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This is some awesome barbecued lamb. It's the result of a fairly complicated process--a hybrid of braising and smoking. But I figure this is the season for a challenging barbecue recipe, what with the Rodeo BBQ Championship coming up and all. I figure Houston barbecue enthusiasts are ready to show off their stuff. (I coulda been a contender!)

The smoky-flavored, falling-off-the-bone tender meat this recipe yields is even better than the stellar barbacoa de borrego at Gerardo's Drive-In Grocery. At Gerardo's, the kitchen crew steams the lamb in giant steel-jacketed gas-fired kettles over a chile broth in a process related to the stewed goat dish called birria.

So let's just say you had some chili con carne and chili con queso on hand for one reason or another this weekend. (Who said anything about football?) If you also happened to have some yellow corn tortillas, you would have all the makings of one of my favorite Tex-Mex creations, Palmetto Inn's #10 Mexican Dinner, affectionately known in deep South Texas as the "Hangover Special" and the "Heart Attack on a Plate."

To make the dish, you dip the tortillas in a little hot oil and roll them around some cheddar or American cheese with a sprinkling of onions to make the enchiladas. Then you ladle some chili on the plate and over top of the enchiladas. Stick the plate in a hot oven or under the broiler for a couple of minutes until its bubbling hot. Just before serving, cover the top of the cheese enchiladas with a generous portion of hot chile con queso.

Palmetto Inn, 1817 Padre Boulevard, South Padre Island, (956) 761-4325

-Robb Walsh

Okay, nice joke J.C., you totally had me. Although I should have known something was up since nobody makes their own corny dogs (except maybe Jay Francis).

Don't look for any Super Bowl recipes from me. The spirit has gone out of our great national guacamole-eating holiday since the NFL started suing everybody for infringing on their trademark. Bars and restaurants can't have Super Bowl promotions without paying a fee to use the name. That's like Hallmark demanding a cut of your Mother's Day Brunch. Last year there were reports of the NFL lawyers going after churches for advertising Super Bowl watching parties. What a greedy bunch of creeps.

Times like these call for food superheroes: foods that are tasty, healthy, easy to fix and -- most of all -- cheap. And, if it's your thing, easy to grow, too. And that's where kale comes in.

Kale is one of the more unappreciated leafy greens, playing second fiddle to its more well-known cousins like spinach and cabbage. And that's a shame, really. Kale is not only far cheaper, but it's just as simple to fix and delicious to boot.

Then you, too, can have a "chocolate cake" that looks like something you'd find in the lower intestine of an elephant.  Sounds tempting, right?

The "Five Minute Chocolate Cake" recipe has been circling the internet for years, wowing college students and lazy eaters the world over.  It's a pretty basic recipe, really, and as close to a boiled cake as you'll want to get on this side of the Atlantic.  And, yes, it is cooked in a mug.  In your microwave.  In five minutes.

Wondering how this cake actually turns out?  Don't.  Local radio personality Jay Lee took it upon himself to test out the recipe and share the results (and pictures!) with the rest of us.

Beef soup always tastes better with a dash of Bovril liquid beef bouillon added. So do beef stews and beef gravies. Legend has it that Bovril was invented because Napolean III needed to feed his army during the war with Prussia. So he ordered an enormous quantity of canned beef from a Scotsman named John Johnston. Evidently, the only way to fill the order was to cook the beef down into a thick brown sticky concentrate that could be easily transported and reconstituted with hot water. It was originally known as Johnston's Fluid Beef when it was introduced in 1870.

Swedes are larger and denser than turnips. No, it's not an ethnic joke--swedes are what they call rutabagas in England. The rutabaga, or Swedish turnip, is often sold with a wax coating to protect the skin from discoloration. Rutabaga comes from the Swedish word rotabagge. Swedes are best roasted or boiled. In Finland and Sweden they are frequently mashed up with turnips and carrots in a dish called rotmos or "root mash."

"Neeps and tatties," as rutabagas and potatoes are known in Scotland, are boiled and mashed separately as the traditional accompaniment to haggis. Rutabagas were introduced to Scotland in the late 1700s by Patrick Miller, the Chairman of the Carron Iron Company. King Gustav III of Sweden gave Miller a gold snuff-box containing rutabaga seeds as a gift. The snuff-box is exhibited in the British Museum in London, the neeps are all over Scotland.

Turnips are cheap and bitter. Carrots are annoyingly sweet. But before you allow the unpleasant characteristics of these root vegetables to summon disturbing memories of your relatives, consider how brilliantly they balance each other out. Pair the bitter turnips with the saccharine carrots and you get a wonderfully complex marriage of flavors and a hearty, inexpensive winter dish.

Mashing the roots up with a generous amount of butter or bacon grease makes them a lot more interesting. Some folks crumble bacon over top. I like to serve the orange mess with grilled sausage-- a variation on British bangers and mash.

Few American culinary inventions have been experimented on, analyzed, tested, and dissected more than the humble chocolate chip cookie. Myriad variations in recipe, presentation and technique have been exhaustively documented.

As a home cook I tend to be a traditionalist. So I call for a return to the recipe that started it all: the original Toll House Inn recipe for chocolate chip cookies.

Chess pie is one of those forgotten vestiges of old Southern culture, like RC Colas and Moon Pies, that hasn't yet been snapped up by nouveau foodies and made trendy again, as has been done with greens, grits and pork fat.

It's all for the best, really.  Chess pie isn't supposed to be trendy.  It's supposed to remind you of your grandmother's house, the warmth and the soft smell of pie crust in the oven, of afternoons spent talking with family and without a TV or other distractions in the background, a simple dessert for a simpler world.