2010 Best New Chefs' Simplest Recipes

Instead of the usual smoky-sweet tomato-based barbecue sauce, Mike Sheerin of Chicago's Blackbird bases his Asian-style version on oyster sauce, soy sauce and roasted garlic, with toasted black peppercorns added for heat. The sauce is superb glazed on chicken, but it would also be great on pork or steak.

This spectacular torta (Mexican sandwich) is Kogi chef Roy Choi's gift to Los Angeles's late-night partiers. The over-the-top combination of fried eggs, spinach, pork belly and roasted jalapeños is a little Mexican and a little Asian—a uniquely Choi hybrid.

At New York City's A Voce, Missy Robbins makes this elegant, decadent pasta dish with burrata, the creamy cow's-milk cheese from Italy. She says, "I absolutely love burrata, but this recipe also includes my trifecta of favorite ingredients: marjoram, lemon and chiles."

At the Greenhouse Tavern in Cleveland, Jonathon Sawyer uses a little bit of foie gras to create a luscious sauce for clams. "It's such a simple recipe," he says. "I just put the clams, foie gras and vinegar in a pot and just let them get to know each other for a while."

At Trummer's On Main in Clifton, Virginia, Clayton Miller makes a highly seasoned, Indian-inflected tomato jam with ginger, cinnamon, cumin and cayenne. It's a terrific accompaniment to his hush puppies—cheekily nicknamed "shut-your-piehole puppies" by the cooks in his kitchen.

John Shields of Town House in the small town of Chilhowie, Virginia, composed this dish from ingredients he picked up at his local supermarket. The magic is in the play of textures and flavors: The salmon skin and shallots—both potato-chip crisp— are wonderful with the tender, flaky fish and sweet pieces of melon.

Most cooks boil, steam or sauté green beans, but grilling them—as Alex Seidel of Denver's Fruition does here—gives them a delicious char that's superb with the lentils, pancetta and baked tomatoes in this salad.

In this clever recipe, Jason Stratton of Seattle's Spinasse makes a simple, creamy sauce by simmering toasted pine nuts with lemon zest and chicken stock, then pureeing them. His other smart trick: cooking shrimp on a superhot bed of coarse salt flavored with bay leaves and lemon zest.

Relishes typically contain cooked and pickled vegetables; the one here is mouth-tinglingly tangy. James Syhabout of Oakland, California's Commis makes it by pickling shallots, capers, pistachios and pink peppercorns overnight in Champagne vinegar and olive oil. It's awesome on tomatoes, but he also likes using it on fish.

For this unexpectedly fun dish, Matt Lightner of Castagna in Portland, Oregon, tosses grilled torpedo onions (a sweet heirloom variety from Italy) with grilled squid bodies. Since the onions and the squid resemble each other so much in color and shape, each bite is a small surprise.