Egg

This is good at room temperature as well as warm. Try it out on kids; leftovers are good to pack in brown-bag lunches.

Simplicity is at its best in this hearty egg dish. It’s perfect for a cold-weather brunch (see the menu) or as a light dinner dish, served with fresh bread, salad, and orange sections.

These tasty patties can be sandwiched into rolls with lettuce and sliced tomatoes or served on their own as a side dish for grain, potato, or pasta dishes.

This indispensable chocolate cake is perfect for every birthday.

People love these, and the salmon caviar gives this classic an updated twist.

I order steak tartare in restaurants whenever it’s on the menu. When you serve it at home it’s important to seek a fine butcher who can provide you with the best-quality beef. You can make the Parmigiano baskets the morning of the party and store them covered at room temperature; they will still have an amazing snap hours later. The trick for success with this is not to use “green can” grated cheese, which will not melt evenly; you have to buy the good stuff. Once you get the hang of making Parmigiano-Reggiano frico you can really crank them out. The tops of water or soda bottles are ideal for forming the Parmigiano cups. I also like to make flat frico as a crunchy garnish for Caesar salads.

Soft scrambled eggs put a smile on my face in the morning. They are super easy to make and they require very little forethought. I first tasted “real” scrambled eggs while traveling through Paris as a starving college student. Café et des oeufs was just about all I could afford for breakfast. It was simple, but it was magic.

The quiche originated in Alsace-Lorraine, in northeastern France. It’s a pastry shell filled with a savory custard of eggs, cream, and other ingredients. Quiche Lorraine always includes crisp bacon with optional cheese. Of course, there are many ways to vary this basic recipe and a few ideas follow. In the convection oven, the temperature is reduced by 25 to 50 degrees and the baking time is reduced as well.

This tasty frittata has a particularly pleasing texture, light and luscious like a soufflé on the inside, with lots of crust outside, especially when baked in a heavy cast-iron skillet. It’s an excellent brunch or lunch dish, served either warm or, if you want to make it ahead, at room temperature. And this lends itself to many tasty variations: simply fold into the rice mixture a cup or more of sautéed onions and peppers, cooked crumbled sausage, or cubes of Taleggio, before incorporating the whipped egg whites.

Stuffed veal breast can be found in many regions, but the Genovese preparation, cima alla Genovese, is one of the most distinctive and delicious. It is one of my favorite Ligurian dishes, and whenever I am in Genova I seek it out at the local restaurants. Traditionally, it is a specialty of late spring and summer, because in the natural cycle, calves are mostly birthed in early spring, and the veal will be most tender within the next few months. Appropriately for a summer dish, cima alla Genovese is served at room temperature, accompanied by fresh salsa verde. Here, though, I give you my home version of cima, one that I prepare all year around, whenever I want something special (and convenient) to delight lots of people. Because veal breast of appropriate size can be hard to find, I use veal shoulder and sometimes turkey breast, butterflied and flattened. I wrap the meat around a colorful filling: a big frittata with a medley of vegetables and a row of hard-cooked eggs. Poached in a log shape, the cima cools before it is sliced for serving. It is still always exciting for me (and will be for you) as each slice is revealed, the filling ingredients forming a unique mosaic within a frame of moist, tender meat. The convenience of cima I also love. I can assemble the stuffed veal the night before, cook it early in the morning, and let it rest. Uncut, the roll keeps well (even for several days) and can be served whenever needed, without further cooking. In summer, it makes a fine al fresco lunch or dinner, or a picnic centerpiece. At holiday times, nothing is more beautiful on a buffet. And when there are guests in the house, I serve it at dinner and leave the rest as an elegant anytime snack.

This is a different sort of frittata, not the neat golden round of well-set eggs that’s probably most familiar. Here the eggs are in the skillet for barely a minute, just long enough to gather in soft, loose folds, filled with morsels of asparagus and shreds of prosciutto. In fact, when I make this frittata or the “dragged” eggs—uova strapazzate, page 143—I leave my eggs still wet and glistening so I can mop up the plate with a crust of country bread. That’s the best part of all.

This is exactly what it says: the essential ingredients of a traditional English breakfast (sausage, bacon, egg and mushrooms), cooked in a single pan, with the end result resembling something like a Spanish tortilla. It's an epic breakfast (have it late morning and you're unlikely to feel hungry again until evening) and, being cooked in a single pan, it won't create as much washing up as the conventional English breakfast.

Potatoes are, without doubt, my favorite vegetable. You can keep your squashes and artichokes, your fennel and snow peas, your kohlrabi and endive just as long as I have my potatoes. After all, according to A. A. Milne, "If a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow." But what's so good about potatoes? In a word: versatility. Once you think you know every way that you can cook a potato, another one comes along, and the Swiss rösti stretches the possibilities of the mighty tuber even further. I fell in love with its great blend of 'tato textures: crispy on the inside, creamy in the middle, it makes an ideal hungover breakfast with poached eggs on top. The best way to prepare the potatoes is to boil them in their skins the night before and place them, unpeeled, in an airtight container in the fridge, for use up to 24 hours later. But if you haven't been able to organize this, just leave them to cool down for at least 30 minutes before grating them. A word of warning: watch those shaky hands with wobbly poached eggs!

This dish might not be to everyone's (westernized) taste on a hungover morning, and it's also a breakfast with many components—rice, grilled fish, miso soup, pickles and a Japanese-style omelette—and some relatively obscure ingredients. Having said that, this is as clean, wholesome and nutritious as breakfast gets, so if anything is going to make you feel better it may well be this. However, I advise you to steer clear of tofu with a hangover (vegetarians: you may shoot me now); I've used cubes of potato instead.

Whether you're serving breakfast, brunch, lunch, or dinner, this flavor-packed shakshuka is welcome at the table anytime.

Start breakfast by making a potato pancake, then cover it with sausage, eggs, and cheese and bake until puffed and golden.

Chef Nancy Oakes was initially underwhelmed when developing this dish. "The eggs were just poached and a little squishy," she says. "Frying them in breadcrumbs made things more interesting." For maximum crispiness, chill the poached eggs before giving them a pre-fry roll in the egg whites and panko.

Are you flush with folate? Too-low levels are linked with osteoporosis, depression and more. Black-eyed peas are a top source of the vitamin.

Customize this one to your liking, from the fillings to the doneness.