Breakfast and Brunch Recipes
Almost every Sunday morning growing up, my father would make a huge apple coffee cake for us after church. Recently I pulled this recipe from the Boston Globe; they had it listed as an apple cake for the Jewish high...
Every fall we are blessed with a bounty of apples and walnuts. I grew up in what used to be a walnut orchard. At one time our home had 5 huge trees, covering both front and back yards, and yielding...
On vacation, 5 o'clock pm, having too much fun to realize that nothing has been planned for dinner, fridge mostly empty, remembering that uh oh, I'm the one in charge of feeding my friend's children that night. Oops! Open the...
My father got bit by the frittata bug this week and made these for us for lunch a few days ago. This is a quick and easy, no-nonsense recipe that makes a terrific frittata in hardly any time at all.
Have you ever attempted to make a soufflé and it just didn't live up to your expectations? That's when it pays to have friends who actually know what they are doing. After trying unsuccessfully to recreate a fabulous soufflé I...
A favorite family ritual growing up was apple coffee cake on Sunday mornings. My dad would prepare it for his six greedy kids, all of us begging for him to pile on the brown sugar.
"Elise, I have the perfect recipe for your website!" my young friend Audrey (age 10) exclaimed recently. "Blueberry buttermilk pancakes!". Audrey loves making these blueberry pancakes for her family. Easy, fluffy, totally addictive, and by the way, the blueberries are...
This is one of those great party brunch casseroles. It's easy to assemble the night before and just pop in the oven an hour before needed in the morning.
There's something about buckwheat pancakes that hearkens to an earlier time—pioneer days, log cabins, pot belly stoves, and all that. Perhaps it's because buckwheat used to be a lot more popular a hundred years ago (according to Wikipedia, 20x the...
If there is one person who knows how to do Southern right, it's my Alabama-native friend Steve-Anna Stephens. Please welcome her as she walks us through how to make wonderfully indulgent buttermilk biscuits with sausage gravy. ~Elise If there is...
Ever wake up in the morning with a craving for a specific food? This morning it was quiche, specifically an onion quiche. To my dear father who turned up his nose at this masterpiece, mumbling something about real men, I...
I had this crustless quiche recently at a ladies weekend (you know, the kind where husbands and kids are left to fend on their own and the gals take a well deserved break from the regular chaos) and couldn't wait...
Chilaquiles. Chee-lah-KEE-less! I mentioned I wanted to make chilaquiles to a Mexican friend the other day and you should have see the smile and look of rapture that came over his face. This is true Mexican comfort food, what your...
Growing up, we had some of the standard American foods for breakfast - cream o' wheat, oatmeal, waffles, fried eggs, pancakes (no sugar coated cereals in this household!) - and a couple things I never saw in any of my...
So much of our enjoyment of foods comes from the memories they evoke, don't you think? Cinnamon toast. Just saying the words and I see myself 8 years old sitting at our dining room table with assorted siblings, elbowing each...
Have you ever made colcannon? It's a traditional Irish mashed potato dish with lots of greens. If there's a heaven for kale, it's this, mixed in with mashed potatoes and butter. Colcannon cakes, sort of an Irish version of potato...
One of the best reasons to make corned beef and cabbage is for the leftovers. Corned beef sandwiches with mustard and lettuce, or corned beef hash, fried up with leftover boiled potatoes, to serve with runny fried eggs for breakfast...
I first encountered a crab mango salad at Fringale, the exquisite French-Basque restaurant on 4th St. in San Francisco. Recently at a restaurant in LA I had another delicious crab mango salad, this time with avocado and surrounded by peeled...
The debate usually begins like this. ME: Dad, how do you make your hash browns turn out so crispy? DAD: Use a potato ricer. It's the only thing I've found that really gets the moisture out of the potatoes. The...
On a recent visit with my goddaughter Piper and her sisters Alden and Reilly, the girls surprised me one morning by making me their favorite version of French toast for breakfast - a "crunchy" French toast coated with corn flakes...
Do you love oatmeal? Do you love pancakes? You should try them when they are one and the same. Seriously. Dee Johnston whipped up her favorite family recipe for a recent gathering of friends and this is now my new...
Please welcome my friend and guest author Stephanie Stiavetti who writes The Culinary Life food blog. Stephanie shares her recipe for a Dutch baby, also known as a German pancake. It's sort of like a sweet version of Yorkshire pudding...
Poaching eggs is one of the easiest, quickest, and lowest calorie ways of preparing eggs, as there is no added fat. Poached eggs make great additions to salads, such as the French salad Lyonnaise, or sandwiches, or just served simply...
It all started with a book. A whimsically illustrated French children's book about cooking, called La cuisine est un jeu d'enfants, or "Cooking is Child's Play". First published in French in 1963, a version that included both the original French...
Making eggs benedict requires careful orchestration. You have to have warm, crispy bacon, hot buttered toasted English muffins, eggs poached perfectly to your desire, and a warm, creamy, unbroken Hollandaise sauce, all at about the same time. No wonder I...
This is my lazy girl's lunch. Lazy, because even when I've eaten every last pickle in the fridge, I can usually find a few fresh eggs, a couple mushrooms, and half an onion there. Lazy, because when I can't be...
Is there nothing better than French toast for Sunday breakfast? Thick slices of bread, soaked in a mixture of beaten eggs with milk and cinnamon, toasted in a frying pan, and served with butter and maple syrup, this has to...
Recipe and photo updated July 8, 2011 Ever since that wonderful movie with Jessica Tandy I've wondered about fried green tomatoes. People really eat green tomatoes? I recall being served fried tomatoes for breakfast while visiting London, but they weren't...
