Cheese

If time and busy schedules allowed, we’d still show up at Mama’s table around 3:30 p.m. every day begging for an afternoon snack of cheese bread. Instead, we now work the bread into our dinner routine. You can even serve this on its own or with a salad for lunch. Or, try it with Braised Chicken with Peppers and Mushrooms (page 129) and Not-Your-Mama’s Tuna Casserole (page 62).

Bobby loves broccoli; Jamie loves bacon; Brooke loves pine nuts and dried cranberries; and everybody loves ranch dressing, so this salad just kind of “appeared” in the bowl one day when we were all feeling hungry. Also try it with Quick-’n’-Easy Chicken ’n’ Dumplings (page 131).

This is not only a fabulous side dish to add to the grill while the main meal is being prepared; we also love to serve it on its own as a game-day snack. You can also try it with Bobby’s Special Thick-Cut Garlic Pork Chops with Bourbon Glaze (page 87) or Jamie and Bobby’s Fabulous Grilled Burgers with “The Deens’ List” of Toppings (page 78).

Cheese, peppers, bacon, grill . . . This is a winning combo that will steal the fire from anything else you have going on. Well, except maybe the Super Bowl, which it will make just that much better. Serve it anytime you’ve got a group of buddies coming over, which, for Bobby, is nearly every night. We love these with our ultimate rib steak and also with All-Day Beef Chili (page 122).

Some dishes are all about the garnishes. Or maybe some families like to do it up. Either way, when we bake a potato, we don’t settle for a pat of butter. The fixin’s are the fun part! We’ve made up a whole list of optional baked potato toppings, but, for us, the Vidalia onions are nonnegotiable. These crunchy and sweet onions are a Southern favorite and, although they’re grown only in Georgia, they’re still available in many supermarkets nationwide. If you can’t get Vidalias, other sweet onions like Walla Wallas or Texas sweets taste just as good. These taters go great with all kind of mains. Two of our other favorites are All-Day Beef Chili (page 122) and Southern-Style Turkey, Tomato, and Monterey Jack Bake (page 48).

Macaroni salad is all over the South. This is our refreshing Italian-inspired take on the usual mayonnaise-based kind. You can toss in leftover grilled chicken for a main-course salad. Kids tend to love macaroni, so we leave out the herbs when we know we’re feeding someone who isn’t a fan of “green bits.” Try it next time you serve up Chicken Nuggets with Honey-Lemon Dipping Sauce (page 159) or our Saucy Tilapia with Tomatoes and Capers (page 56).

Who doesn’t love this combo? You can pay twenty bucks to eat it all nicely stacked up at a five-star restaurant, or you can make it at home for a lot less, and it’ll be just as good. Try it with any Italian-accented dish, like Braised Chicken with Peppers and Mushrooms (page 129) or Creamy, Spicy Sausage Pasta (page 105).

You can transform this perfect crisp side salad into a main-course salad by slicing up any meat you like and tossing it on top. Or try it alongside Grilled Caesar Pork Tenderloin (page 89) or Down-Home Pinto Beans and Ham Hocks (page 127).

Mama used to make us cheese toasts and cinnamon toasts for breakfast. (She would leave the oven door open after making them, so we could warm up on chilly mornings.) We started to play with that for Jack, and came up with these tasty cream cheese sandwiches sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. They taste a bit like a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese, but the crunch of the sugar on the outside and the creamy cheese inside make them way more interesting. Plus the cream cheese adds protein, so they’re heartier than your average serving of cinnamon toast.

So many kids only want to eat mac and cheese right from the box. We decided to come up with an alternative dish for Jack—one where Mom and Dad are in charge of quality control. Jack always cleans his plate, so we have to be quick if we want to sneak a few pieces for ourselves!

Brooke is a huge Mexican food fan. In fact, when Jack was one week old, Brooke had such a mean craving that we took him out to a Mexican spot near us. So it’s no surprise that Jack has become a big fan, too. And since quesadillas are pretty much Mexican grilled cheese, we make them just to give him a little variety, and use them as an opportunity to get a little avocado (which is chock-full of vitamins and has more potassium than a banana) into his diet.

We’ve never met a kid who doesn’t love grilled cheese—with extra-gooey cheese, please! We like to slip in some tomato, too, which some kids won’t eat otherwise. And let’s be honest here: You may as well make yourself one of these while you’re at it; otherwise your kid’s sandwich doesn’t have a chance.

Mama’s spaghetti and tuna casserole was delicious. We don’t want to give anyone the idea that it wasn’t by calling this Not-Your-Mama’s. But this casserole, full of creamed corn, olives, and cheese and topped with addictively crunchy fried onions, is really better than it has any right to be. Sorry, Mama!

This Italian-inspired salad uses fresh cheese tortellini as its base. (You can find fresh tortellini in the refrigerated section of your local supermarket.) It’s a fun variation on the usual pasta salad suspects. Plus, it’s superconvenient because you can fix it up to a day ahead and serve it straight from the fridge. We love the way tortellini and mozzarella taste when they’ve been marinating in Italian seasonings and how nice the colors of the broccoli, tomatoes, and olives look when they are served together. That’s why we call this salad tricolore (Italian for “three colors”)!

When we were traveling around the country shooting episodes of our Food Network show, Road Tasted, we ate lots of fried, barbecued, and sugary food (Hey, it’s a tough job but somebody has to do it). Wherever we were, Bobby would seek out a salad for lunch or dinner to add a little balance to his diet. The night he discovered chopped salad, it was love at first sight. He developed this easy week-night recipe as soon as we were back home. It’s a salad that accommodates almost any ingredient—feel free to add your own personal favorites into the mix.

Growing up in the South, we were surrounded by three-bean salads, which are something of an aquired taste. We ate up Mama’s beans and ham hocks, but give us kids a cold bean salad and we’d be out the backdoor. Well, now we’ve seen the error of our ways—plus canned beans seem to be better these days, less mushy and more flavorful. Here we toss them with spicy cheese and leftover ham for a main-course salad that’s delicious served with cornbread.

Our Aunt Peggy does a zucchini bake for every get-together, and it is so good that we decided to try cooking eggplant the same way. Since we don’t fry it, this is a healthier, easier take on your standard eggplant Parmesan, and, served over spaghetti with a crisp romaine and tomato salad, it makes a delicious vegetarian meal. (Of course, you can always add grilled chicken breast, if you prefer.)

Bobby may just make the best pimiento cheese there is. This version is a combo of Bobby’s recipe and the classic Lady & Sons’ version. We like to use pimiento cheese everywhere, not just as a dip. Leftovers sometimes find their way onto a burger, and every once in a while, we’ll make a batch just for this souped-up mac and cheese, which we often serve with a nice cup of hot tomato soup.

One of our favorite things about pasta is that you can get creative with your sauce. Bell peppers, black-eyed peas, and Tabasco give this baked pasta a racy Southern taste. Jamie and his family eat so much pasta at their house that we like to joke that if they weren’t from the South, they’d be from southern Italy.