Cheese

Crab may be my favorite food of all time—except maybe for scallops or octopus#151;and I like it any way I can get it, including in this totally kicky ceviche dish. I know this combination of foods sounds totally off the wall, but I love to play with food, and this play knocks it out of the park. Trust me! (And if you don't want to trust me, trust the diners at The Surf Lodge, where this dish is a top seller and the one people always ask for.)

Think of this as a streamlined and guilt-free version of scalloped potatoes. It's a toss-and-dump dish, in which I toss sliced potatoes with a little melted butter, dump them in a dish, then cover them with milk—healthier than heavy cream—that I've thickened slightly with a bit of flour (the flour keeps the milk from separating). The cheese topping is optional; with or without it, in less than an hour you will be rewarded with lusciously creamy potatoes along with that all-important browned crust. Editors' Note: Kemp Minifie reimagined the foil tray frozen dinner for Gourmet Live. Her updated menu includes: meatloaf made from grass-fed beef, scalloped potatoes, lemony green veggies, and your new favorite brownies for dessert.

This rich, soufflé-like dressing derives its texture from stone-ground grits.

Start breakfast by making a potato pancake, then cover it with sausage, eggs, and cheese and bake until puffed and golden.

This delicate cheesecake is cooked in a water bath and steamed for a supremely light texture. To make sure the homemade-gingersnap-cookie crust stays crisp, wrap the cake pan inside and out with heavy-duty, 18"-wide aluminum foil.

Celery root, also known as celeriac, has a knobby exterior that is best peeled (carefully!) with a paring knife.

The Reid family crumbles blue cheese on top to add a salty bite.

The inspiration for this salad came to chef Hugh Acheson as he spoke to a friend who'd eaten at the Spotted Pig in New York City. "He'd had a salad and was telling me all the components," says Acheson. "It sounded wonderful, so I came up with my own version of it, using local ingredients from Georgia."

The bite-size sweet red peppers in this recipe are a tasty, low-cal vehicle for delicious cheese; plus, their mild heat can help warm you up from the inside out as the temperature begins to drop.

My editor, Maria Guarnaschelli, suggested this recipe, based on her memory of a savory pie served at a London pub. One half of the pie was filled with pork and the other with apples. As I later learned, that dish has its roots in an eighteenth-century workingman's lunch called the Bedfordshire Clanger—a hand-held pie filled with meat on one end and jam on the other. It was a compact way to serve lunch and dessert in one package. In adapting this idea to my own taste, I decided to layer apples on top of a spiced ground pork filling, rather than setting the two ingredients side by side. The flavors are fantastic together, and this dish has been the hit of many parties. It makes an especially good buffet option, as it can be served warm or at room temperature. Apple Notes: As with all pie recipes, you want firm fruit here. Some good examples: Granny Smith, Arkansas Black, and Northern Spy for tart apples; and Golden Delicious, Jazz, or Pink Lady for sweet ones. Equipment: 10- to 12-inch skillet; food processor; 9-inch deep-dish pie plate, preferably glass; parchment paper or wax paper

In winter, the section of our cupboard devoted to onions seems to grow exponentially, filled with all forms of eye-dripping lovelies: red and white onions, shallots, massive white-bulbed scallions. Grilling a sack of onions down to a cereal bowl of caramelized noodles is a rare fall pleasure. And few pillars of French cooking are as widely and voraciously loved as scalding hot onion soup cloaked in a blistering layer of melted Gruyère. But like with many epic dishes canonized by the cuisine of rural folk, vegetarians usually remain wholly uninvited. So how does one mitigate the beef stock in every single recipe of the gooiest of soups? Our "ah-ha moment" was beer. After trying small batches of all three colors of the proverbial tricolore (blue, white, and red) we settled on Chimay Blue, a dubbel style beer that's become a household name for boozers. This so-called grande réserve, or any other basic dubbel, is a super substitute for the essence of animal gore. The malts and sugars play on your tongue in a way that's strikingly similar to the flavor of liquefied fat and tendon.

Nothing satiates the sentient like the gooey, almost raw central mass of a freshly baked sweet roll. As true seekers of new ways to sedate each other with homebaked carbs, we flipped the Cinnabon on its noggin' one New Year's Day and whipped up what has become our favorite recipe for savory rolls. Take everything sweet about a cinnamon roll and invert it: soft sweet bread becomes tart and savory, gooey brown-sugar butter morphs into salty caramelized shallot goo, and frosting slumps into melted aged cheese. Yeah this will take a few hours to a day … but it will hurt your friends and lovers in the most wonderful way.

Customize this one to your liking, from the fillings to the doneness.

For the softest dough, use a potato ricer or simply mash the potatoes until smooth.

This one's got it all: bright fall colors and sweet-savory appeal.

These ethereal, savory puffs are easily frozen and reheated. Serve half the yield from this recipe at the party, and save the rest for another time. Feel free to mix and match any semisoft melting cheese such as Gruyère, cheddar, or Fontina with any hard cheese such as Asiago, Parmesan, or Manchego.

To speed up this classic soup without sacrificing its soulful flavor, simply caramelize the onions in a dry nonstick skillet (be sure to use one with a silicone surface designed for use over high heat, not Teflon), and use good-quality beef stock, preferably one that is low in salt.

Blanch brussels sprouts and then shock them in an ice-water bath to keep them bright green and crisp-tender.

This whoopie pie is like a root beer float turned into a cake.