artichoke version, as well as a vegan chickpea option. All three are celebrations in a pan, and absolutely sublime.

This recipe holds a certain special memory for me. Growing up, my family would celebrate birthdays, awards, or just life at a vegan Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. Dry-fried green beans were a must-have every time we went there. Something about escaping the cold of San Francisco and enjoying slightly charred green beans with stewed eggplant and fried rice was so comforting. I knew I wanted to re-create this recipe and hopefully share the comforting energy that comes with it.

Dry-frying is a classic technique that, despite its name, doesn’t involve a completely dry pan but rather a pan with a very small amount of oil. Dry-frying takes moisture out of the ingredients and makes them crispy. I love to dry-fry my green beans because this technique gives the green beans a nice charred flavor without resulting in overcooked and listless green beans. Tien Tsin chiles are small, mild dried chiles that impart lots of smoky chile flavor. Depending on where you live, they can be hard to find, but I recommend going to stores specializing in Chinese foods, a spice shop, or substituting with another small dried pepper such as chile de arbol. Sichuan peppercorns can be found at most grocery stores, but if you have trouble finding them, a spice shop is a good place to look. The spices in this recipe are used to flavor the oil in the pan and indirectly infuse the green beans.

You know it’s officially summer when juicy, sweet, refreshing fruit hits the farm stands. Along country roads in the Southern states, you’ll find numerous fruit and vegetable stands. In the old days, there would be metal cattle-watering troughs filled with cold water, ice and freshly picked watermelons. We would stop daily to grab a melon, sometimes barely making it to the back of the station wagon before slicing one open and devouring it right then and there. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I came to learn about gazpachos, so this recipe combines my childhood memories with my adult need to elevate those taste memories. But, really, does it get any better than a farm-stand snack?