Broil

My mom thinks these might be more ’60s than ’80s, but they sound ’80s to me, so here they are. These open-faced grilled cheese sandwiches are easy to make and sure to get a comment or two from your friends.

Normally, you would make these on skewers, but for a party it’s much easier to broil all the meat and then serve them on toothpicks.

A tuna melt is one of the easiest things to make when you are eating alone. It really doesn’t take much more work than a tuna sandwich, but because you eat it with a knife and fork, it always seem more like a meal than just a sandwich.

I love Caesar salad but, of course, my sister has to ruin it by adding chicken to cover up the taste of the lettuce. I mean really, how can you not like lettuce? This dressing is also really good on pasta salad, and at least Jill doesn’t feel the need to add meat to that.

When you present dumplings with this sauce, the combination may recall an Italian pasta dish, but the sauce’s zesty qualities resemble the Latin flavors of Mexico more than of Europe. But on closer analysis, the combination of chile, ginger, herbs, and spices is definitely Asian, specifically Nepal’s Himalayan cuisine, which blends Chinese, Indian, and Tibetan traditions. In the Nepalese repertoire, this sauce is a type of achar (a moniker for chutneys and pickles) and is what typically accompanies momo; it’s great with Tibetan momo, too. With a tangy edge, moderate heat, and spiced depth, the sauce has a multilayered punch that begins seemingly subtle but finishes with a certain feistiness. Sometimes ground toasted sesame seeds are added for richness, but I find that they mute the other flavors too much.

Hummus is everywhere in Mediterranean cultures. In Greece, it is generally served as an appetizer, swimming in olive oil, accompanied by pita triangles, feta cheese and olives. In the United States, it is also served as a dip for raw vegetables, and often has other ingredients, such as roasted red peppers or pine nuts, blended right in. The basic formula is pretty simple: chickpeas (garbanzo beans), tahini (sesame butter), lemon juice, salt, and olive oil. Proportions of the basic ingredients may be varied in accordance with your taste. Less garlic, more garlic, less tahini . . . whatever. Play around with it and see what you get. Fattet is a sort of Middle Eastern layered casserole or salad. Taking a left turn at traditional, it occurred to me that you could easily make a sort of Middle Eastern tostada using some of the common ingredients found in the dish.

Miso is a fermented soybean paste, and is, well, the namesake ingredient behind miso soup. It is available in most natural foods stores and certainly in Asian supermarkets. Look for it in the refrigerated section near the tofu. Serve alongside steamed rice and vegetables for a spicy, sensible meal.

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).

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.

This pasta salad is one of Jamie’s “greatest hits” meals. It’s perfect for leftover grilled or store-bought rotisserie chicken, and it’s got everything we could want Jack to eat in it: pasta, chicken, and veggies. A little ranch dressing makes the salad nice and creamy and helps bring all the ingredients together.

Trust a riverboat captain to throw some fish on the grill. Mama’s husband, Michael Groover, makes his po’boy sandwiches with sweet, mild tilapia fillets and tartar sauce so tasty some of us have been known to eat it on its own. These po’boys are a big, messy, and delicious meal—a real Low Country favorite. Don’t forget to put a bottle of Tabasco on the table for extra punch!

You can order yourself a grilled chicken Caesar anywhere. But we figured we could jazz up that combo a little while still keeping it fairly healthful if we swapped in tender slices of grilled pork instead. The smoky, juicy pork and crunchy, tangy salad is a uniquely delicious pairing, if we do say so ourselves. We love to serve it with our Grilled Cheesy Olive Bread (page 90), but then again, we love just about anything with that bread!

We took Mama’s classic pineapple rings off the ham and put them on our grilled chicken breasts. This sweet-and-sour, quick-cooking dish is a real crowd-pleaser. Pineapple slices coated in brown sugar and Bourbon turn sweet and caramelized on the grill, and a salad dressing marinade makes the chicken tangy, moist, and tender. Perfect with a nice green spinach salad.

We first wrapped our faces around some authentic cheesesteaks and hoagies when we were shooting an episode of our Food Network show, Road Tasted, at Campo’s Deli in Philadelphia. Once we got a taste for Yankee-style sub sandwiches, there was no going back. Grilled onions, peppers, and meat plus melted cheese all piled onto a nice big roll—you can’t improve on that! Now you don’t need to be in Philly to savor this supreme sandwich experience.

We’re always looking for new ways to cook shrimp. Here, the lip-smacking shrimp and veggies cook on skewers at the same time, making the meal fast and easy enough for a weeknight meal, even if shrimp seem like Saturday-night kind of food. Kids can even help out with threading the food onto the skewers. Serve this spicy recipe over Coconut-Orange Cashew Rice (page 66) and you’ve got a complete and extra special meal.

When it’s so cold that even Bobby won’t cook out on the grill, we turn to this recipe. Broiling tuna (one of Bobby’s favorite fish) is a perfect way to sear the outside while keeping it nice and rare inside, and the superfast salsa is full of bright, spicy flavor. We started making our own salsas a few years ago and haven’t looked back.

London broil is a great, affordable way to serve steak to a crowd, and it’s nice and thick, which makes it our favorite cut for grilling or for a sandwich the next day. Or you can slice leftovers, throw them in a pan, and make the world’s best steak and eggs for breakfast. We brush the meat with balsamic vinegar, then broil it for a tangy-sweet glaze. You’ll be amazed how many compliments you can get from such a simple recipe.

For some people in the South, dessert doesn’t count unless it’s one thing and one thing only: this one.

I’ve loved shirred eggs ever since I first sampled them in a Paris brasserie years ago. But I didn’t know exactly how to make them until I came across the carefully instructive recipe in Julia Child’s masterful tome, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, where they were called oeufs sur le plat or oeufs miroir (in deference to their shimmering surface). Here’s my favorite version, which I invariably make when I have plucked the packet of giblets from the cavity of a chicken. It should always include a plump liver—the cook’s treat.