2009 Best New Chefs' Easiest Recipes

Italian carbonara is famously rich, combining pancetta or guanciale (cured pork jowl), egg yolks and cheese. At Holeman and Finch, Linton Hopkins adds his own Southern accent to the dish with house-cured pork and local eggs.

Natchitoches, Louisiana, is renowned for its meat pies. Kelly English serves his mini version with a dipping sauce that combines two quintessential Southern ingredients: buttermilk and hot sauce.

This carnivore's salad is filled with bold ingredients like bacon and pickled onion, but the star ingredient is chicken livers. Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo soak the livers in buttermilk and coat them in flour, then repeat the process for extra-crispy results. "I'm into livers of all kinds now," says Dotolo, "especially duck and lamb."

Grilling watermelon gives it a terrific sweet-smoky flavor, but the key to charring it properly is to sprinkle it lightly with sugar, which burns just a little on the fire. Here, Christopher Kostow combines the watermelon with delicately curried shrimp (he likes making the dish with lobster, too) and yogurt.

Pinzimonio is a supersimple Italian dish of raw vegetables served with seasoned olive oil for dipping. In his clever variation, Nate Appleman replaces the olive oil with tonnato, a creamy sauce made with tuna and lemon.

The bright flavors of tomato, orange juice and smoked paprika make this soup perfect for summer, as does its versatility: It’s delicious chilled or hot. Naomi Pomeroy serves the soup with a side of maple-candied bacon, which she prepares by sprinkling bacon slices with maple sugar and baking them until crisp.

Mark Fuller prepares this steak in the spring and summer to showcase the Pacific Northwest’s iconic Walla Walla onions and morel mushrooms. The tomato-and-asparagus salad he serves alongside the beef would be wonderful all on its own as a first course.

Bryan Caswell's method for making his version of corn pudding is brilliant in its simplicity: He grates corn on the cob, places it in a hot skillet and bakes it. As the corn cooks, it turns creamy in the middle and crusty on the edges. Caswell's tip: "Be sure to bear down on the cob a bit when grating to extract all the juices in the kernels."

Sorrel is a leafy green that gives dishes a tart, almost sour flavor. For this salad, Paul Liebrandt likes using red ribbon sorrel—a European variety with bright green leaves and intense red veins—because it"s so pretty with the beets and because its tang is so nice with the nutty pistachio sauce.

Almond flour gives these not-too-sweet biscuits a subtle nutty flavor; cornmeal adds a bit of crunch. Instead of whipped cream, Barry Maiden serves the biscuits with two sweet-tangy accompaniments: whipped crème fraîche and blueberry sauce.