American

This Italian take on shrimp and grits comes together in just 25 minutes for a creamy, comforting dinner.

This quick soup, an American classic, makes a fine pairing with a grilled cheese sandwich or crisp romaine salad. Here the grilled cheese sandwich takes a different form—a souffléed Cheddar topping on a good piece of toasted sandwich bread. Use an organic brand of tomatoes, one that's thick with puree as well as chunks of tomato.

If you like regular pecan pie made with corn syrup, wait until you taste old-fashioned pecan pie made with cane syrup—the difference is astonishing!

This is probably the most requested dish at my restaurant, davidburke & donatella. You can, of course, adjust the heat in this dish to your own palate. I really like it to have a powerful note. It is another terrific dish for entertaining as the rice, basil, and tomatoes can all be made in advance. The rice can be kept warm over hot water or it can be reheated in a microwave. The lobster can be cut up in advance, and then all that is left to do is to put it all together, which should take no more than twenty minutes.

Chilaquiles is a classic Southwestern casserole made from crumbled tortillas, tomato sauce, and cheese. Here, its savory flavors are augmented with black beans and zucchini.

It's easy to understand why apple crumble pie (sometimes called French apple pie in diners and old cookbooks) is so immensely popular: It packs all the flavor and fragrance of a traditional apple pie underneath a carapace of nutty, buttery, cinnamony crumbs. Adding cranberries to the filling evokes a familiar fall color and provides pleasant tartness to balance the sweetness.

When you combine powdered chiles with cumin and other ingredients to make a spice mix for chili con carne, you are turning chile powder into chili powder.

This is the “house” burger at Bobby’s Burger Palace. It’s a basic burger (I like it garnished with red onion, tomato, romaine lettuce, and horseradish mustard) with CRUNCH. The crunch factor comes from a big handful of potato chips layered between the burger and the bun. Some of you may have added chips to your sandwiches as kids, and if people ever told you that you were nuts, I’m here to say that you’re not! Oozing melted cheese becomes a part of the chips and those crunchy chips become a part of the burger—delicious. I love getting a mouthful of juicy burger and salty, crispy potato chips in one bite; it’s a way to get a true contrast of textures into your cheeseburger. In fact, I make it an option to have all of the burgers at Bobby’s Burger Palace “crunchified.”

Jamie’s favorite meal in the world is his wife Brooke’s meat loaf. Making meat loaf in muffin pans means everyone gets his or her own, which kids always love. Of course, if you’re a fan of meat loaf like Jamie is, it means you have to admit to eating two—or more—at a time. We glaze the tops with a mixture of ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and mustard for extra flavor, but for kids, you can also serve ketchup alongside or as “frosting” on top after it comes out of the oven.

A few years ago I created a menu of regional American dishes (both traditional and invented) for a special Fourth of July wine dinner. I wanted something particularly clever to represent Manhattan. I kept thinking of sophisticated New Yorkers drinking martinis and decided to try my hand at making a sauce with similar ingredients. I like the double dose of juniper with the deep, rich taste of wild salmon, and the olives add a distinctive briny note.

This is the grandmother of all meat loaf, especially juicy when cooked in a loaf pan. It also can be baked free form—just shape the meat mixture into an oblong loaf and set it on a rimmed baking pan. Either way, the cooking time is reduced in the convection oven. Serve slices of this everyday favorite with mashed potatoes and a salad. Leftovers make great sandwiches. You might bake some vegetables or biscuits along with the meat loaf, either on the rack above or below, while it cooks.

This dish is a true Southern delight, our riff on Louisiana-style spicy shrimp combined with cheesy grits just the way we make ’em at The Lady & Sons. It’s amazing how easy this is to whip up. Make it for your family, and they’ll swear you spent all day tied to the stove.

Guess whose is whose. Yogurt and sorbet with fresh fruit is a luscious and healthful way to get your sundae fix. Or you can go whole hog and pile on the ice cream, peanut butter, fudge, and cookies! As kids growing up, we always got single scoops at the Dairy Queen; we couldn’t ask for the banana split—it was the most expensive thing on the menu. It’s safe to say we’ve made up for lost time on that one, though!

If you’ve been to Savannah, or if you live here (hey, neighbor!), then you know that we’re one shrimp-crazy city. We like shrimp so well we are happy just boiling them up and eating them out of their shells. But every once in a while, we do something a little more substantial for dinner, like this Cajun-flavored dish, which goes great with our colorful Broccoli and Red Pepper Salad (page 109).

A pandowdy is a deep-dish fruit dessert with a pastry topping. while The name may come from the fact that the dessert is typically dowdy-looking, we think this one is anything but.

Brown sugar adds a deep, rich flavor to the soft filling. The nutty, slightly salty topping is the perfect finishing touch.

This can help use up all the leftover veggies, too.