Culinary adventurers Matt and Ted Lee may have been born in New York City, but they know a thing or two about Southern hospitality. Even though this time of year is the busiest for their mail-order snack food business, they took a break from testing recipes in their long adopted hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, to make me a welcoming oyster shooter. (Matt tried hot sauce and blood-orange bitters, but simple turns out to be best: lemon juice, green onion and Bluffton oysters.)

The pair mixed a punch made of Mount Gay Rum, Apple Jack Whiskey and sweet green tea and perfected the proportions on a shrimp-and-deviled-egg salad. They also shared a couple of culinary crowd-pleasers perfect for winter from their book, The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook: Stories and Recipes for Southerners and Would-be Southerners, which was named the 2007 James Beard Foundation Cookbook of the Year.

The bourbon balls are made with a bit of cayenne for spice, and the oyster pie is best served with a mellow white Burgundy, a German Gewürztraminer or Riesling. Where cocoa meets chili pepper and nutmeg meets brine, the recipes are a study in contradictions, not unlike their creators. "We're just two kids from New York," Ted explains, who have a hankering for Southern cuisine. "We're never bored by it." Clearly. --LIZ McDANIEL

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