American

One ambitious Thanksgiving eve we gathered family, friends, and neighbors over to the house and deep-fried all their turkeys for the next day. That was fun and exhausting. Of course, keeping with R. B.’s former motto “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing,” we finished the turkey fry with a big batch of catfish. At least we got our money’s worth out of the peanut oil. For other ambitious Thanksgivings, R. B. has stayed up all night (by himself) nursing Tom Turkey’s fire with a formula of wet hickory chips and Tennessee whiskey. Those were the memorable years when R. B. dozed through Thanksgiving dinner and got along particularly well with everyone. Now that R. B. is in cheater recovery, a wet-smoked turkey in an oven bag leaves him with the single challenge of keeping things light and deferential at the dinner table. The cheater turkey is always moist, tender, and smoky and shows off a golden brown sheen.

Poaching sounds chef-toque complicated, but simmering meat in a liquid on the stovetop is pretty straightforward and keeps the kitchen cooler in hot weather. Better yet, poaching is especially good for keeping the usually dry chicken breast meat moist. We even add a smoky component to the poaching liquid for terrific smoked chicken salads and sandwiches. For chicken salad, aim for a balance of smoke, sweet, and savory. The smoke really takes to fresh and dried fruits like green apple, pineapple, mango or papaya, raisins, dried cherries, or cranberries. Parsley and green onion are always a good choice, and celery and good mayonnaise are a must.

No, even we can’t live only on pulled pork barbecue. Now that we’ve taken you through the fat trenches with delicious pulled pork aplenty, here’s sensible lean tenderloin that’s quick to brine and broil. Don’t overcook it, or it will taste like sensible shoes. Take the flavor in any direction with your choice of dry rub. The cider-soy brine is essential for keeping the “tender” in the ultralean tenderloin and adds a nice penetrating flavor that’s impossible to get with a quick topical seasoning. Change up the brine to keep things interesting. Any of the brines on pages 77 to 78 will perform the same juicy service.

You can’t pick them up with your fingers or gnaw the bones, but country-style boneless “ribs” make nice pork barbecue. We like this hot-covered-pot-in-the-oven method to speed things up without sacrificing taste or tenderness. Moisture and smoke are trapped inside and the pork’s fat keeps the meat from drying out. If you’re among the 20 percent of households without a slow cooker, this is for you.

Our friend Mary Ellen Chavez of Belen, New Mexico, owns the wildly popular Burritos Alinstante, a small chain with a cultish following in the Albuquerque area. When he met her, R. B. (a swamp Yankee from Rhode Island) asked what kind of Mexican food she served. “We don’t serve Mexican food, R. B., it’s New Mexican,” she gently corrected. “New Mexico is the only place for red and green chiles like ours.” Serving her mother’s famous burritos with New Mexico red and green chiles has earned the small chain Best of Show among more than 230 vendors at the New Mexico State Fair. Number one on the menu is Carne Adovada, pork that’s first browned or grilled, then slow-cooked in New Mexico red chile sauce. We’ve swapped Mary Ellen’s restaurant steam pan for a slow cooker. Fortunately, dried New Mexico red chiles are available pretty much everywhere now. To make the sauce, rehydrate the dried chiles in hot water and blend them with garlic and a little water. After a warm night in the slow cooker, you’ve got breakfast burritos Alinstante. Mary Ellen has yet to tire of them, but she limits herself to one a day.

Our friend Philip Bernard of Raleigh, North Carolina, has plenty of hickory-smoked barbecue options, and still he’s a cheater. Philip likes to add molasses and vinegar to the pork butt to create a built-in sauce while it cooks. Be sure to trim the excess fat from raw meat in recipes like this when you want to serve the barbecue right away in its cooking liquid.

In between cruises when you’re pining for the late-night lido deck scene, there’s no better way to escape the quotidian than an island-themed luau. Lining the slow cooker with banana leaves and filling it with seasoned pork can really generate a breezy mood. The cheater way is to put a whole banana, skin and all, on top of our Luau Pork during cooking. It gets the party point across just as well. To carry the theme, think side dishes with tropical fruits, macadamia nuts, coconut, and rice.

Eastern North Carolina’s pungent vinegar sauce is accented with black pepper notes and a light sweetness, but no tomato. Because it works so well with pulled pork, its popularity has traveled way beyond the region.

Moving through the Plains toward the Southwest, the sauce flattens out with more tomato, less vinegar, and a touch of chili on the horizon.

Farther south in South Carolina and Georgia, tangy yellow mustard predominates.

Back in the day when Min and her pal Philip Bernard attended Virginia Tech football pregame tailgate parties with fervent religiosity, a touch of special cider was often the incentive for warming up some team spirit. In truth, there is absolutely nothing Hokie about this fine cider punch, what with the assistance of the special team’s Tennessee whiskey and all.

