Bacon

This devilishly good appetizer is an American translation of the Alsatian tarte flambée. The pizza’s thin crust is topped with an unbeatable combination of nutty Gruyère, smoky bits of thick bacon, sweet caramelized onions, toasted slices of garlic, and tangy crème fraîche.

This is my tip-of-the-hat to the picturesque city of Charleston, South Carolina. Each time I visit I am charmed by the city’s citizens, its architecture, and its Low Country cuisine, in particular the sumptuous shrimp and grits. Originally a humble breakfast made by and for the local shrimp fishermen, this dish of creamy grits and plump shrimp deserves a night out on the town. Sharp cheddar cheese and heavy cream enrich the grits with lush flavor. Thick matchsticks of smoky bacon are rendered crisp for a salty garnish, and the flavorful fat is used to sauté the sweet shrimp. Lemony thyme and chopped garlic season the shrimp to savory perfection.

Once you taste this dressing, you’ll be reluctant to use a bottled variety again. Given how extremely simple— and quick—it is to prepare, you won’t need to. Crisped cubes of bacon, eggs, and blue cheese often come together over a bed of bitter frisée, but I think that tender Boston lettuce makes a superb substitution. Its sweet leaves get some punch from peppery radishes and the tangy buttermilk-based dressing.

I have had this chowder on the menu since day one, and no one—neither the patrons nor the staff—will let me take it off. Roasted sweet potato puree thickens the clam broth and imbues it with intense sweet flavor and a vibrant orange hue. That sweetness plays perfectly against the astringent wine and briny clam juice in the broth; a “touch” of rich cream added at the end brings everything lusciously together. Of course, there are also lots of fresh clams, smoky bacon, and (sweet) potato cubes in this hearty soup. Fresh tarragon delivers a touch of delicate anise flavor and a spot of green in the otherwise sunset-orange soup.

The Kentucky sandwich. Built on a base of savory French toast, this open-faced sandwich needs no doubling up. Thick slices of turkey breast and juicy tomatoes are topped with a decadent cheese sauce, broiled until bubbly and golden brown, then crowned with crisp slices of bacon. It’s no surprise that this dish, named for its birthplace at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, has become Kentucky Derby lore.

This is the ultimate grilled cheese. Forget about American cheese; this grown-up grilled cheese features the real deals. I love goat cheese, but you couldn’t do this sandwich without the cheddar; goat cheese can be too crumbly to melt well, and cheddar—beyond having great flavor—gets all nice and gooey when melted, bringing all of the tasty components together. Tart green tomatoes balance the salty bacon, which is a big part of what makes this sandwich so amazing. One final note: A key factor in making any grilled cheese is to be sure the bread is well toasted.

I’ve yet to meet a man—Texan or otherwise—who can resist these meltingly tender short ribs. (Most women can’t either, but they tend not to eat as many.) Serve them over a pile of creamy cornmeal mush and you’ll have a party full of satisfied customers. At one gathering, I asked a group of guys how many ribs they thought they’d eat. The majority estimated that three would be plenty. They changed their tunes after taking a few bites and revised the number upward to four or five—and they kept their word. Short ribs come in varying sizes, so I figure about a pound per person, especially if my guest list includes a bunch of guys with big appetites.

Once looked down upon as so 1950s, the iceberg wedge with tangy blue cheese dressing has made a comeback, and with good reason. I’m always amazed at the enthusiastic response when I set out these salads—either on a party buffet table, or for a sit-down dinner. Guys especially love it.

My dear friend Paula Disbrowe, cookbook author, chef, and general partner in cooking, partying, and eating, created this recipe. She says, “Don’t be fooled by the term salad. This gigantic tumble of ingredients creates an incredibly satisfying meal, with big, bold flavors that will satisfy friends and ranch hands alike. Be sure to remove any wilted or bruised outer leaves from the head of romaine, so you only use the crisp, sweet inner leaves in your salad.” This salad calls for jalapeño cornbread croutons (page 241). Bake them up first and let them cool while you prepare the rest of the recipe.

Beans and rice create an unassuming but essential backdrop for the quintessential Tex-Mex meal—leave them out and you’ll probably hear about it. Rosa Albiter Espinoza, who has worked for more than seven years in the Rather Sweet kitchen, makes her Mexican rice regularly for our lunch specials. She prefers Adolphus rice, a long-grain variety native to Texas. When I’m preparing a Tex-Mex spread for a party, I make sure to serve a pot of rice and plenty of refried black beans.

You may not think of beans as a party dish, but there’s something deeply comforting and welcoming about a big pot of beans simmering on the stove top. First, it fills the house with a wonderful earthy aroma. Second, it gives friends the feeling that they’re worth fussing over—almost everyone knows homemade beans take a little extra time and some advance planning. Finally, I enjoy serving beans for a party because I have several gorgeous terra-cotta bean pots and I can’t resist showing them off.

