Photo Credit: Deen Brothers Enterprise
Bobby, left, and Jamie Deen have a new book out titled "Y'all Come Eat."

"This is really our book of greatest hits," says Jamie Deen, 40, during a call from their hometown of Savannah, Ga. "Every recipe in here has got a story or a memory behind it or involves some of our favorite things."

Jamie and his brother Bobby, 37, will be promoting their new cookbook with appearances on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," "Good Morning America" and "The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch" over the next few weeks, as well as two local book-signings next week — in Bridgewater and Princeton.

Indeed, "Y'all Come Eat" is as full of stories as it is memories. As the brothers describe the dishes — and the tales behind them — one gets a real flavor of not only the food, but also of their southern roots. Take the red potato and green bean saute, for example.

"Our (great-) grandmother had a garden with the freshest pole beans and red potatoes," Jamie recalls. "She'd do them old style in a cast-iron pot with half a side of hog in there. It would be so greasy and so good. This is kind of the same dish, but done a lot more light."

A moment later, Jamie has chocolate on the brain.

"My mother made buckeyes for us," he explains, "which is essentially just peanut butter dipped in chocolate. At Christmastime all my life I've always loved that. That's a recipe that is so simple and so ingrained in my memory as a child. I just made myself sick off of them."

Can you feel the chocolate, peanut-buttery goodness melting on your tongue yet?

You can almost imagine Jamie salivating as he speaks about his wife Brooke's meatloaf — "One of the best things I've ever had is a meatloaf sandwich on white bread with mayonnaise" — and sense his fondness for her as he recalls her first Mother's Day: "I kind of invented a stuffed French toast . . . that I made her for brunch."

Bobby chimes in with his hands-down favorite dish, goulash, which also is included in the book.

"The goulash is my birthday meal every year," he says. "My mom fixes that for me. If that was my last meal — if I was about to get electrocuted — I'd ask for my mama's goulash."

Maybe it's that enthusiasm for food and family — which is second-nature to these southern boys — that makes them so appealing to the masses.

"All the way through, this is truly our favorite meals," Jamie says. "This is like the last cookbook we'll ever need. Everything in here has been inspired by our life, our friends or our family."

While neither of them are classically trained chefs — "I'm not a chef, I'm just a cook," Jamie says — the brothers Deen put the emphasis on food that's not only tasty and fun to eat but also a pleasure to make. These days, though, Jamie admits his creations are a little simpler.

"I'm kinda gearing toward . . . easier to eat, casserole-type things with vegetables, because my son Jack is 19 months old and we eat together," Jamie says. "So I'm basically eating glorified baby food right now."

Bobby, a bachelor, believes there is a lot of freedom in cooking for one.

"The beautiful thing about being single is you can do whatever you want," he says. "I have a nice new little vegetable garden in the back of my house. I went out there the other night and I pulled out a couple of heads of lettuce and made myself a Caesar salad and threw some chicken on it. It was just as easy as can be."

You might think Paula Deen's sons might get tired of being asked about her so much, but you never get that impression with Jamie and Bobby. The pair effusively speak about their mother, who single-handedly raised them and started up The Lady & Sons, a Savannah restaurant which has continued to grow and prosper over the past two decades. The Deens continue to play integral roles in the restaurant.

"I was just there this morning," Jamie says. "Bobby and I are as involved in our business as we were on our first day. It's just a different role. I'm not cooking and washing dishes and Bobby's not busing tables and seating guests.

"It's the most important thing for he and I to make sure that this business represents the ideals that our mother has set up. . . . It's Bobby and I's job to make sure that we perform to her expectations every day."

Bobby agrees: "It (the restaurant) was started with the last $200 that our mom had. . . . I've never been married and I don't have any kids, but I compare it all the time to it's like having a child. It's like we birthed a child and have watched it grow up."

Something in their lives that dramatically has changed is the brothers' decision not to return for another season of their Food Network program, "Road Tasted."

"I had a baby," Jamie begins to explain.

"He keeps telling everybody that he had a baby," Bobby interjects. "But my brother has not had a baby."

"My wife and I," Jamie corrects. "After Jack was born, we had the opportunity to continue doing it, and it was a really tough decision for me because it affected Bobby and what he was doing, but there's no way I could physically and mentally take myself away (from my family). I've wanted to be a father my whole life. And the show would have us on the road five to six months out of the year. I just could not, I could not do it."

Regardless of whether the Deen Brothers appear on television again (though stopping by their mom's show is pretty much a foregone conclusion), you can be sure they won't leave the kitchen.

"Food here in the south . . . it crosses every kind of emotion and circumstance," Jamie says. "It's food, it's being outside, it's making something with love for people that you love. There's a lot of feelings that go into it. It's definitely not just eating."