American

This Southern dish usually is prepared and served in an iron skillet, but may be cooked in a frying pan with an ovenproof handle.

This dish is indigenous to Savannah and our lifestyle. Calling up a dozen friends for a cookout is a great casual way to entertain, especially if the food is cooked outside over an open flame (you can also use a portable gas fish cooker). Once the Low Country Boil has been cooked and drained, I like to pour it out on a table covered with newspaper.

Esther Shaver owns one of the best bookstores in town. Her store, E. Shaver’s, was one of the first places to carry my cookbook. Not only is her store great, but so is her coleslaw!

To me, the secret to good slaw is the way you cut your cabbage. I have found that I prefer half of the cabbage coarsely chopped in a food processor and half hand-sliced very thin. Use outside dark green leaves, too, for color.

We serve this salad with most of our seafood dishes at the restaurant. It’s also quite good at an outdoor fish fry.

This is a traditional favorite down here. We try to use female crabs, but you can use either male or female.

This is my son Bobby’s own recipe for pimento cheese. It is a definite favorite.

I’ve heard this was our governor and later president Jimmy Carter’s favorite cheese dish. His First Lady, Rosalynn Carter, has been credited for making this a famous Southern favorite.

Our girls are huge lovers of green beans, so they are a must-have on the menu. (We try to accommodate everyone in some way or another.) Of course, the smokiness of the pig doesn’t hurt, either

These meatballs always inspire a lot of “ooh, yuuumm”s and funny comments from friends and family alike: “Something is different about these meatballs!” They love them, but they’ve never had anything quite like them, either—unless they’re familiar with this old Southern recipe. (We’ve kept ours a secret till now, but we’ll share it with you here.)