Brunch
923 recipes found

Persian Herb Frittata
This beautiful, verdant Persian-style frittata is made from a recipe that at first glance looks ridiculous. It’s not the list of ingredients, which sound fresh and lovely with heaps of parsley, cilantro, scallions and lettuce. It’s the last line, Step No. 4, which calls for cooking one side of the frittata 40 minutes, then flipping it over, and cooking the other side 40 more minutes. In the interminable 80 minutes that it cooks, several things happen. The vegetables give up their moisture, the frittata shrinks in height by two-thirds, and the outside becomes a slightly crisp, dark, golden brown — without burning.

Yellow Layer Cake With Chocolate Frosting
Craving a good old-fashioned cake, a tall, frosted showgirl, preening on a high crystal stand? This yellow cake with chocolate frosting and a macaroon crunch is just the ticket. This recipe is adapted from one made at Junior’s in Brooklyn. The cake is moist, and the frosting sweet. Quite sweet, actually. Just right.

Chocolate Lime Pie

Pork Dumplings
This recipe for pork-and-chive dumplings comes from the chef Helen You, who learned to make dumplings from her mother in Tianjin, China. She serves these classic boiled dumplings, along with 100 other varieties, at her restaurant, Dumpling Galaxy, in Flushing, Queens. The filling is a simple mix of ground pork, seasoned with grated ginger, soy and garlic chives, and it works best with slightly fatty ground meat (about 30 percent fat, if your butcher asks). It's traditional to splash the meat with shaoxing, the Chinese rice wine, but You prefers to use sherry.

Carrot Loaf Cake With Tangy Lemon Glaze
This easy, breezy one-bowl loaf cake makes the perfect afternoon snack — and a perfect breakfast the next day, too. It’s lightly spiced and nut- and fruit-free, but feel free to add about 1/2 cup of chopped nuts or dried fruit, if that’s how you like your carrot cake. There is an optional bit of grated carrot in the lemony glaze, which doesn’t lend that much flavor, but provides a lovely light orange hue. If grating carrot for the glaze seems fussy, you can certainly skip it.

Irish Trifle
I call this Irish trifle because it was my Irish ex-in-laws who introduced me to this wonderful dish. It is one of the most irresistible desserts I make. I love to have leftovers because the cake just keeps soaking up that amazing custard sauce, which is spiked with sherry. I use up a few of the egg whites left over from making the crème anglaise in the cake, opting for a biscuit, in which the egg whites are beaten to a meringue, over a richer sponge cake. Although jam is traditional in this trifle, you could always top the cake with a berry compote instead.

Strawberry Pavlova
The particular joy of this dreamy dessert, which was named in honor of the Russian ballerina, is that the meringue base can be made in advance. Then to serve it, drizzle the strawberries with a little balsamic vinegar and vanilla (a combination that brings out the fullest essential flavor of the fruit), whip some cream and arrange it all on a plate. It’s magnificent, and deliriously easy.

Sweet Potato Soufflé
This soufflé is not too sweet to serve as a starter at your Thanksgiving table, but it also makes an impressive dessert and it’s easier than pie to make. You can make individual soufflés or one large one.

Baked Camembert Salad
Cheese encased in pastry and baked until brown might seem like an old-fashioned dish, but it’s one of the most reliable ways to please a small group of omnivorous people. Flaky pastry, warm, runny cheese, what’s not to like? Baking is also a great way to turn a mediocre wheel of cheese into something great. Cut the wheel in half, sandwich it with something savory and something sweet and wrap it up tightly with pastry. If you want to replace it with Brie, or another soft cheese with an edible rind, feel free — just make sure there aren’t gaps in the sides of the pastry, or the cheese will leak out in the oven.

Lemon Sweet Rolls With Cream Cheese Icing
These sweet, lemony rolls are a fresh alternative to classic cinnamon rolls. A little cardamom in the dough and filling enhances the bright citrus flavor without overtaking it. This dough is adaptable: You can let the dough rise in the refrigerator, instead of at room temperature, so you can serve fresh, warm rolls for breakfast without getting up at the crack of dawn to make them.

Tomato Salad With Cucumber and Ginger
The classic combination of tomatoes and cucumbers gets new life here from a lively dressing of lime zest and juice, fish sauce and serrano chile inspired by Thai papaya salad. It’s a study in contrasts: Bracing on its own, the salty-spicy vinaigrette is mellowed by fresh summer tomatoes and cucumbers. Large pieces of fresh ginger add a punch of spice without the heat, while cilantro and basil serve as fresh, cooling elements. Enjoy with red curry chicken, coconut rice and a nice crisp beer.

Crispy Feta With Lemon
When heat touches feta, its exterior crisps while its interior becomes surprisingly creamy and soft. Turning it into a dazzling appetizer takes very little: Dust the cheese with cornstarch and sesame seeds, sauté it in butter, then finish it with a squeeze of lemon. You can perch it atop a cracker, or eat it on its own, in awe of the sum of so few parts.

Egg Mayo
Egg mayo — or oeuf mayo, as it’s called in France — is simply hard-boiled eggs coated with seasoned mayonnaise, but it’s so beloved in France that it has a society to protect it: Association de sauvegarde de l’oeuf mayonnaise. You could season store-bought mayonnaise for this recipe from Priscilla Martel, but at least just once, you should make your own. It’ll be delicious, and you’ll feel like a magician. The dish is beautiful served plain, and tasty dressed with anchovies, capers, snipped chives or other herbs (choose one or more). It’s good as a starter, with a pouf of dressed greens, or as part of a platter of small salads (hors d’oeuvres variées), a picnic on a tray.

