Breakfast Recipes & Ideas

Recipe:Category: OriginalWeekend recipe alert! This delicious-looking quiche from Annette is a weekend meal waiting to happen. Quiche is a great quick meal, and it’s even better after a day or two in the refrigerator. (We like it cold for breakfast.) Annette also entered in the Classic category with her Classic Apple Pie with Pâte Brisée Crust. Read on to see Annette’s second (and savory!) use of her pâte brisée crust.Where is this recipe from?

I was sick with a bad cold over the weekend and although I was raised a WASP in midwestern USA, when I’m down for the count I usually cook up a big pot of congee, perhaps one of the most ubiquitous of all Asian foods.In my experience, there’s nothing simpler and more comforting than congee, which is basically rice cooked with a lot of liquid until it forms a soft and creamy porridge.

We gave you some ideas for feeding a brunch crowd this weekend. We’ve also reviewed Mark Bittman’s baked eggs, which are corralled in a casserole dish. But what if it’s just you? Or you and a loved one? These individual baked eggs look so scrumptious…This dish is part of an amazing brunch spread from chef Scott Peacock, featured on Gourmet.com. The photos, shot by Mikkel Vang, are beautiful, and every recipe looks like something we’d make in a heartbeat.

Morning buns aren’t a big thing on the East Coast—at least not that we’re aware of. We discovered them on a trip to San Francisco, where it seems several well-known bakeries make them every morning. What’s the difference between a morning bun and a cinnamon roll? Well, we’ll tell you…Morning buns are made with croissant dough that’s light, flaky, and extremely buttery, rather than a chewier, more bread-like dough.

An egg on a crispy slice of toast is an essential part of our morning routine. We usually buy whole grain or oatmeal bread, but when we ran out of bread a few days ago, we decided to plunge into baking a sandwich loaf.

It’s the season for Italian prune plums. These tiny oval fruits are delightful for baking – they soften and run into plummy jam in the oven. These and figs are a perfect late summer pair, which is why we put them into a clafoutis on Saturday morning – or, as we discovered, a flognarde, since clafoutis is a term reserved only for the cherry version of this eggy baked pancake.

We’re not exactly going to win a medal for figuring this one out, but still. We’ve eaten this simple, creamy, peppery dish several times at Cafe Gitane in New York City (for breakfast as well as an appetizer at dinner) and finally made it at home…We don’t know the restaurant’s exact preparation, but the bread is always a thick, nutty whole grain and there’s a kicker — a big sprinkling of red pepper flakes over the top of the mashed-up avocado.

You may remember our last attempt at this jam, when it turned out a wee bit hard. But because the flavor was so good, and because we were determined not to let the jam win, we gave it another try…This time, we made a couple of changes. We peeled the peaches, making the jam a little paler than our last batch.

There’s quite a debate going at our earlier post about sweet versus savory cornbread. It seems like many of you feel strongly about the matter! Well, for those of you who love the savory stuff, here’s a recipe to wash the taste of sweet cornbread out of your mouth forever – you’ll never make any other kind, after you’ve tried this.This recipe comes from Things Cooks Love, which we reviewed yesterday.

We’ve been talking consistently this month about learning to cook without recipes. We have a few formulas and basic recipes that let us create free-form dishes on the spur of the moment. When it comes to dessert, one of these is crumble topping for baked fruit.We love apple crisp, berry crumble, and all kinds of baked fruit with crumbly, oaty, sweet crispy toppings. The basic formula for a crumble topping is very easy, and it can be switched up easily depending on the fruit underneath.

Well, at least two readers immediately wanted the recipe! We adore steel-cut oats too, so when Louie C kindly gave us the recipe we tested and ate it twice. Here it is, for your morning oatmeal enjoyment! My cooker has only one temperature, which is quite high, and as a result I’ve never successfully made this — I end up with a thick gummy crust on the bottom and top which has to be scraped off and thrown away — it’s a real waste.

In Devesh and Tara’s Spice Pantry kitchen tour we were led on an Indian spice adventure in Tara and Devesh’s Manhattan apartment. Devesh shared two recipes: one for a typical western India breakfast item of “flattened rice,” known as “Poha” and another for the authentic way to prepare Chai. Both dishes were rather extraordinary: the poha was an unexpected, full-flavor, mildly spicy, fluffy rice full of different elements.

Okonomiyaki is a savory Japanese pancake-like dish that is very easy to prepare at home, and makes a good “ clean the fridge” meal as many different types of meat, vegetables, and seafood can be added to it.The “base” ingredients for okonomiyaki can be found at your local Japanese grocery store or online.

