Slab pies turn out to be the perfect solution for cocktail hour. Inspired by a phyllo filling from The Silver Palate Cookbook, I first combined spinach, gorgonzola, and walnuts in my early 20s when I decided to have a cocktail party. I made so much, I spent five days filling and freezing tiny phyllo appetizers. They were devoured and everyone was amazed, but I never did it again. Since then, I’ve shied away from large fussy projects and tend toward simplification. Pie is all that. And this pie is all that and more.
Holley Pearce, my coordinator of chaos and close friend, loves food but doesn’t do much cooking. We met because she dined in one of our restaurants four nights a week. When Holley, who’s from Mississippi, started working with me, her lack of cooking skills became a running joke. One weekend, we had a little gathering at my office, and Pearce (as her friends call her) brought something she called BLT dip. She said it was just something her family had always taken to the beach. Unable to stop myself, I stood by it snacking till all that was left of the dip was a puddle of pink mayonnaise-y bliss.
You might be surprised to know that pimento is a vegetable, not a cheese. The pimento is a heart-shaped pepper that made its way to a young United States via Spanish explorers. The largest commercial producer and retailer of pimentos in the United States, Moody Dunbar, was started in East Tennessee by a schoolteacher seeking to supplement his income during the Great Depression. Southerners have always loved this ubiquitous and versatile spread, embracing it as “the pâté of the South.” We add the smokiness of bacon and the satisfying crunch and sweetness of pecans.
In hindsight, stuffing a meatball with a tot seems like an obvious idea, but I couldn’t find any evidence of it being done before! After testing the merits of precooking the tots to add an extra dimension of brown flavor and crispness, my tasters unanimously agreed that the uncooked tots worked better. This is because browning the tots essentially seals them inside a crust, keeping them separate from the meat surrounding them. But when you wrap the thawed tots in meat, they really become one with the meatballs and the delicious pork flavor permeates the tots.
Rillettes, so very French, are usually made with pork cooked in its own fat until it’s as spreadable as jam. These are lighter, made with both fresh and smoked salmon and miso butter. The butter gives the rillettes their luxurious texture (it also holds everything together), and the miso is the flavor that few people can identify on first bite. Serve the rillettes on toast or crackers with white or sparkling wine. Cocktail hour perfection.
Ukoy is one of the most popular items on our menu which many customers try to cook at home. The most common problem I hear about when cooking ukoy at home is that the fritter always disintegrates when lowered into the hot oil. I tell them to anchor the batter on a banana leaf and it always works.
Scotch eggs are pub snacks. Cut in half, fresh from the fryer, egg yolk gently relenting, they are beautiful.
Potatoes, chiles and shrimp sit so well together in this effortless, comforting salad. Eat it just as it is, or serve it as a side salad if you like.
This is the classic poke, the one that you probably think of when you hear the word. It showcases the evolution of the dish over the decades, with the more prized ‘ahi tuna replacing bony reef fish.
In this poke variation, ruby red beets, slicked with sesame oil and studded with crunchy limu seaweed, give a pretty good imitation of ‘ahi.