Ingredients
Heat the oven to 450ºF.
If you cook no other potato recipe in your lifetime, you must try this one. A small amount of turmeric brings out the earthiness and somehow the sweetness of potatoes. This is kind of an upside-down potato casserole with the caramely onions on the bottom rather than the top. A final handful of crisp almonds takes these potatoes over the top.
The yams are best at room temperature and improve with several days in the refrigerator.
A beauty queen of the first order, this dish flies in the face of the old saying, "two peas in a pod." The truth is no two peas are ever the same.
Cuban black bean soup ranks with France's steak frites and Italy's spaghetti with red sauce as a national obsession. It is a touchstone dish of the Caribbean. Usually made from dried beans (and definitely worth the extra time when you have it), the dish can nonetheless be adapted to a streamlined model with canned beans.
Jean-Pierre Moullé and I were roasting chickens to go with brussels sprouts when he told me I should try opening the brussels and flash-sautéing them, because they're delicious that way. That's how I've cooked them ever since. The bacon-and-cream combo -- along with bourbon -- is a classic Southern thing; I put a Spanish twist on it with the sherry.
Ingredients
Everyone in the South seems to love cheese straws - the thin, crisp pastry sticks with the tang of cayenne and sharp cheddar - and they are always served at cocktail parties and church socials alike. They are almost mandatory at weddings: I remember receptions where the only fare was a silver compote of cheese straws, another of mints, and the wedding cake. Usually cheese-straw dough is piped from a cookie press and snipped into short lengths. Miss Lewis uses the simple technique of rolling out the dough and slicing off the “straws.” Cheese straws improve as the flavors mellow, so make them a day before serving, if possible. A tin of cheese straws makes an excellent hostess gift.
I love to come home, blast some music, pour myself a beverage, and make a meatloaf sandwich on a baguette with a pile of these fries. Since they aren’t fried, it’s not a super gross late-night snack. The thinness makes them crispy, so it’s really like half potato chip, half fry. As my best friend says, it’s all about the dipping sauces: BBQ, ketchup, honey mustard, ranch, and sriracha mayo.