In its vibrancy and heat, the sizzle in Daisy Martinez’s kitchen matches the quick-fire rhythms of her island girl parlance. And when all’s rolling in Martinez’s kitchen — the happy dance of sofrito* in the skillet, the boil of rice water, the crackle of double-fried green plantains — it’s as if you, the armchair observer, are within garlic-wafting distance.

Martinez, star of the Food Network’s Viva Daisy!, is a chef of disarming qualities. Her cuisine is as welcoming and down-to-earth as her demeanor. Call it pan-Latino soul cooking, a cuisine accented with the flavors of Martinez’s Puerto Rican heritage, her Nueva York childhood, her family travels across Spain, Argentina, Mexico and the Caribbean.

And if you’ve been watching Martinez since she launched her onscreen cooking career with Daisy Cooks! on PBS in 2005, four years before landing the Food Network show, you know that virtually no dish in her culinary repertoire seems too daunting to undertake. Never mind that it might well be too daunting to undertake. Martinez has a genial way of making it all seem so doable.

She doesn’t toss around the epicurean lingo or cast herself as any kind of master chef. She could. After all, she’s a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York — the same cooking school that gave us chef Bobby Flay. She worked as a prep chef on Lidia Bastianich’s cooking show on PBS. She also ran her own private chef and catering business, The Passionate Palate.

But Martinez is more inclined to regale you with family stories as she leads you through the fine points of, say, achiote** seeds, a cornerstone ingredient in her favorite yellow rice dishes.

The Brooklyn-born child of mainland Puerto Rican parents is a down-home storyteller with a kitchen full of memories and family anecdotes.

"Nothing triggers a memory quicker than the smell of food cooking," Martinez says by phone on a recent morning, during a break from her hectic tour to promote her newly released cookbook, Daisy: Morning, Noon and Night ($30, Atria). "The minute I smell roasted red peppers, I’m in my grandmother’s kitchen on a Saturday afternoon."

The thought triggers a tangent or two.

"That was my paternal grandmother, Valentina — she was a force of nature. And then you have my grandmother in Puerto Rico, who grew everything in her garden. She had mangos, avocados — avocados the size of footballs — toronjas (grapefruit), herbs. She cured everything that ailed you with those herbs. When it was mango season, we’d eat and eat till we had mango everywhere. We’d have mangoes in our eyes!"

The common thread in every tangent is Martinez’s celebration of humble food, good food.

"Good food doesn’t have to be complicated food," says the Brooklyn-based mother of four. "It has to be fresh, seasonal and well-seasoned food."

Take the aforementioned roasted red peppers, her grandmother’s Saturday dish, for instance. Grandmother Valentina would choose large red bell peppers, char them and lovingly peel them, stuff them with creamy rice and cheese and bake them. Instead of using the tops of the peppers, Valentina would cap them with a piece of white bread that had been dipped in egg and seasonings.

"So when you eat it, it’s like a little savory bread pudding on top of the pepper. I would eat the whole thing and save that little plug for my dessert. Girl, it was serious," says Martinez.

That recipe shares space in Martinez’s cookbook with dishes from places such as Peru (an aromatic shrimp chupe, or bisque), Argentina (an orange-scented hearts of palm salad), Spain ("cinnamon-perfumed" custard), and her family’s native Puerto Rico ("soupy rice" with pigeon peas and Tierrita Dulce, a popular chocolate mousse dessert).

The recipes were inspired by the flavor profiles encountered on family travels abroad. Martinez would take lots of food photos and scribble copiously in her travel notebooks, describing each meal with a connoisseur’s attention to detail.

"The way I took my notes, I would say the top note (of the dish) is this, the middle note is this, the finish note is this. So even if I came home and couldn’t find the ingredients, I could remember what the dish tasted like and I could recreate it as best as I could," she says.

The family trips started after her daughter, her youngest child, turned 8 and "Santa Claus stopped visiting our house," says Martinez. She and her husband, Jerry Lombardo, sat the kids down and told them, pretty much, that Christmas was going to be about trips, not toys.

"We said, ‘From now on, we’re going to give you memories,’ " Martinez recalls. "There was total silence and a look of abject horror in their faces."

Their first family destination: Barcelona.

"Imagine going to Spain with three teenage boys and a young girl. I tell you. They were like a horde of locusts invading Barcelona," says Martinez, laughing at the memory of the trip that launched many great — and quite delicious — family adventures. "They’re still talking about us over there."

~liz_balmaseda@pbpost.com

Sweet Peppers Stuffed

with Rice and Cheese

(Serves 6)

INGREDIENTS:

10 large yellow, orange, or red bell peppers, or a mix of all three

FOR THE FILLING:

1 small zucchini

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 small yellow onion, finely diced (about 1 cup)

¼ pound cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced (about 2 cups)

1½ cups long-grain white rice

1 tablespoon salt

6 ounces smoked Gouda, shredded (about 13⁄4 cups)

5 extra-large eggs

¼ teaspoon onion powder

Kosher or fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper

5 slices white bread

1¼ cups tomato juice

PREPARE THE PEPPERS:

Roast the peppers until well blackened on all sides. Wrap each one in a double thickness of damp paper towels as it is done. Let peppers stand until cool.

