Rice & Grains

I love the classic combination of beef, potato, and carrot cooked in a saucy, slightly sweet curry and ladled next to white rice. You can use whatever meat and vegetables you want, but for me, curry has two unbreakable rules: First, make sure that meat is nice and fatty. Second, embrace the premade blocks of Japanese curry roux. Curry is not health food, but neither are the deep-fried pork cutlets called tonkatsu, and I’m not planning to give those up either, no matter what my wife says!

No squash? No problem. This rice bowl—which was developed for our #cook90 initiative—can be made with all sorts of roasted vegetables (and, for that matter, any kind of grain).

Quinoa—either red, black, or white—adds body and heartiness to this warming bowl of tomato-basil soup.

Like any braised dish, this lamb shanks recipe is better when made one day ahead.

There is no better use for leftover rice than chahan. A brief trip in a pan resurrects the grains and a few pantry ingredients—little more than eggs, oil, and salt—transform tired rice into a super-satisfying meal. To give the humble dish a little flair, I whip up a saucy broth filled with vegetables and shrimp and pour it on at the last minute. Of course, you can add any ingredients you like—peas or asparagus, kimchi or Japanese pickles, pork, or even, as I do at Morimoto Napa, duck confit.

This hearty salad combines roasted parsnips, hazelnuts, fresh orange, and crisp lettuce for a bright, refreshing vegetarian dinner.

When you peel the kabocha squash for this recipe, use a vegetable peeler—not a knife. (Better to dull a $4 tool than your best kitchen blade.)

Kimchi gives this porridge recipe a spicy twist, while the 6-minute egg keeps it hearty and perfect for breakfast.

Toss leftover stuffing into a big pan with sautéed rice, eggs, mushrooms, and kale for a glorious carb-on-carb send-off to the rest of your post-Thanksgiving stash.

Sorghum is a gluten-free grain, with a texture similar to wheat berries, barley, and millet—so feel free to substitute those for this chicken recipe instead.

For this porridge recipe, pulsing long-cooking spelt, wheat berries, or barley in a blender yields a tasty base for a hearty, savory supper.

The oats, nuts, and fruit in this batter will start your day on the right nutritional foot—even with a generous glug of maple syrup poured over the top.

If you don’t have cinnamon and star anise in your pantry, don’t buy them just for this congee recipe. You can tweak the flavor profile by using black peppercorns and parsley stems, or fennel seeds and crushed red pepper flakes instead.

This crackers recipe features a variety of seeds, and the combination of colors and textures is impressive, but you can use fewer types—just make sure total volume stays the same.

This easy slurry method takes polenta into weekday fare. And this recipe shows how to make a deeply flavored mushroom sauce with the simple addition of dried porcini. Both techniques are in my go-to repertoire.

Probably the biggest, most versatile recipe I've ever written and it's become a model for my master-recipe formula. Here six basic components are completely transformed with simple substitutions into 18 totally different dishes.

Set out a plate of these sweetly spiced cookies and watch them vanish fast.