Like fried chicken and good corn bread, oven drums are all about the crust. The key to Hot-Oven Drums is to get the skin working for you. Hot-Oven Drums are inspired by Nashville’s cultish hot pan-fried chicken that’s dusted-to-dredged in cayenne pepper. Proceed with caution! Here the skillet meets the oven. The bread crumbs, dry rub, and oil keep the Hot-Oven Drums crisp and the cayenne pepper, added right before cooking, lets you control the heat. Serve the drums just like chicken wings with ranch or blue cheese dressing and celery and carrot sticks. Eat them on your feet with a beer in the other hand and no worries about the red mess all over your face and hands.

These days quality hardwood-smoked salmon and trout in convenient Cryovac packages are easy to find. What we never expected was that even canned tuna, a product that has required little contemplation beyond water- versus oil-packed, would go through a major transformation with the new retort vacuum-packed foil pouch. No can opener, no draining, and new flavors to play with. A pouch or two of hickory-smoked tuna works for this spread. When we say any fish, we mean any fish or any shellfish, like smoked oysters or clams. We usually use a frozen pack of R. B.’s patio-smoked, fresh-caught Rhode Island bluefish courtesy of his friend and neighbor Chappy Pierce. Vary the ratio of seafood to cream cheese to your liking. If things taste fishy, add lemon juice. Serve the spread mounded in a bowl garnished with capers and lemon slices. We prefer plain water crackers for serving.

Before he discovered cheater BBQ, the only indoor kitchen appliance R. B. had a serious relationship with was the toaster oven. He fancies himself the master of all things topped with melted cheese. Predictably, leftovers of this smoky cheese spread went right into the toaster oven on slices of thick rustic bread. Smoky Pimiento Cheese Bruschetta! Min took it to the next level with sliced fresh tomato, a few green onion bits, and a basil leaf for a “New South” Italian appetizer. Of course, the pimiento cheese is fantastic on a big juicy Cheater Kitchen Burger (page 119). We also serve our pimiento cheese along with Cheater Foie Gras (page 21), each spread on tart Granny Smith apple slices.

For more than fifty years, Min’s two family branches, the Merrells and the Almys, have been eating at the Cortez Cafe in Carlsbad, New Mexico. The food is straightforward Tex-Mex and always finishes with a round of sopapillas and honey. Back in the ’70s, the family thought nothing odd about beginning meals with bowls of fiery green salsa scooped up with saltine crackers. The Cortez has since switched to tortilla chips and you may prefer them as well, but the Merrell-Almy clan retains its hot spot for salsa and crackers. Pining away in Nashville for that distinct Cortez flavor, Min thinks she’s figured it out—it’s mostly fresh jalapeños. Min’s cousin Eric, knighted Sir Cortez by the clan, now brings his version of Min’s Cortez Salsa recipe to every family dinner—with sleeves of only the freshest saltines, of course.

In so many American childhoods, cherry pie is a gloppy, cloying, Day-Glo affair. As a chef, I’m expected to disdain such things now, and, officially, I do. But I’ve always loved cherries. This Italian cherry and almond tart is everything a bad cherry pie is not: flaky, buttery, and sophisticated, with a filling the color of darkest rubies. But if someday, when cherries are long out of season, you happen to see in a corner booth at DuPar’s Coffee Shop someone who looks like me, wolfing down a slice of all-American diner pie, wearing dark sunglasses and a stain that looks suspiciously like Red Dye #40, well, keep it to yourself. Even chefs have fond memories of their misguided youth.

This recipe was perfected by Brian Wolff, our lovably obsessive-compulsive chef de cuisine at Lucques. He developed it using our cornmeal of choice from Bob’s Red Mill. If you’re using a different polenta, the cooking time and quantities of water might be a little different. The most important thing to learn from this recipe is the technique. Keep adding a little water at a time throughout the cooking process. There are only a few ingredients, so the cook makes all the difference. Watch carefully, and let the polenta tell you when it needs more water. And most of all, stir, stir, stir!

Savory is possibly the most underappreciated herb in this country. I fell in love with it many years back when I was cooking in France. There, it’s used in the traditional seasoning mix herbes de Provence and added to all types of stews, ragoûts, and sauces. Its aroma—earthy, slightly sweet, and a little bit peppery—reminds me of the brush-covered hillsides where we played growing up. Winter savory, summer savory’s seasonal opposite, is more robust in flavor but would be a fine substitute in this recipe. If you can’t find either of the savories, substitute a combination of equal amounts of thyme, rosemary, and mint. This isn’t a difficult dish to make, but it does require some last-minute multitasking. Have your prepared ingredients—or, as we say in the kitchen, your mise en place—ready to go. Be sure that your herbs are chopped, the vinaigrette is made, the crème fraîche is mixed, and your seasonings are in reach. This dish is a great way to initiate the unconverted to the Church of the Fava Bean. The potatoes and favas are mashed together with butter and finished with pea shoots and a vibrant Meyer lemon salsa. The seared halibut goes on top with a dollop of savory crème fraîche.

Trying to come up with a new sugar cookie recipe is like trying to reinvent the wheel. Over the years I’ve tried, but, inevitably, I always come back to this one from Chez Panisse Desserts by Lindsay Shere. Sometimes I like to top the sugar cookies with a little black pepper, fennel seeds, candied ginger, or lavender sugar, but here they’re embellished with candied tangelo zest to complement the “Creamsicle.”