Cheese

These bite-size cookies resemble little lemon pies, with a sweet, short crust and a tart cheesecake filling.

Flaky cream cheese dough is filled with a rich dried-fruit filling, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, and baked until golden brown to form these crescents. The prunes are soaked in brandy overnight for the filling, so plan ahead if you’re making them.

This is a thick dressing perfect for dippin’ hot-from-the-grill Chicken Wings (page 19) in. If you want to serve it as a salad dressing, thin it down by adding a bit of milk slowly at the end.

We use this versatile dressing on more than just salad greens. It makes a good dippin’ sauce for fried or grilled meats and veggies as well as a sauce for Chicken-Fried Chicken sandwiches (page 69) and Fried Green Tomatoes (page 28).

Pie doesn’t get any easier than this. The chocolate cookie crust is pressed into the pan, and the filling needs no baking. It’s the perfect dessert to whip up after you’ve invested all those hours smokin’ your pork butt.

A few years back, we were closed on Sunday. People kept turnin’ up anyway, so we gave in and opened with a limited menu. We created this soup just for that day. It has a good Sunday vibe.

This is a good old Italian recipe that makes an appearance on our menu every once in a while. It’s brimmin’ with Old World flavors and looks damn good on the plate. It’ll keep your main courses from gettin’ boring.

If you were wonderin’ what to do with all that leftover pulled pork or brisket you smoked, or if you have some nice roast turkey hangin’ around, give this a try. It’s our only breakfast item and it goes great with a couple of eggs on the side.

Most Yankees have a preconceived notion that they don’t like grits. When we put them on the menu, lots of folks are resistant. It’s a tough sell for the waitresses, but once they get customers to try them, they’re hooked. Our flavor-boosted grits are rich and powerfully earthy. Serve them instead of mashed potatoes.

Any Southern cookin’ conjures up corn bread. Ours is sweet and mellow and goes great with the tanginess of our bar-b-que.

This is one of the best ways we know to use up day-old corn bread. We mix it with spicy Italian sausage and stuff it into some bodacious pork chops to turn out one good-lookin’ dish for our Custom-Que menu.

Just like the name says, this is a big chicken dish. Grilled whole boneless chicken breasts are layered with eggplant, prosciutto, basil, provolone, and BBQ sauce for a heaping meal-size portion. For those with dainty appetites, the same approach can be applied to half chicken breasts. You might even want to come up with your own grandiose combinations, like grilled zucchini, oregano, and feta; grilled portabella mushrooms, bacon, sautéed onions, and Cheddar; or grilled tomatoes, sliced sausage, chopped cilantro, and pepper-jack cheese. Remember, just think big.

As far as Dinosaur patrons are concerned, anything with goat cheese is kinda suspicious. Add some asparagus and you’re tippin’ the highbrow scale—hence the name of this dish. Many have discovered the tangy difference goat cheese makes when matched up with our Mutha Sauce.

Here’s a twist on a classic British pub recipe. The beefy base of the pie gets flavored up Dino-style and topped off with savory mac ‘n’ cheese instead of the traditional mashed potatoes. It makes a hearty meal. Just add salad.

This is my version of a recipe that’s been bouncing around my family for years. It’s more Italian than barbecue, but who cares? It’s definitely a crowd pleaser. We get our fresh bread dough from the Columbus Bakery, a legendary family-run bakery in Syracuse.

Don’t get me wrong from the title—I treat these tender babies right. First you blacken ‘em in a smoking skillet and then finish ‘em off with a blue cheese-studded BBQ sauce. If that’s not respect, I don’t know what is.

Because we’re a barbecue joint, we’ve always got pulled pork on hand, so it was just natural for us to turn it into a delicious appetizer. Don’t let our habits limit you. Make these quesadillas with some cooked turkey or chicken thigh meat or any chopped or shredded leftover meat you have lurkin’ in the fridge.

Central and Western New York is “wing country,” so you’ve gotta have some good wings on your menu. Most places fry their wings according to the original Buffalo recipe, but we smoke ours. You can make them hot or mild on your grill just by changing the rub and the sauce you slather on at the end. We serve them with the traditional fixin’s—Blue Cheese Dressing and celery sticks.

I first came across these tasty Colombian fried corn cakes stuffed with oozin’, stringy cheese at a Miami street festival. Back home, I messed around with the recipe and added whole corn kernels to the dough to make ‘em more interesting. In the restaurant we serve arepas with a pile of pulled pork in the center for a real Memphis-meets-Miami dish. But if you don’t have the pork on hand, they’re just as good served with some Fire-Roasted Garlic Salsa.

It has become a tradition in my house that I make everyone’s favorite dessert on his or her birthday. Garth’s favorite is German Chocolate Cake, Taylor’s is Banana Pudding, and so on. When it came time for my friend Joe’s birthday, his wife, Kim, let me know that his favorite was cheesecake. “No problem,” I said, as I started thinking about that awesome cheesecake in a box I was going to make (I have to admit that it’s my favorite). “He loves the old-style New York cheesecake,” she explained. Umm … no problem? But I was committed, so I did what I always do: call my family for help. Beth hooked me up with several cheesecake recipes, and this is the one I like best. It made me a big hit on Joe’s birthday.