Last year, my cousin Gloria showed up at our homecoming reunion with a huge pan of baked beans topped with a layer of walnuts. Walnuts? Walnuts are my least favorite nut, and I’ve never seen them paired with baked beans. But Gloria is a fine home cook, so I asked her where she got the idea. “I dreamed it last night,” she said. I tried her beans, and those crispy, toasted walnuts added a lovely crunch to an old standby. By adding walnuts to beans, Gloria has given a delicious new meaning that old maxim: “Live your dreams.” I can’t wait to see what she “dreams up” for next year’s homecoming.

Here’s a portable egg favorite for those who like eggs and bacon for lunch or dinner (who doesn’t?) that’s certain to disappear at any gathering. The recipe comes from my friend Penny Perry-Hughes, co-owner with husband, Jerry, of Der Kuchen Laden, a first-rate kitchen shop located just across Main Street from Rather Sweet. As a student at London’s Le Cordon Bleu years ago, she remembers promising to bring her family’s prized deviled eggs to a party thrown by a group of fellow Americans. “My mother almost died laughing that I called from London to get her deviled egg recipe,” she says. Worst part was, Penny prepared the deviled eggs in advance, but got sick just before the party and couldn’t go. The eggs went without her, never to be seen again.

Three Pigs is one of my favorite party dishes because it feeds a lot a people without breaking the budget. I make the stuffing one day in advance, refrigerate it, and all that’s left is to slather it onto the pork in a thick layer, roll it up, top it with a bacon roof, and put it into the oven. The carrots are a snap as long as you have a mandoline, or a carrot guy or gal (someone whose sole job is to cut the carrots into even slices on the diagonal; I’m just fantasizing here). We had a bread guy when I was the executive pastry chef at Tony’s in Houston, and all he did was make bread, all day, every day. Sadly for me, I don’t have a carrot boy or girl. When I’m entertaining at home, the work mostly falls to me, so I hook up my iPod, turn up the volume, and slice my own carrots. And unless I’m at work, it’s up to me to butterfly the pork loin so that it lies flat for stuffing. If I were you, I’d ask your butcher to do it, specifying that the loin be butterflied twice for stuffing. Day-old scones make a fabulously rich stuffing, I’ve discovered. Bake my smoked tomato scones (page 35) for another meal and stow three in the freezer for use whenever you fancy making this dish.

My mother loved fresh peas and she’d routinely prowl local farmers’ markets to find them. Purple hull peas were her favorite, but she also had a thing for cream peas, black-eyed peas, or just about any fresh legume that showed up at the farmstand. She’d make us kids shell the peas, and I always suspected it was to keep us out of her hair. I didn’t mind, though. For some reason I enjoyed shelling peas. Naturally, I liked eating them better than shelling them and this recipe, which makes enough to feed a crowd, showcases peas and my mother’s other summer favorite, fresh corn. Just like my mother, I find fresh peas at Texas farmers’ markets and sometimes even at my regular grocery store. Any fresh southern pea (see Tip) will work, but I especially favor cream peas. Do not use green peas, which will not hold up. I use canned black-eyed peas if I can’t get my hands on fresh and the salad still shines.

I never liked raw spinach that much until I started eating it from my sister’s huge garden in southern Maine, where she and her husband grow almost everything they eat—a year-round endeavor, thanks to lots of canning, freezing, and the smart use of greenhouses and the like. She even brought me spinach seeds so I could start growing it in my own community garden. My garden is a tiny fraction of the size of hers, but the spinach comes out of it just as tender and sweet. This recipe barely wilts the spinach, so it still has that fresh flavor, but helps compensate for the sturdier texture of supermarket spinach, if that’s what you need to use, by softening it slightly. If you have tender garden-fresh spinach, you can feel free to let the topping cool before adding it to the spinach for a cold salad instead.

Try as I might, I just couldn’t leave the bacon out of this omelet. Obviously, nothing goes better with eggs. But beyond that, bacon gives the slightly bitter chard an addictive smoky and, well, meaty flavor, while the goat cheese offsets it all with a tart creaminess. The result: a hearty, one-dish meal.

The only place to start with something so absurd yet perfect as this dish is in the middle. The bacon is ready to flip in about a minute and a half. The edges get super-crispy (who has ever noticed before that bacon has corners?), while the lean inside stays wet and meaty. And the fat actually firms and ripples, like lardo that’s been working out. Suspense builds when you flip the bacon and crack the eggs on top. It’s awful—like watching a landslide threaten to wipe out your village—as the egg whites run toward the edge of the hot brick, but the salt is so hot they rapidly lose steam (pun intended) and sizzle to a halt, with at most just a few rivulets dribbling over the sides of the block. The whole thing is done in less than 5 minutes. Take a bite and things get weirder still, with the sheen of salt simmering underneath the egg and bacon instead of on top, and a jumble of textures—creamy, crunchy, chewy, juicy, fatty, fleshy, and eggy.