Cured Meat

Fall is a perfect time to try this bisque. The healthy and delicious sweet potato, which certainly represents the season in our home, is one of the stars of the soup. And if you’ve got leftover pumpkin flesh after carving your decorations, you can always substitute that for the canned purée. Using chicken broth instead of water gives this thick soup a rich-tasting down-home flair.

A great dressing is the key to an outstanding potato salad. And let me tell you: in our version, this German lady is wearing a nice dress. Y’all know Gina dresses well, too, and once she adds her signature “pig,” this salad is a stand-out, even among the best potato salads in Memphis.

Smoky bacon wrapped around shrimp spiced with Neely’s barbecue rub and garlic creates a sensuous dance of flavors on your tongue. But the real romance of the dish is that you can feed your partner these bite-sized delights.

PAT Broccoli, broccoli, broccoli! We love this simple vegetable. Nothing is easier than blanching broccoli, and once this delicious dressing—a little sweet, a little savory, a little sour, and a little spicy—is added, the transportable dish becomes super-duper. As Gina always says, “A great dressing is like a great handbag and shoes. It makes the whole outfit look (taste) perfect.”

PAT The secret to this recipe is the sauce. Kids and grown folks will not be able to eat just one. Using 80-percent-lean ground beef leaves just enough fat so the burger will plump up and be extra juicy. And we can’t leave out Gina’s pig: top these darlings with bacon, Comeback Sauce, pepper Jack, Neely’s coleslaw, and fried onion rings, and you’ll have a burger like no other.

“Devils on Horseback” are an old Southern favorite, and it’s hard to believe how so much flavor can be packed into one little bite. We like to make a double batch whenever we’re having a family party; they fly off the plate so fast we can barely keep up! Luckily, they’re just as easy to make as they are to eat. There are several variations that are fun to try: for example, try substituting Parmesan for the blue cheese, or dates for the prunes.

This dish reminds us of warmth and comfort, and it also adds heartiness to the menu. Being served BBQ chili mac basically means a big “welcome to the Neely home.” Cavatappi are great noodles for this dish, because they’re shaped like corkscrews, so you can grab all the good stuff and get the full flavor. If you can’t find cavatappi, elbow macaroni comes in a distant second.

GINA For some reason, there are always potatoes in the pantry. So pull them out and make some potato skins! Grilling them gives them a nice spin, and since we are the first family of barbecue, these skins are complemented by barbecue sauce, pulled pork, and bacon. And you guys all know how I feel about the pig . . . so I like to call these the “double pig.” They also make a nice pick-me-up when you’re entertaining, so, to make them more like appetizers, you can slice them in quarters, arrange on a platter, and sprinkle with green onions. Trust me, these will be eaten so fast they’ll be history. PAT That’s right, pig layered on pig, y’all! Having potato skins, and adding two types of pork—bacon and pulled pork—truly puts a guy (that’s me, Pat!) in hog heaven. For you non–pig lovers (surely only a few of you), you can always substitute turkey bacon, chicken, or even beef brisket for the bacon and pulled pork.

I love it when the first bunches of springtime sorrel appear in the market. It has a fantastic sour, lemony-mint thing going on that does something great for clams. The only drawback is that when you cook sorrel, it turns the worst color of brown. Sprinkle it on the dish at the last minute for the best flavor and look. Please try to find guanciale for this dish—it has a delightful fattiness to it that can’t really be replicated. If you can’t find guanciale, use bacon or pancetta instead. Everyone thinks clams have to be cooked over high heat. It’s not necessary in order for the clams to open, and it can render them tough if not done carefully.

Though this recipe sounds straight out of a Coen brothers’ movie, the name refers to the fact that you chop off the squids’ arms and stuff them inside their own bodies. Trust me—this is my kind of punishment. I use cooked Controne beans as a binder instead of breadcrumbs, ensuring the filling is creamy and light, and I add slab bacon for a hit of smoke and texture. When you grill the tentacles, remember that you’re just precooking them and don’t leave them on the heat too long. Another key to this dish is ensuring that your filling is at room temperature before you stuff the squid. If it’s too cold, you’ll overcook the bodies while you heat the stuffing through. If you want to stuff the squid earlier in the day, just take them out of the fridge about a half hour before grilling.

