"Legend has it that the recipe for Tres Leches cake was first printed on the back of the can of Nestle's sweetened condensed milk," Michael Cordúa, the chef behind the Cordua Restaurants in Houston, once told me.

The name tres leches, or three milks, refers to the ingredients used -- a can of evaporated milk and a can of sweetened condensed milk are blended together with cream and poured over the cake. So how did a dessert made with canned ingredients become a favorite in Cordua’s homeland of Nicuragua and all over the rest of Latin America? I wondered.

“You have to understand that for many years in my country, imported canned products were considered superior to fresh products,” Cordua told me. “Canned milk was expensive, it was a luxury. I know it sounds strange since things are the other way around in the United States.”

The story of how the most popular dessert in Latin America descended from the back of a can of imported milk sounds like something from the school of magical realism.

Houston is hot, no denying that, and I love to take advantage of the temperature whenever possible. We use solar energy to dry our laundry (it’s called a clothesline). Alton Brown once told me how he tried using his mailbox to bake biscuits.

We used to have an older car that was always parked in our driveway. I found that it had the perfect environment for sun-drying tomatoes on the dashboard with a cake cooling rack and a towel underneath. (I didn’t have to worry about bugs as I would have if I had dried them outside.) The car also turned out to be an excellent environment for making yogurt.

Romano’s on West Gray has outlawed dipping pizza in ranch dressing. The pizzeria’s owners, two cousins named Frank and Vinny, were born in Calabria, Italy. They spent 15 years working in New York pizzerias before coming to Texas. The cousins pride themselves on making one of the best New York-style pizzas in Houston.

Where Frank and Vinny come from, dipping pizza in ranch dressing is not done. “It's a crime against nature,” railed New York food writer Ed Levine, author of Pizza: Slice of Heaven, when I e-mailed him about the pizza/ranch combination.

But pizza dipped in ranch dressing is gaining ground in the rest of the country. The Washington Post credited inebriated college students with making the combination popular at a pizzeria in Georgetown. “Ranch Chicken Pizza,” a grilled chicken pizza covered with ranch dressing, was a special this summer at the Schlotzsky's sandwich chain. The pizza came with more ranch dressing for dipping.

Okra and chile peppers are the last things left in a Texas garden at the end of the summer. Here’s a recipe that calls for lots of both--along with some Texas shrimp and peanuts.

Texas Caruru

This is one of my favorite okra recipes. It is a simplified version of a traditional Brazilian okra stew made with okra, red palm oil and dried shrimp. Caruru is made on the festival of the twin spirits in the Condomble religion and it is considered an aid to fertility. The Brazilian version is made with chopped okra and it comes out very slimy--hence the fertility symbolism. Personally, I like my okra without the slime. And if you don’t cut it, there isn’t any.

Photo by Robb Walsh

The Kitchen Table, a cookbook by Brennan’s of Houston chef Randy Evans, has a lot of local recipes in it, including Texas peach and fig preserves. Whole Foods has Texas peaches and fresh figs on hand right now, and so do some of the farmers’ markets. But they won’t be around much longer. Labor Day is the traditional end of the Texas peach season. Figs are usually gone by mid-September. If you put up some preserves over Labor Day weekend, you can enjoy the flavor of Texas peaches and figs all year long.

Photo by Robb Walsh

This quick and easy Indian yogurt drink is ideal for the end of summer when sweet, juicy Texas peaches are arriving at the farmers' markets straight from the Hill Country. This drink is quite versatile -- it can be served for breakfast, along with appetizers, as a dessert, or anytime you get thirsty on a hot day.

In the August 14th Stirred and Shaken column, I referred to "thyme syrup" and "grapefruit dust" used in the Thyme After Lime cocktail at Reef. In case you were curious, here are the recipes and instructions for those two rather novel ingredients, straight from Reef's head barman, J.M. Erben.

Thyme syrup: Bring one cup of water and one cup of sugar to a boil. Remove it from heat and add four ounces of fresh thyme. Let cool and strain.

Grapefruit dust: Peel a grapefruit and remove all the pith from the fruit. Bring the peelings to a boil in water three times. On the fourth time, add one part sugar and three parts water. Strain, then place the peelings on a sheet pan and dry them until brittle in a 200 degree oven. Grind to make powder. – W. Healy

Russell Baker has observed that eating hot dogs seems like the patriotic thing to do on the 4th of July, despite the fact that hot dogs aren’t any good--and probably never were.

I feel his pain. I have eaten a lot of bad hot dogs on this holiday. And it’s true that the vast majority of hot dogs we eat suck--except in Chicago. (New York dogs are overrated.) After spending a couple of days eating spectacular hot dogs in the Windy City for a food and travel story, I asked a sales executive at Vienna Beef what the secret was.

He introduced me to Vienna Beef’s “hot dog stand in a box” which I bought by mail order for a while, but then I noticed they were shipping “skinless” hot dogs to us poor schmucks in the provinces--nobody in Chicago eats anything that doesn’t have a natural casing. That’s the difference between the James Coney Island version and a real Chicago hot dog as well--JCI uses skinless Vienna Beef wieners. The natural casing makes a world of difference.

Qu'est-ce qu'il faut chaud aujord hui alors!

In France, your summer drink of choice could very well be Perrier Menthe, i.e. a sparkling soda flavored with mint syrup.

I love this drink and was very pleased to discover that you can get the Teisseire Sirop Menthe at French Riviera Bakery for $11. Until someone begins importing Spa Red from Belgium, my personal favorite sparkling water is good ol' Canada Dry Club Soda.

And, I've found that you can use Teisseire as a quick short-cut for the simple syrup and mint in your rolling pin mojitos. -- Jay Francis

I've found the best way to crisp up the thick-sliced bacon I picked up at Vincek's:

You will need a wire rack like the one used for cooling cakes and cookies and a pan to catch the bacon drippings.

My Dutch friend, Adrie, got me hooked on mojitos. When we go out, he has one as an aperitif and then switches to red wine for the meal.

The way to make a mojito great, instead of just squeezing lime juice, is to mash the complete cut lime and release the skin's citrus oils. I’ve found the easiest way to do this at home is with a standard British pint glass and a wooden rolling pin (the solid wood kind, not the one with handles and rollers on the end).