Dairy

The King Ranch Casserole is as much a part of Texas history as the Alamo. So imagine when Crystal—originally from Georgia—marched into Sandy’s kitchen with some ideas on how to improve the dish. Yep, you guessed it. Disaster. You just can’t mess with Texas. Our recipe hasn’t budged from the original, which has been in Sandy’s family for as long as she can remember. Our fellow Austinites share the same love for this traditional recipe and have made the King Ranch one of our most popular menu items. Enjoy!

Ah, the Corn Dog Casserole! Just the smell alone will get the kids to the table in time for dinner. Maybe even your neighbor’s kids. Okay, forget the kids. Who are we kidding? If you’ve ever dropped by your local carnival or street fair just to get yourself a corn dog, this is the dish for you! It’s fun to act like a kid sometimes, anyway.

This is a super-yummy cake that you can whip together easily once you’ve got your mise en place under control. Start by preparing all your apples at once—then just break off what you need to sauté for the cake first, and put the ones for the topping in a bowl off to the side. After you’ve grated the lemon zest for the cake, squeeze the juice from the lemon and toss it with the reserved apples for the topping—this adds flavor and keeps them from turning brown while you make the cake. If you really have it together, you can make the topping ahead of time and keep it in the fridge until you’re ready to serve the cake. You don’t even have to serve the topping warm, but I think it’s really special this way. Got leftovers? This topping is great over ice cream, on pancakes, or, of course, on second helpings of cake!

My favorite thing about cheesecake is the texture. I like a dry, dense New York–style cheesecake over a light, creamy one. By using goat cheese in addition to cream cheese, this recipe gives me a fabulous texture that’s slightly crumbly, a bit tangy, and has just the perfect hint of sweetness. Add to that a spectacularly spiced crust, and an old classic is totally new and exciting again!

I LOOOOOVE Nutella. I can happily eat it straight out of the jar, so whipping it up into a mousse and serving it with a hazelnut cake just makes sense. It’s nutty, chocolaty, and creamy all at once—what’s not to love? As far as I’m concerned, anything with Nutella sells itself.

This is my interpretation of the French classic, pommes Anna. It’s just as elegant as the traditional version, but I’ve added Parm for a cheesy little twist. What’s beautiful about this dish is how the outside gets a delicious crispy crust while the inside has a wonderfully delicate texture, thanks to the layers of thinly sliced potatoes. I also love that you can make one cake and then just cut it into individual portions—super-cinchy!

I’m a huge fan of potatoes! Which is why I love this dish. It’s the perfect base for poached eggs at brunch, to sop up the juices of a big rib eye steak (page 156), to complement my fabulous brined pork chops (page 170), or just for lunch. When this was on the menu at my restaurant and I was craving something porky, cheesy, and delicious, I’d have one of the line cooks fry up one of these lovelies for me to eat while I worked. Yum!

This dish reminds me of summertime as a kid. Growing up we had a vegetable garden and we always grew zucchini—one of those veggies that if you grow some, you get a ton. So my mom was constantly coming up with different ways to use all the zucchini we had hanging around—we had stuffed zucchini, grilled zucchini, zucchini bread, you name it. (I took more zucchini bread to my teachers at school than you can imagine!) This preparation of stewed zucchini was one my favorites. Zucchini with tomatoes and cheese . . . HELLO? What’s not to love???

For years polenta reminded me of the Cream of Wheat my mother used to send me off to school with in the morning. It was totally boring. But once I started making polenta for myself I discovered I LOVED it. My special twist? I fat it up with milk, Parm, Fontina cheese, and mascarpone until it’s creamy, decadent, and delicious. Just remember, the kicker here is to season the liquid with plenty of salt in the beginning—it makes all the difference.

Everyone thinks of mac and cheese as comfort food, but there’s a lot of bad mac and cheese out there, and frankly, that food makes me UNcomfortable! Great mac and cheese should be creamy and tangy and luscious—it should get me excited with every bite. I promise that this recipe is what mac and cheese should be. And it’s got bacon! What could be better?

If you wheel your grocery cart down the rice aisle, you will not find “risotto.” Risotto is not a type of rice—it’s a method used for cooking Arborio or Carnaroli rice. And once you learn how to make risotto using my Risotto-Without-a-Recipe method, you’ll be able to make any kind of risotto simply by adding ingredients and flavorings to this basic technique.