One of my mother's favorite breakfasts to prepare for our family has always been German Farmer's Breakfast, also known as Bauernfruhstuck. I remember eating this several times a month as a kid. It's sort of like a large breakfast hash...
For the Easter holiday, I thought I would adapt my mushroom quiche recipe into a Spring brunch dish, with asparagus and ham. It turned out great, my one note is to not add any salt as the ham brings enough...
Sunday breakfasts are a favorite activity around here. More like a brunch, they are usually somewhat more elaborate and filling that what we eat for breakfast during the week. Ham and potato hash is a perfect side dish for fried...
We had dueling home fries here the other day, a veritable home-fry cook-off between my mother and father. Mom makes her fried potatoes sliced, using raw potatoes, and usually serves them as a side when we have fish for dinner...
I love it when my Mexican friend Arturo comes to visit, we always cook up something "muy delicioso". This time Arturo introduced us to huevos motuleños. Have you ever heard of huevos motuleños? Think seriously over-the-top huevos rancheros—fried eggs over...
One great benefit of growing up in California (LA actually) and having a Hispanic mother is being exposed at an early age to Mexican food. From the time I was 5 it was my job to prepare the salsa for...
Huevos al la Mexicana, or Mexican-style eggs, are essentially eggs, cooked and scrambled in salsa. My mother has been serving "huevos" (pronounced weh-vose, with the beginning like "when" without the n) prepared like this forever, as her mother before her...
Please welcome Hank Shaw as he shares a Passover treat with us. Hank made the savory version of matzo brei for my parents and me the other day, we loved it! ~Elise I grew up in a New Jersey town...
Call this mushroom pie a California quiche, with its Monterey Jack cheese, parsley, eggs, sour cream, garlic, and a whole pound of mushrooms. Great for company, and pretty easy to make, especially if you have an extra pie crust all...
Now I see why people use frozen pie-crusts to make quiche. It's a lot of work to make the crust from scratch, especially when you "blind bake" (pre-bake) the crust. But there is nothing better than a real butter crust...
Please welcome Garrett McCord as he shares his favorite oatmeal muffin recipe. ~Elise When I was a kid my dad made my brothers and me breakfast every morning. We often didn't get to see him much since he came home...
One of my most favorite breakfasts is a poached egg on toast, with a side of papaya and lime. Including some prosciutto with the papaya just takes it up a notch further. Papaya is filled with enzymes that help digestion...
Based on a tip in Alice Waters' new cookbook, The Art of Simple Food, that fuyu persimmons make a good fruit salad, I begged some just picked fuyus from my neighbor and fellow blogger Andrea and set about to make...
I saw a tasty salad on Ben Trott's Vox page and just had to make it. It is a traditional French salad, called Salad Lyonnaise, made with frisée or curly endive, hot bacon, and a freshly poached egg. Not one...
Please welcome my dear friend, guest author Ashley Teplin, who made for me the best breakfast potatoes I've ever eaten in my life. They take a little more time, but are oh, so worth it. ~Elise I won’t lie; I...
Yes it is royal wedding time, once again (at least for those of us old enough to remember Charles and Di, and Andrew and Fergie). In honor of this festive occasion, we present to you a recipe for drop scones...
It occurred to me a while ago that the site was missing a Quiche Lorraine recipe. Hah! An opportunity to cook bacon! (Like we don't get enough of those around here?) Culinary trends took an odd turn in the 70s...
I recently observed my friend Suzanne whip up a couple onion tarts for a family meal and was so impressed by the wonderful flavor of the caramelized onion, I decided to try my hand at it. I've deviated a bit...
I think this recipe is based on one from a Jimmy Dean ad. I got it from my friend Heidi, and we've both made it several times for brunch gatherings. If you want you can make it ahead the night...
Every few days, for the last month, I've gone out to my garden in the morning and gathered enough tomatillos to cook up with some eggs for breakfast. Here it is November, and the leaves are all turning, but we're...
Quesadillas have to be my favorite go-to food for lunch. They're just so easy to make! Especially when you have tortillas and cheese in the fridge, which we almost always do. Recently I had lunch with an old friend at...
Try this one for breakfast. A reader from Alaska recently mentioned to me that instead of fried with corned beef or ham, the way he likes his potatoes in the morning is as smoked salmon hash, potatoes cubed and fried...
One of my favorite recipes on this site is the smoked salmon and goat cheese toasts; I just love the blending of flavors of the herbed goat cheese, the salmon, and lemon zest on crunchy buttered toasts. When trying to...
According to the Wikipedia a frittata is "a kind of Italian omelette that can contain cheese, vegetables, or even leftover pasta. Frittatas are cooked slowly. Most often, they are cooked on the stovetop on low heat until the eggs are...
Ever notice how people from big families eat fast? That's because if you finish your food first, you'll be assured of seconds. In our family we kids perfected the art of eating quickly with strawberry shortcake. If there was one...
I honestly don't know if they serve scrambled eggs this way in Tuscany, but ever since we started making eggs this way, pulled from Tuscany: The Beautiful Cookbook we've called them "Tuscan Eggs". They are very easy to prepare; the...
From the recipe archive, first posted last summer, reposting now because not only is it a terrific casserole, it uses up a lot of zucchini, and if your garden is in any way like mine, you have tons of it...
Did you know that yesterday was "Dump Your Extra Zucchini On Your Neighbor's Doorstep Day"? According to our local newspaper it was, though I think they may have been joshing. Then again, maybe not. This excellent zucchini ricotta frittata recipe...