During the week, I’m often too busy to cook breakfast, but as the weekend approaches, I start making mental menus for Saturday and Sunday morning. Freshly brewed coffee, fruit salad, toast with jam, fresh-squeezed juices, frittatas, pancakes with maple syrup, crabcakes Benedict with hollandaise …Hollandaise is one of my most favorite sauces ever, and it is ridiculously easy to make.

It’s not often that we buy a cookbook for just one recipe, but we confess we did that here. All it took was one photo…The Oat, Pear, and Raspberry Loaf is from bills open kitchen (his lack of proper capitalization/punctuation, not ours, we hasten to add) by Bill Granger, and it was the first thing that greeted us as we flipped through this book at a used-book store.The whole grains of the oats and the oozing streak of jammy pear-and-raspberry fruitiness stopped us cold.

Photo by Allen of Eating Out LoudWe love spaetzle and we often make our airy, tender Ricotta Spaetzle for dinner. We’ve never thought of them as breakfast food, but now we suddenly do…Spaetzle are tiny German dumplings – not much more than flour, eggs, and water. They can be made orzo-tiny by pushing the batter through a ricer or special spaetzle-maker. Or they can be made, as we prefer them, by pushing thumb-sized lumps of batter off the end of a teaspoon.

There’s nothing like a hot, steaming muffin and a cup of tea to get us out of bed in the morning. Muffins are portable and endlessly flexible; nearly any quick bread or cupcake recipe can be made into a muffin. They can be sweet, nutty, refined, or whole grain. These muffins were born out of our love of tea – especially tea with citrus and spices – and a packet of dried peaches.

Plums are in season, and we have been busy thinking up more ways to use them. We were inspired by Heidi Swanson’s Rosewater Plum Compote a couple weeks ago, and we set out to make our own plum sauce. We love tea and plums together, so we played around with an Earl Grey concentrate and sweet-tart red plums until we found a combination we liked. The tea gives the sweet plums undertones of tannins and herbs, and these deep flavors ripen as it sits.

We like our muffins absolutely popping with blueberries, and we found that we like also them best in mini size – you’re guaranteed to get lots of blueberries in every bite with a one-bite muffin. Try them! They’re easy and quick.

It’s just too easy to make your own smoothies – here’s one of our favorites. Sweet, tangy, and most importantly, ice cold, this tastes just like a Creamsicle. All you need is a blender and a few basic groceries. Whip one up and stay cool!

Eggs on toast are go-to comfort food, a meal to be eaten alone on a spring evening, standing up in the kitchen, or on the couch with a book. When all else fails, there’s always eggs and buttery toast. Here’s one of our favorite ways to spruce up the old standby with a smattering of grownup flavors – briny, juicy capers, fragrant rosemary, and a dash of Romano cheese.

It’s May and the sun is shining here – is it where you are? We celebrated the sun with this simple fruit salad of melon, strawberries, and bananas, tossed with a tangy dressing of lemon and honey and just a hint of nutmeg. It was a sunny start to our day, but would be just as good in the evening with a dollop of crème fraiche or ice cream for a light dessert.

We made pancakes last weekend, a hearty Saturday brunch for a crowd. We are great fans of maple syrup, but we also love the chunky fruit toppings found in diners and family restaurants like Bob Evans. You can buy these industrially pre-packaged in jars, of course, but it is just too easy to make your own. You don’t even need fresh fruit; frozen does just as well, and bags of organic frozen peaches and blueberries are easily available from Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.

A good frittata is great any time of the day – morning or evening. This particular frittata makes a great dinner; we had it the other night when too tired to cook anything else. But it doesn’t taste like a last-minute option; a healthy handful of Italian parsley, slivered garlic, and crumbled feta cheese give it Greek flavor, and it’s easily adaptable to one, two or even three. A green salad and a glass of white wine are all you need to add for a fresh, light dinner.

It is finally snowing here in New York City! And Florida grapefruit are at their peak now. This is the perfect morning to pucker up, keep warm in front of the oven, and make yourself a sunny broiled grapefruit for breakfast.

Dense, meaty Mahi Mahi lends itself well to roasting. It has a relatively high fat content that plays well with salty olives and tart citrus.This recipe is a good one for a weeknight dinner party, or any time you want something healthy, elegant, great tasting and fast. This method will get dinner on the table in about 30 minutes. Just add rice or couscous and a salad and you’re all set.Mahi Mahi is a large tropical fish that is readily available all winter.

Jam looks intimidating – boiling and canning and sterilizing and botulism all rolled into one specter of potential food poisoning. But while canning itself is much easier than it looks, you don’t need to mess with that for just one or two quick jars of jam. An hour or two will give you a jar of jam that can be frozen for up to six months or refrigerated for a month with that taste of summer fruit locked inside.