Easy, Breezy Summer Entertaining With Skye McAlpine

The cookbook author on seasonal favorites, no-cook cooking, and making picnic meals feel extra special

Skye McAlpine cooks and serves "the kind of food you can plonk down in the center of the table for everyone to tuck into, towering platefuls of it, higgledy-piggledy, unpretentious, colorful, and overflowing," she writes. Stars of this spread include honey-roasted poussins, spaghetti with lemon cream sauce, and burrata with preserved lemons and mint. Photo by Skye McAlpine

Skye McAlpine, cookbook author and consummate hostess, doesn’t believe you need a special occasion to cook for the people you love.

“If you keep things simple, if you can find a way to have friends over more often and make gatherings a regular, easy part of your life, you will feel richer for it,” she writes in her forthcoming cookbook, “A Table for Friends.”