When you buy your quail, try to get the biggest ones you can find, and make sure they’re semi-boneless, meaning only the drumsticks and wings are left intact for the shape of the finished bird. When you’re working with a bird this tiny, having someone else bone it is helpful. If you have mad knife skills, go for it. Using foil strips like huge twist ties helps set the shape of the quail as they cook, resulting in a pleasingly plump little package. Soft Polenta (page 66) and braised greens are the perfect accompaniments.

This is a very rustic dish, the meat and potatoes redolent with rosemary and garlic and bathed in butter and pork fat. But as rich as all of that sounds, the best part might be the front legs that end up crispy and delicious; as you gnaw the bones, you’ll be reminded more than a little of fried chicken, and that’s never a bad thing. I portion out the rabbit so that the darker pieces get a little more cooking and the loin receives nothing more than a quick sear. As with Braised Rabbit Paws with Radiatore (page 89), make sure you ask the butcher for the smaller and more tender fryers, not roasters.

This is my idea of bacon and eggs. Thick, homemade bacon adding a smoky, salty touch to gorgeous spring asparagus and tender new-crop potatoes, all crowned with a perfectly poached egg—it doesn’t get much better than this. When you break into the soft yolk, it melts into the vegetables, forming a luxurious sauce. This recipe makes four hearty portions. If you would like to serve six smaller plates, keep the other quantities the same and simply increase the number of eggs.

Lobster mushrooms are named for their gorgeous color and appear in Northwest markets from August through October. They have a delicate flavor and are very fine textured, making them a lovely addition to the plate. The preserved garlic ties the whole dish together, so don’t be tempted to substitute fresh. Not only would the taste be too harsh for this delicate mushroom, but you’d also miss the mellow richness the preserved garlic offers. If you can’t find lobster mushrooms, you can use other wild mushrooms such as chanterelles or hedgehogs, though the flavor will be different.

Most recipes for basic lentils call for you to cook the legumes with vegetables until the lentils are tender. In the restaurants, we precook the lentils with celery, onions, and garlic, then finish the dish with finely diced vegetables that keep their flavor and texture, adding pancetta for richness and texture. I’m sure that once you try this technique, you won’t go back to the mushy mélange that home cooks usually end up with. The lentils make a nice accompaniment to fish and poultry entrées.

This is a very grown-up salad and my idea of a fantastic lunch. It also happens to be a great way to use loins left over when you’ve braised or stewed the richer, darker pieces of your rabbit. Like pork tenderloin or filet mignon, rabbit loin can’t take that sort of cooking. Give it a quick sear instead, and toss it with crisp pancetta and frisée in a Chianti vinaigrette. You’ll find yourself making rabbit more often just to end up with spare loins.

This was the very first recipe that we cooked for this book, and it remains a favorite. It’s a perfect summer-into-fall pasta dish for when chanterelles are at their best. The gnocchetti are also a nice size for sharing.

My mom always made these sticky-sweet baked beans for picnics and cookouts. I make them year-round with most any type of cooked dried beans, including navy, pinto, or great Northern. In the summer, though, fresh and tender butter beans are my favorite. When entertaining, I often give this homey dish an air of sophistication by baking and serving it in individual-size ramekins or custard dishes topped with slices of pork belly in place of the bacon.

Unlike my mom and many Southern cooks of her generation, for whom fatback was the preferred flavoring agent, I most often make peas in a savory broth flavored by bacon, country ham, or olive oil. Either way, the cooked peas yield a rich, saucy pot likker that just begs to be soaked up with cornbread.

A Charleston classic, pirlou (aka purloo or pilau) is an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink rice pilaf that is the lowcountry contribution to the family of rice dishes, including jambalaya and gumbo, hailing from the rice-growing regions of the Southeast. Pirlous usually feature seafood of some kind—as you might expect, given their watery origins—but I like the way this simplified version showcases the grassy flavor of fresh field peas.