Spinach and Pea Fritters
As a vegetable-forward weeknight meal, these spinach fritters have it all: sweet peas, gooey cheese and crispy bits. Made from thawed, frozen peas and spinach, the work is minimal. If you’d like to use fresh peas and spinach, you’ll need to quickly blanch and drain them first. Fresh mozzarella adds a pleasant creaminess, but goat cheese or feta would work, too. Serve these over quinoa or rice, or top with a poached or fried egg for brunch.

Melon and Avocado Salad With Fennel and Chile
This sweet-savory, crunchy-creamy dish nods to California summers, when a drive to the market can often end with avocados and melons buckled in the back seat. The recipe is simple, and instantly impressive: It involves little more than scooping out the fresh fruit and topping it with a spicy-sweet pinch of sugar and a drizzle of dressing. Rubbing toasted fennel seeds, red-pepper flakes and lemon zest into sugar and salt helps their floral kick travel far. The salad’s balance depends on your melon and avocado, so rely on taste more than measurements here. Adjust the ingredients as needed, until the salad is rich, punchy and bright, bite after bite.

Good for Almost Everything Pie Dough

Mushroom-Parmesan Tart
Cremini mushrooms and Parmesan star in this hearty tart, a comforting winter brunch or lunch when paired with a vibrant salad. Make the crust from scratch, and you’ll have two tart shells for the work of one — one for now, and another for later. Chances are you’ll want to make this tart again and again: It’s a relatively easy, make-ahead crowd-pleaser. But if you don’t have time (or energy) to make the dough, a store-bought pie crust will serve you well.

Blueberry Crumb Cake
It’s easy to find an occasion to serve this cake — breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner or snacktime will do. The dominant flavor here is the berries. Don’t be tempted to increase the amount of walnuts in the topping — scarcity makes them even more delightful.

Mashed Potato and Cabbage Pancakes
Vegetable pancakes with a sweet and comforting flavor. These have a sweet, comforting flavor. They are quick to mix up, using either leftover mashed potatoes from your Thanksgiving dinner, or potatoes that you have cut up and steamed for 20 minutes.

Gratinee of Cauliflower
Creamy, cheesy but not too thick or heavy, this is a good side for a pork loin.

Smoky Cheese Grits with Summer Succotash
This recipe, adapted from “Sara Moulton’s Everyday Family Dinners,” came to The Times in 2010 as part of a Pete Wells column on redefining the mise en place. Ms. Moulton uses downtime in the cooking process to an advantage: She instructs you to chop the onion and shuck the corn as the edamame cooks. The recipe comes together in about 40 minutes, making it a good one for a busy weeknight -- succotash without suffering.

Roquefort, Leek and Walnut Tart
The open-face Alsatian tarte flambée can be as versatile as a quiche. Most often it’s given classic treatment, with bacon and onions on a pastry-lined bed of crème fraîche and fromage blanc. But why stick to tradition? You can make it with mushrooms, omit the bacon and dot it with caviar, add smoked salmon, pave it with zucchini slices, and explore other cheeses, including Taleggio and chèvre. Here’s an assertive version that keeps the bacon but opts for Roquefort cheese, leeks and walnuts. And instead of pizza dough, which is a typical underpinning, for a more expedient result, you can make it with pie pastry.

Dark ’n’ Stormy
The dark ’n’ stormy has become a cult highball due to a felicitous combination of its no-fault simplicity and the balance of its headstrong ingredients, each of which is perfectly suited to the common goal: reviving the flagging, heat-pummeled constitution. It is simply dark rum — very dark rum — with ginger beer and some fresh lime. The rich spirit is shaken awake by the buoyant piquancy of the ginger beer, while the lime slashes through the sweetness of both. The drink has its roots in Bermuda, and emigrated up the Atlantic seaboard with the sailing set. Gosling’s rum has a rather sniffy and debatable lock on the recipe, having in fact trademarked its version, even going to the point of threatening with the specter of litigation anyone who might suggest concocting one with another rum. Gosling’s is a delicious rum, and being the dark rum from Bermuda, it is unquestionably synonymous with the dark ‘n’ stormy. But, any number of dark rums are interchangeably lovely in this drink, including Coruba, Zaya, Cruzan’s Blackstrap and the Lemon Hart 151 from Guyana.

Mai Tai
There are raging debates about the invention of and the proper recipe for this drink among tiki connoisseurs. The more accepted versions are granted to Victor J. Bergeron, the irascible, wooden-legged “Trader Vic,” from his eponymous restaurant bar in Oakland, Calif., in the ’40s. Contrary to what you might think, the mai tai is actually just a rum sour, employing orgeat alongside Curaçao or triple sec as the sweetener, and using two rums to add complexity. The rest is just lime juice, and that’s it. No coconut, no passion fruit, pineapple, mango or orange juice. No umbrellas. It’s a relatively simple drink, but as such, each element has to be of the utmost quality; great rums, fresh lime juice and prefab orgeat syrup equal disappointment. But when concocted with homemade orgeat, all the tumblers click. The rums, the lime, the orange aromatics and the heft of the almond all play in stupendous balance.