Chile

Marinate shrimp in a sweet-spicy mixture of apricot preserves, lime, habanero, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger—then throw them on the grill for dinner in 15 minutes.

The smoky charred peppers play well with the cool cucumbers and lemony ricotta. If you can’t find Italian frying peppers or just aren’t feeling them, grilled eggplant or zucchini would also pair well here.

Serve this spicy pepper jelly with fresh cornbread muffins.

Here, chicken and cauliflower get tossed in a garlicky chipotle marinade, roasted to charred perfection and nestled into tortillas. Want to make these vegetarian? Cut the chicken and double the cauli.

The perfect romantic-comedy homage in a drink—a little sweet, a little bitter, and HOT. 

A spicy riff on the classic Margarita cocktail.

Hold these sesame-coated chocolate-and-nut cookies up to the light to appreciate the stained-glass effect of the dried fruit.

Beets can stand up to a hard roast and plenty of spice. Their sweet earthiness and firm texture mean they’re ideal for making meatless chorizo. If beets aren’t your thing, any sweet root vegetable will work.

This easy chile-spiked cooked tomato salsa pairs well with the beet-topped tostadas but is a great sauce all on its own.

You need a bigger bowl and more water than you might think to rehydrate wood ear mushrooms—they nearly triple in size.

This sweet-and-sour glaze will work on other proteins like chicken, steaks, or ribs.

Juicy pork al pastor and oozy Oaxacan cheese make a brilliant combo. Thinly slicing the pork and cooking it in a hot skillet with plenty of marinade still clinging to the meat yields the charred edges and deep flavor of traditional spit-roasted pastor.

Birria is usually served with a side of consomé, the rich pan juices from the roasted meat. This recipe takes things a step further by puréeing those juices with roasted vegetables and dried chiles.

This rich, flavorful Nigerian dish brings together bold chile heat, the pleasant funk of fermented locust beans and dried shrimp, and a good dose of Old Bay.

In this spicy salad, cubes of fried tofu act like tender-bellied croutons amid the leaves of baby kale, only with much more protein and spunk than the usual toasted bread.

Green curry with chicken and eggplant from Chef Hong Thaimee.

Homemade green curry paste has more vivid flavor and aromatic intensity than store-bought, not to mention the freedom to control the spice level. Sopon Kosalanan of restaurant Khao King in, Queens says, “If you get it from a can, I don’t feel like it’s green curry. It doesn’t have the same aromas.” This is the recipe he makes in big batches for his restaurant every day.

Egusi seeds—the large seeds of an African melon—are toasted and ground to thicken this popular Nirgerian stew.