MAKE THE FILLING:

Trim the ends from the zucchini and cut the zuke lengthwise into quarters. Scoop out the seeds and coarsely grate the zucchini.

Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and mushrooms and cook, stirring, until softened, about 4 minutes.

Pour the rice into the saucepan, stirring to coat with oil, then add the salt. Pour in enough water to cover the rice by about 1 inch (about 2 cups) and bring to a boil. Cook until the water reaches the level of the rice. Stir the rice once, cover the pan, and lower the heat to very low. Cook, without uncovering the pan or stirring, until the rice is tender but not mushy and the water is absorbed, about 20 minutes. Fluff with a fork and set aside to cool a bit.

Preheat the oven to 350°. Stir the zucchini and Gouda into the warm rice.

Slide the paper towels from the peppers, removing as much of the blackened skin as you can with them. Wipe off the rest of the blackened skin with the paper towels. Cut a circle around the stems and remove the stems and cores from the peppers. If you feel like being meticulous, use a spoon to scoop out any remaining seeds.

Place the peppers in a 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan (or any baking pan that fits the peppers snugly) and, using a tablespoon, fill the peppers with the rice mixture, leaving about ¼ inch of headroom. Set aside.

Beat the eggs, onion powder, and a generous amount of salt and pepper together in a large bowl until smooth. Cut the bread slices in half and add them to the beaten egg. Soak, turning them gently occasionally, until well saturated.

Cover the filling in each pepper with a piece of the sliced bread, folding and tucking it in as necessary to completely cover the filling. Pour the tomato juice around the peppers. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 20 minutes. Uncover and bake until the bread lids are golden brown, about 10 minutes. Serve, spooning some of the baking juices around each pepper.

TIP: High heat for roasting the peppers is important. It will blacken the skins completely while leaving the pepper shells firm enough for stuffing.

(Prep time: 45 minutes. Cook time: 35 minutes unattended)

"Tierrita Dulce" (Sweet Earth)

Chocolate Mousse with Chocolate Cookie Crumbles

(Serves 6 to 8, depending on size of pots)

INGREDIENTS:

One 12-ounce bag bittersweet chocolate chips

2 tablespoons dark rum

1¼ tablespoons instant espresso powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

3 extra-large eggs, separated

3⁄4 cup sugar

1 cup heavy cream, well chilled

2 packages Oreo Thin Crisps chocolate cookies or 1¼ cups crushed Famous Chocolate Wafers

6 to 8 edible flowers, with stems if possible, or candy flowers (from a bakery supply shop)

TO MAKE:

Mix the chocolate chips, rum, espresso powder, vanilla, salt, and ¼ cup water in a large heatproof bowl. Set over a pot of simmering water and whisk until the chocolate is melted. Set aside.

Using a hand mixer, beat the egg yolks with ¼ cup of the sugar in a medium bowl until they are pale yellow and fluffy and you can see the bottom of the bowl as you beat, about 2 minutes. Fold about one-third of the chocolate mixture into the yolks with a rubber spatula, then fold the yolk mixture into the chocolate remaining in the bowl. Set aside.

Wash the beaters and bowl thoroughly and dry them. Beat the egg whites with the remaining ½ cup sugar in a medium bowl until they hold soft peaks when the beaters are lifted. Fold one-third of the whites into the chocolate mixture with a rubber spatula. Once they are incorporated, fold in the remaining whites.

Beat the cream in a clean bowl until it holds firm peaks. Using a rubber spatula, fold the cream into the chocolate mixture one-third at a time. Divide the mousse among 6 to 8 food-safe flowerpots (see Note) or dessert cups. Chill for at least 2 hours or up to 1 day.

Put the cookies in a heavy resealable plastic bag. Whack them with a rolling pin into coarse pieces, then roll until fine crumbs. Top each dish of mousse with crumbled chocolate cookies to resemble soil. Finish with the edible flowers, standing them straight up by inserting the stems into the mousse.

NOTE: Food-safe flowerpots are available in specialty bakeware shops, or feel free to use ramekins.

(Prep time: 45 minutes, plus 2 to 24 hours chilling time)

Recipes from "Daisy: Morning, Noon and Night — Bringing Your Family Together with Everyday Latin Dishes" (Atria Books). For information, visit daisymartinez.com

* Sofrito: A mix of chopped aromatics that is the cornerstone ingredient in many Latin cuisines. Daisy’s version uses chopped Spanish onions, garlic, cubanelle peppers and cilantro.

** Achiote: Achiote or annatto seeds are small, rust-toned seeds picked from the pods of a tropical shrub. Nutty in flavor and highly saturated in color, they are used to color yellow rice dishes and lend flavor to native Caribbean dishes. Daisy gently simmers 2 tablespoons of seeds in 1 cup of olive oil, then uses that flavorful, color-infused oil in her favorite Puerto Rican dishes.