Louie's-style Hash Browns

Yes, I know perfectly well that these bear little or no resemblance to whatever you grew up calling hash browns. Shut up.

Four large baking potatoes (I prefer russets)
One large sweet onion, diced
Four-six cloves garlic, minced
1 lb hot Italian sausage, casings removed
Olive oil, salt, pepper, cayenne
Cheddar cheese

Scrub spuds, cut into large chunks. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in deep saucepan or soup pot. Cook onion over medium heat with a pinch of salt until softened, 5-8 minutes. Add garlic, cook until fragrant, maybe thirty seconds. Add spuds, tossing to coat with onions.

Sprinkle spuds with 1/2 tsp salt, pepper and cayenne to taste. I use Tony Chacherie's more-spice-less-salt here-- it's pretty much the only reason to keep that red can on-hand, but it's what was on the tables at Louie's. It's not particularly hot, and anyway the starchy potatoes nix most of the cayenne.

Pinch off small chunks of sausage and drop 'em into the pot. Stir again to distribute. Cover pot and reduce heat to simmer. Let that whole mess cook down to desired level of spud-doneness; traditionally, two steps above mush. Usually twenty minutes will do it, just make sure your sausage is cooked through. Adjust seasonings.

The cooks at Louie's (oh yeah, Louie's was the postpub diner near my college campus) just kept a huge mountain of this smoking away on the grill 24-7, adding fresh ingredients and tossing the raw stuff underneath, like an edible compost heap. Except the sausage, that was my addition. Grated cheese is extra, 50 cents. Serve it up.

- Carla Speed McNeil

bagna cauda

Throw into a pan: 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup butter, half a lemon cut into slices (seeds removed), 5-8 anchovy fillets, 2-3 cloves minced garlic (or 3-4 mashed cloves roasted garlic), sea salt, black pepper to taste. Simmer over medium-low heat until the butter's well-melted, the garlic's nice and golden brown, and mash the lemon slices and anchovies with a wooden spoon until the whole thing's goo. Then dunk chunks of crustry bread and sliced veggies (any of these will do: artichoke bottoms and/or hearts, radishes, cauliflower, fennel, spring onions, cucumbers, yellow, red, and green bell peppers, mushrooms, celery, cardoons, cabbage, carrots and cooked asparagus are cut into strips).

Best eaten over the stove, unless you have a fondue pot.

Russel Lissau's Corn on the cob

You want to make really good corn on the cob? Don't boil it. GRILL it. 1. Preheat your grill as hot as it will get.
2. Clean grill surface when grill is hot. (So many people forget this key step.)
3. Take the corn out of the husk.
4. Clean corn free of stringy husk bits.
5. Pour vegetable oil over corn in a pot/tray. Don't give the corn a bath in it, but let it sit in the oil. Roll it around. Let it sit for a while. (Also, don't bother with expensive olive oil here. The oil is to protect the object being grilled, not for flavor. Only use the expensive oils later in the process when grilling.)
6. Lower the temperature of the grill to medium.
7. Put the corn on the grill. Cover the grill.
8. Turn the corn cobs when they start to brown and the sugar in the kernels crystalizes. A good tip that they're ready to be turned is when you hear them popping like popcorn.
9. Brown all the sides.
10. Remove, after about 15 minutes or so. You can test the kernels (squeezing them) to ensure they're done.
11. Eat.

I guarantee this will be the best corn you've ever eaten. No butter or salt needed. It's amazing.

Other grilled vegetables (carrots, peppers, onions) work the same way. Soak in oil, heat until browned/seared, turn, remove. I'll never boil a veggie again.

Carla Speed McNeil's Oven Baked Green Beans

I just recently found a cooking method for green beans (aka snapbeans) that does a lot of the same things as grilling does for other vegetables. Supermarket green beans are often kinda elderly. Picked too late and kept too long, they're often too limp to snap. Green shoelaces, and about as tasty. So do 'em in the oven. 1 lb snap beans, washed, ends trimmed
salt and olive oil

Preheat yer oven to 450 F. Line a cookie sheet with tinfoil unless you like scrubbing cookie sheets. Dump the beans on the tinfoil, glob on some oil and about 1/2 tsp salt. Toss 'em a bit to make sure they're all coated.
Throw 'em in the oven for ten minutes; pull 'em out and toss 'em again. Ten to twelve minutes more should finish 'em up.

They will be wrinkled as hell, a little bit browned here and there. This is good. This is what you want. Adjust salt and pepper and serve 'em up.

(Rachel's Note: I thow in one roughly chopped garlic clove at the beginning. Yum)

Andrew Diroll's Twice-Baked, No-Fry potato skins

Twice-baked, no-fry potato skins (I think). T his is a three-phase operation. Bake yourself some potatoes. Get two big ones, scrub the dirt off, prick the skins with a fork a little, and rub them down with olive oil and sea salt. Put them on a baking sheet and stick them in the oven at 400F for about an hour.

While this is going on, fry up some bacon. Three slices is enough for two potatoes. You don't want the stuff to be extra crispy, just cooked enough to crumble. If you're motivated enough, you could chop up the bacon before you fry it, but then it requires more care in the frying. When they're about done, you shred them by hand. Set the bits on a paper towel to soak up the grease.

After the allotted time, take the potatoes out and let them cool for a few minutes. Cut them down the middle and scoop the guts out into a medium-sized bowl. Leave about 1cm thick deposit of potato meat around the insides. Spray or brush the skins with olive oil and throw them back in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until they start to brown slightly.

Meanwhile, mash up the extracted potato guts with about a cup of half-and-half or cream, throw in some black pepper and the bacon bits, and a handful of shredded cheese for good measure. Take the skins out of the oven and pack this mealy gruel into the skins. Then, throw them back in the oven for another 15 minutes.

Top with more cheese, chives, green onions, whatever you like. Serve piping hot. One of these is enough for a good-sized snack or side dish. I served them with bison burgers and a small green salad. It was very good and I passed out with a food baby growing in my stomach.