American

Being a kid from South Carolina, I always had fresh biscuits growing up. This recipe is as close to my grandmother’s as I could get without having a spiritual adviser. They’re big, fat, and light as a cloud, just like I remember them. The peach and rosemary spoon fruit adds a little contemporary twist.

I love bacon and shrimp. It’s a classic combination that works really well in this Southwestern-inspired bistro dish.

One trick that I learned a long time ago about cooking pork is that you have to brine it. The brine for this recipe is a sugar-salt solution mixed with apple juice concentrate (you will need 2 cans of frozen juice) for the brine and spiced apples. With its sweet apple flavor, this is an intense marinade that works miracles on pork chops. Trust me—once you taste a thick pork chop that’s been flavored in a brine, you will never go back. Cozy up to your butcher to get the pork chops cut to your liking. Thin pork chops—no way! Serve this with Corn Pudding (page 236).

This is the simplest of doughs for cut-out cookies, but the best! Bake three sheets of cookies at a time and reduce the oven temperature to 300°F for the most even baking.

This popular dessert can be made a day ahead and baked at the last minute. The chile powder adds a mild heat and enhances the chocolate flavor.

Eggs, sugar, and flour in equal measure are the basis of this simple cake, which bakes in just 20 minutes and can be filled with fruit or berries in season.

Biscuits have been an American favorite since the early 1800s. Anything so well known has as many variations as there are enthusiasts. My favorite recipe includes an egg for lightness. As expected, when they’re baked in the convection oven, they bake more quickly at a lower temperature.

Sweet potatoes are pale yellow, yams are deeper orange, and red garnets have a reddish hue. If you have trouble finding all three, just buy three pounds’ worth of what you can find. This colorful salad is perfect with roast pork, or on the Thanksgiving menu as a refreshing change from the traditional sweet potato dishes.

Not only do the colors sparkle in this salad, but the flavors do, too. Roasting fresh corn on the cob produces irresistibly sweet little morsels. This is wonderful with roasted fresh salmon.

Try this for your Thanksgiving menu, roasted on the bottom rack of the oven, along with scalloped potatoes or Creamy Garlic Potatoes (page 144), while the turkey roasts on the rack above. If you slice the potatoes ahead, rinse them well in cold water and drain to prevent discoloring.

Roast the tomatoes, peppers, and garlic right along with the meat loaf to make the sauce.

My husband loves tortilla chips, but he won’t touch those little pieces left in the bottom of the bag, so I crush them with a rolling pin to make a coating for boneless chicken breasts. This family favorite can be easily expanded into a party meal. Ordinarily, I serve his with rice, and sometimes I like to add black beans, too.

Roast chicken is a simple but perfect dish when convection roasted: the meat is juicy and the skin is brown and crisp. I reach for fresh herbs in the summertime or dried ones in the winter and a bit of butter, then slip them under the breast skin before baking. When there’s absolutely no time, I just put the chicken in the oven. Be sure to place the chicken on a rack above a shallow roasting pan for perfect air circulation. To turn this into a one-dish meal, add some vegetables—carrot chunks, potato cubes, onion wedges, fennel sticks, cut-up zucchini, or anything in season. Roast them in a single layer in a shallow baking pan beneath the chicken. Following this basic recipe, I give my favorite variations.

This is a simple country-style roast chicken with a garlicky wine marinade. Roast small red or fingerling potatoes while the chicken cooks. Add them to the oven after the chicken has cooked for 15 minutes. You can even add a pan of popovers (page 191) to the oven. They will be done in about 1 hour.

The key to this drink is fresh pineapple juice.

Virtue Feed & Grain in Alexandria, VA, serves this take on an Old Fashioned, just one of their signature "hoptails."

These New Orleans classics will satisfy a serious sweet tooth.

I'm surprised and delighted by the number of sweets and desserts that I have been able to come up with sans flour and dairy. With this one I had help. Our good friend Dr. Nersessian—a very good cook—came up with the first version of this to give me a dessert without the bad things. I have fiddled with it a bit. It has been a great success with all who have tasted it. A chocolate version follows.

My life is all about banging things out, getting things done, moving fast—but sometimes a detour from the fast lane can be a good thing, even for me. Years ago, Gwen and I were on our way home from a road trip to the Canadian Maritimes when we were forced off the highway by some epic construction. We ended up on a wandering road that took us through a charming series of dying industrial towns. There was not much to see... and definitely nothing to eat. But then, in Fall River, Massachusetts, right at the border of Rhode Island, we stumbled across culinary gold: an old gas station converted into a root beer stand. The owner, a retired A&W root beer guy, was behind the counter; all he served was root beer in frosted glasses. Our root beer came with a long lecture about chilling the glass, not the root beer itself (that kills the taste). We sat at a broken-down old picnic table and sipped. I'm all about root beer, and that roadside glassful was the best I ever tasted. This recipe is my stab at bringing that taste to cake—because the only thing better than root beer is root beer plus cake. There's a mad-scientist component to this recipe: when you whisk the baking soda into the molasses and root beer, there's going to be some crazy bubbling up going on, straight out of sci-fi. Don't worry: it's completely normal.

Grits are one of the most iconic Southern foods around—so, being a red-blooded Northern boy, I thought I'd mess with them. I'm not totally unqualified, since grits aren't all that different from Italian dishes like risotto and polenta—but when I started thinking about how to brighten them up and make them a little more lively, I ended up over in the American Southwest. Go figure. Cooking time and liquid-to-grits ratios will be different depending on the type of grits you use, so make sure you check the directions on the box for that. These amounts are for Anson Mills Carolina Whole Hominy Quick Grits, which I like a lot.