Papaya

The zombie cocktail was invented by Donn Beach in Los Angeles—a tiki drink so strong that drinkers at his Don the Beachcomber restaurant were limited to a maximum of two. 

Tangy buttermilk custards are a delicious foil for sweet tropical fruit.

Wonton wrappers are used for these samosas instead of traditional pastry dough. Betelnut Pejiu Wu in San Francisco serves them with a tropical chutney.

"I literally didn't know how to boil an egg until I was in my 20's — when I tried to impress a guy by making dinner for him," writes Sally Siegel of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "I didn't have much success with the dinner or the guy, but I regrouped and put together a repertoire of fairly elegant dishes I felt confident making. Over the years, my cooking style has become more casual; I make dishes that are not too demanding, but still special for company."

Try these as appetizers, as a salad (on a bed of greens) or as a light dessert.

These versatile quesadilla can be passed as hors d'oeuvres, or offered at dinner as a first course or at lunch as the entrée.

Anywhere you go in Laos, you will find women patiently preparing papaya for this salad. Using a small machete-like knife, they make repeated shallow parallel cuts, each about 1/8 inch deep, in a section of the papaya. Then they scrape the papaya from top to bottom so they end up with very nice julienne. A food processor fitted with the julienne disk or a manual slicer such as a mandoline works equally well.

Light, refreshing and very sophisticated. Asian pears have a crisp texture, a round shape, and a sweet and floral aroma that's quite unlike that of the more familiar buttery "pear-shaped" pear.