Bacon

Be sure not to overcook the bacon. Seven minutes is just right.

Cut the bread into cubes to offer with aperitifs, or serve it cut into strips with a salad. It tastes best the day it's made. The day after, try it toasted and topped with butter. For best texture, make sure the dried pears you use are plump and moist.

A cold-weather favorite, this all-beef, no-bean chili gets added appeal from a seasonal ingredient: butternut squash. For best results, make the chili at least one day ahead so that the flavors have time to meld.

When you put okra and cornmeal—two icons of the southern table—together in a hot greased skillet, magic happens, especially when you've tossed in a little crisp bacon for good measure. These fritters are best when eaten immediately, but try not to devour them all before they've even left the kitchen.

A clever, deconstructed BLT: Bread coats chicken in the form of breadcrumbs,bacon is cooked with lettuce and tomato for a simple side, and a dollop of seasoned mayonnaise acts as a sauce.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are adapted from Elizabeth Karmel's Web site, girlsatthegrill.com . I use this technique to grill one of my signature dishes, pancetta-wrapped trout. I stuff the fish with fresh tarragon, wrap it mummy-style in pancetta (uncured Italian bacon) and serve it with a simple mesclun salad for a winning meal off the grill.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are adapted from Elizabeth Karmel's Web site, girlsatthegrill.com . There are those days that nothing will do except a bacon cheeseburger. Instead of visiting your favorite burger joint, make them at home. You may never order a burger out again!

Great on polenta, grits, or steamed rice.

Eggs become a silky, creamy sauce when they're tossed with hot pasta. Here, leeks add a nice spring touch to the traditional Roman dish.

This dish takes the best of traditional choucroute garni—smoked pork married to sauerkraut that's had its bite removed by being simmered in wine with bay and juniper—and lightens it up, pairing it with another Alsatian favorite, trout, and transforming a stick-to-the-ribs dish into something fit for a first course. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how the slight acidity of the kraut and the smokiness of the bacon play up, rather than dominate, the fish's clean flavor.

This is the perfect antidote to the Sunday blues, not least because there will be enough left over to pack sandwiches for Monday's lunch. A mix of beef, pork, and bacon ensures meatiness, with Worcestershire sauce, chopped prunes, and cider vinegar added for good balance and occasional suggestions of sweetness. Because the loaf is baked without a loaf pan, there's plenty of well-browned crust to go around.

This country-style quiche has a crunchy crust, thanks to the whole grain cornmeal.

The coffee marinade is sweetened slightly with a little maple syrup, and the sauce gets a kick thanks to a jalapeño chile.

"Smothering" means braising a tough cut of meat to tenderize it. Slow simmering also concentrates the flavor of the gravy.

This "assembly of greens," as Miss Lewis would say, has a supple texture that works nicely with cornmeal dumplings.

For most people, the word gumbo immediately conjures the Cajun and Creole cooking of Louisiana. But okra (ngombo in Bantu), for which the soup-stew is named, reached South Carolina with the slave trade some years before Europeans settled in Louisiana, and the Creole world, where African, European, and indigenous cultures meet, actually extends up the southern Atlantic coast. There are many different gumbo recipes, all taking advantage of local ingredients and served with rice. This one is a heady, fragrant slurry thick with seafood. If desired, add filé powder (ground dried sassafras leaves), a Choctaw thickening agent with an almost lemony flavor, just before eating.

Almost every culture has an abiding, elemental hunger for greens, and in the American South, it's common to simmer a variety of them. Hopkins cooks his relatively quickly in a satiny béchamel. The nutty sweetness of the sauce rounds out the natural bitterness of the greens, thus lifting them into the realm of the spectacular. Think of this as a rough-around-the-edges version of creamed spinach, one with real backbone.

In keeping with the rest of the menu, this is no shy salad. The sweet and acidic vinaigrette unites with the salty bacon and, along with the lettuces, produces fireworks in the mouth.