Bell Peppers

Jose Garces often serves this Spanish bell pepper stew, called a pisto, with poached or fried eggs.

This recipe calls for sweet bell peppers, but it's also terrific with Gypsy peppers, a slender variety that comes in a range of flavors. "You play the pepper lottery," Sheamus Feeley says. "Some Gypsies are hot, some sweet, and every now and then, one lights you up, it's so fiery."

This savory dish gets a kick of tangy Asian flavor with the sesame oil, oyster sauce, and soy sauce.

Tonnato sauce, a smooth puree of olive oil, packed tuna, mayonnaise, capers and anchovies, is traditionally served in Piedmont with slices of roasted veal. Chef Andrew Feinberg spoons the sauce onto a plate then tops it with a layer of wood oven roasted peppers.

Matt Neal cooks all the key ingredients for this sandwich separately. "That way, I can make sure each vegetable cooks exactly how I want it; plus they won't steam in a big group all together," he says.

Grissini are Italian breadsticks—not the typical stubby, sesame-coated ones but the svelte, supercrunchy ones. Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson serves them with a sweet-tart red-pepper jelly (a recipe handed down from his grandmother) and wedges of Montasio cheese.

Switzerland has been making Sbrinz—a hard, aged, cow's-milk cheese — for centuries. Daniel Humm uses the pleasantly salty Sbrinz to top a gratin made with a ratatouille-like mix of sautéed zucchini strips, bell peppers and tomato. Parmigiano-Reggiano, another hard, aged, cow's milk cheese, is a fine substitute.

A plate of red and yellow bell peppers tossed with a tangy dressing pleases both the eye and the palate. You can use peppers of only one color, if you prefer, or include an orange and a green bell pepper for a truly spectacular effect.

"I grew up with a bunch of hippies, so I ate a lot of quinoa," Kerry Simon says. "I thought the taste was so cool." For this tabbouleh-like salad with tomatoes and roasted bell peppers, Simon simmers quinoa in water and orange juice to give it a citrus hit.

It's no surprise that Steven Raichlen can grill any vegetable you throw at him. The trick, he says, is to figure out how long the vegetable needs to cook and adjust the grilling method accordingly. "Tender vegetables with a high water content should be grilled over direct heat," he says, meaning on the grate right above the coals. "Dense, starchy vegetables, which take longer to cook, require indirect heat. Some, like whole potatoes or onions, I bury directly in the embers." This simple salad gets a burst of Mediterranean flavors from the addition of sweet dried currants, tart capers and salty feta cheese.

Celia Brooks Brown lives in London near Green Lanes, an ancient thoroughfare now famous for restaurants that serve Turkish dishes, like these stuffed peppers. Brooks Brown replaces the usual green bell peppers with yellow ones, which deliver more than twice the vitamin C: One yellow pepper provides a whopping 500 percent of the recommended daily intake.

Annabel Langbein loves oven-roasted peppers. Here she transforms them into a silky soup seasoned with cumin, crushed red pepper and cilantro, and finished with seared, sweet scallops.

The classic Syrian nut dip muhammara typically contains walnuts, bread crumbs, Aleppo pepper paste and pomegranate syrup, but there are endless variations. The bright-flavored take here is adapted from a recipe by Anissa Helou's Syrian chef-friend Mohammed Antabli. Pistachios, cashews and freshly toasted pine nuts, almonds and walnuts give it a chunky texture, while onions and red bell peppers make it tangy-sweet.

A gourmet take on sausage, this recipe calls for a cast-iron griddle, so the peppers brown perfectly.

Muhammara, a Middle Eastern dip with a spicy kick, is traditionally served with pita bread or roasted meats, but Chris Hanna likes it with the addictive crunch of fennel.

Sea scallops are marinated in a blend of grapefruit, lemon and orange juice in this elegant appetizer.

Round out a feel-good picnic with this cool red-pepper soup.