Southern

Repeatedly folding and rolling the biscuit dough yields lots of flaky, individuated layers that pull apart neatly when you eat them.

This potent New Orleans nightcap is as much about the aromatic absinthe rinse as it is the Cognac and rye.

Pretty much everyone in the South fights about who's got the best pimiento cheese recipe. Make these if you want to put the debate to rest.

Chicken potpie is a dish many of us crave when we want to conjure up the warmth of home and hearth, and chef Ashley Christensen, owner of Poole's Diner in Raleigh, North Carolina, is no different. "This potpie is inspired by my mother's kind of cooking: dishes that shout out the classics, but with clean flavors and crisp textures," she says. Christensen grounds the pie in colder-month offerings of sweet potatoes and rutabagas and tender leaves of kale instead of the usual carrot and celery combo. Adding another bit of Southern flair, the chef uses a small amount of cornmeal in the crust, which provides a nutty, toasty flavor with an echo of sweetness to match the filling. "Though some potpies are encased in crust, I like the "island" approach, letting the gravy bubble up around the pillow of crust," Christensen says. "Crust is potpie's defining moment, no matter how delicious the filling."

Bourbon Balls function as the ultimate easy dessert for Southern cocktail parties, and they put a sweet, slightly boozy finish on any get-together. Think of them as an edible digestif. Crushed vanilla wafers hold all the chocolatey goodness together. Buy an 11-ounce box and remove two dozen wafers to save for another use, like Banana Pudding.

Turn your favorite ribs into the ultimate barbecue dinner with this all-purpose recipe.

We use this rub on just about everything that we smoke at the restaurant, but you needn't follow the recipe exactly. Feel free to improvise on the ingredients and amounts, reducing the sugar for a less-sweet "bark" (crust), increasing the cayenne for a spicier one, and so on.

Yogurt gets used two ways in this simple dinner party–worthy dish: first it provides a tenderizing marinade for the chicken, then more yogurt is mixed with the pan juices to create a rich sauce for serving.

Once cooked, slick fried chicken with a potent spiced-chile oil, for an extra punch of heat and flavor.

Barbecue purists may claim that pulled pork has to be smoked in a pit to be the real thing, and we won't quibble with that. But this recipe, prepared right in your kitchen (on the counter, no less), is one deliciously simple variation on the theme.

This is an ode to Spain, a culture totally infatuated with the glories of asparagus. Here the green spears are paired with a classic Basque tomato-pepper relish called pipérade, simple poached eggs, and grits. One of these things has no place in Spain, but you can take the boy out of Georgia but you...well, you know.