These gnocchi are also called malfatti (which translates to “badly made”) or gnudi (which means “nude”) because essentially these are ravioli without the pasta—they’re naked! No matter what you call them, I ADORE these delicate little cheese dumplings. They’re little bundles of spinach and ricotta sitting on top of melted Fontina mixed with heavy cream, mascarpone, and egg yolks. A little bit of this dish goes a long way—right to my booty usually!

This is an amazing dish because it takes everyday ingredients and joins them in a delicious and unexpected collaboration. Both the squash and the broccoli rabe have their own strong personalities—one sweet and one bitter—and each brings something to the party that would be sorely missed if one of them didn’t show up. Combined with the nutty, earthy flavor of the whole wheat pasta, this is what I call a real team effort.

Fava beans are one of those things I wait for all year long. When you talk about seasonal cooking, fava beans immediately come to my mind because when they’re fresh, there’s really nothing like them. I was one of the weird kids who grew up liking lima beans—in fact, I asked for them every birthday dinner (why my mother didn’t just serve them to me on a regular basis I’m not really sure). Fava beans to me are a jacked-up version of lima beans, so you can imagine how much I like them. I feature them in this sauce, but then I tuck some sweet pea and cheese action into the ravioli so you get a little pocket of pea-ness on your plate along with those lovely favas!

I first encountered this sauce while working in Umbria, and it’s one of my favorite summertime pastas. To me, this is Mother Nature’s last blast, her crescendo before fall. This is where you take everything she has to give, all those glorious summer ingredients, and toss them together to let the wonderful flavors marry. Then you just barely heat everything up, never actually letting the veggies cook, so they maintain their fresh flavors. Punctuate this with a salty grate of ricotta salata and say, “Mmmmm . . .”

I LOOOOOVE nuts. And this super-classic preparation, which is hugely flavorful and really easy to make, is all about them. I start by toasting and puréeing walnuts—both of which help bring out their flavor and natural fattiness. Combine them with some sharp cheese and spicy arugula, and you end up with a dish that’s luscious and palate cleansing at the same time.

Where I come from, corn is the epitome of a summer vegetable; we used to drive out to the fields to get ours fresh and just leave our money in a can on the side of the road. So in this dish I combine corn with lovely little cherry tomatoes sautéed until they burst out of excitement, letting their delightful juices flow! Add some bacon and this sauce just steps up, pokes you, and says, “Hi, I’m summer, glad to see you!”

After culinary school, I spent a year in Italy learning to cook Italian food the way the Italians do, the right way. That year was probably one of the most important of my education; I learned a ton from the chefs I worked for—techniques and methods I still rely on every day. I also learned how to make this dish—which is a total showstopper. Uovo means “egg,” and that’s what this dish is all about: a lovely golden egg yolk nestled in a bed of creamy ricotta cheese all wrapped up in a tender blanket of pasta. Cut these lovelies open and the yolk flows out of the center. It’s an incredibly sophisticated and sexy dish, but deceivingly easy to make—the only catch is you have to cook the raviolis in batches. I realize this may seem like a pain, but it’s really the best approach as these ravs are very fragile (and they do cook really quickly, so it’s actually not that big a deal). I promise it’s worth it, because this recipe will make you a rock star!

Eggs, bacon, and cheese, oh my! After a long shift in the kitchen and a few glasses of wine, carbonara is a chef’s late-night favorite. It’s fast, flavorful, and oh-so-satisfying. The thing is, as much as I love it, carbonara poses a bit of a dichotomy for me because while it involves some of my very favorite ingredients (eggs, bacon, and cheese), it also includes my nemesis: black pepper. The thing is, this is such a classic preparation that black pepper really belongs here—so I use it.

Years ago, I was working at a tiny restaurant in Tuscany. This is where I first learned to make ragù—an unbelievably delicious sauce that I would let cook for hours and hours. But in the beginning, no matter how long I let it simmer, the owner would come over, taste it, and tell me the vegetables were raw! In my head I remember thinking, are you freaking kidding me? But he was right. I was skimping on an essential step—I was rushing the browning of the soffritto: the early stage in a ragù’s life cycle when the flavor begins to build and deepen. Now, of course, I’m super-sensitive to this step, and when I taste a ragù in a restaurant, I can tell instantly if the chef has taken a shortcut at the browning stage. So be patient—if you’re taking the time and effort to make this spectacular sauce, don’t rush it; brown it and enjoy!