Porridge

We all need energy to start our days off right, and a healthy and hearty breakfast is the perfect way to do just that. When it comes to getting nutrition and satisfying early morning hunger, it doesn’t get much better than this creamy cereal. You’ll be shocked by how refreshing and rich this dish tastes. But in addition to being decadent, this breakfast is also packed with great nutrients like calcium, vitamin C, and iron.

In recent years, pomegranates have emerged as one of the healthiest fruits due to their powerful antioxidants. Here’s a quick spin on plain oatmeal you can enjoy for its delicious flavor while reaping the great benefits of this superfood.

What kid (big or small) doesn’t love peanut butter and jelly? Well, here’s an adult twist on the combination that incorporates all the health benefits of oatmeal and still allows you to enjoy this classic comfort combo. And the kids will love it, too!

Allspice is the secret ingredient here. In Italian cooking, it is VITAL to have a secret ingredient in your meat sauce.

Fine-grained sweet couscous, called seffa in Morocco and mesfouf in Tunisia, is served hot, accompanied by cold milk or buttermilk. I like to eat it for breakfast. There are many versions. Dried fruit such as dates and raisins, and nuts such as almonds, walnuts, and pistachios, can be added, and the grain can be flavored with orange-blossom water or with cinnamon, honey, or sugar. A particularly wonderful version is with fresh grapes. The most common, seffa be zbib, is with large black or golden raisins. Seffa be tamr is with dates and walnut halves. There is also one with pomegranate seeds. Here is a basic seffa/mesfouf followed by possible garnishes. Serve it in bowls and pass round a jug of hot milk to pour over.

Grits are hulled, dried, and cracked corn kernels. To add variety to your grain repertoire, try them! I do urge you to try using stone-ground grits, which are much more flavorful than those sold in supermarkets. However, the latter can’t be beat for convenience, especially the quick-cooking kind.

This terrific dish brings into one bowl three essential Italian foods: polenta, cannellini, and the unique variety of kale called cavolo nero—one of my favorite vegetables. The customary green in Tuscan ribollita, cavolo nero has an earthy mouth-filling flavor, as if cabbage, broccoli, chickory, and spinach were all packed into one leaf. Fortunately, this delicious and healthful vegetable is now being grown and sold in this country under a variety of names, including lacinata, or dinosaur kale (for the texture of the leaves), and black kale (for their dark hue). In this recipe, cavolo nero is braised with bacon and cannellini and served atop hot polenta. But you can just braise it with bacon, following the same basic procedure, and serve it as a delicious side dish, or enjoy it in crusty bread as a great sandwich filling.

Our microwave polenta technique puts an end to nonstop stirring.

Grits are one of the most iconic Southern foods around—so, being a red-blooded Northern boy, I thought I'd mess with them. I'm not totally unqualified, since grits aren't all that different from Italian dishes like risotto and polenta—but when I started thinking about how to brighten them up and make them a little more lively, I ended up over in the American Southwest. Go figure. Cooking time and liquid-to-grits ratios will be different depending on the type of grits you use, so make sure you check the directions on the box for that. These amounts are for Anson Mills Carolina Whole Hominy Quick Grits, which I like a lot.

I've enjoyed oats a thousand different ways in my life, and this is my favorite. A layer of fruit lines the base of a well-buttered baking dish. The fruit is then topped with a blend of rolled oats, nuts, and spices. A wet mixture of milk, egg, melted butter, and vanilla is drizzled over the dry ingredients before baking to a golden-topped, fruit-scented finish. Be sure to use rolled oats and not instant oats.

This breakfast dish is served at Canyon Ranch Hotel & Spa in Miami Beach.

When we visited my grandmother in snowy Alsace, she used to serve us this delicious and filling breakfast, rich in fiber and fruity nutrients. It is still one of my favorite winter breakfasts: true baby food for adults. My grandmother usually served her oatmeal variation with freshly baked brioche or kugelhopf (a wonderful cake with raisins and almonds that is one of the great specialties of Alsace). Today, I sometimes find it a filling meal unto itself, and I skip the bread. If I want a little more protein, I have a bite of cheese or some yogurt.

Here is a good basic cereal. As baby gets a little older, you can add a few things to the cereal such as a tablespoon of banana puree. You can make this ahead and refrigerate it for a day or two—at most—or simply have the rice, barley, or oatmeal ground and ready to go.

Only use fresh corn in season for this recipe. As soon as corn is harvested, the sugar in the kernel begins to convert to starch and the corn begins to lose its sweetness. To store corn, leave on the husks and store it loosely wrapped in damp paper towels inside a paper bag. Refrigerate and use it within twenty-four hours. My friend, chef Marvin Woods, introduced me to the technique of grating the onion on a box grater instead of finely chopping it. When the onion is grated, it almost melts into the grits, adding a layer of onion flavor without any noticeable onion texture (always present with chopped onion, regardless of how fine the pieces). It also adds a bit more moisture to the grits than chopped onion does.

Frigitterie, found all over Palermo, means things fried, and the selections are endless. Breaded eggplant, broccoli, artichokes—all of the vegetables in season are coated with a flour paste (pastella) and find their way into a fryer. In Palermo, one of the undisputed specialties is panella, made of chickpea flour and cooked like polenta, chilled, and then cut into thick slices that are fried in olive oil. Fried panelle are eaten as is, or multiple slices are piled in a sesame bun and enjoyed as a big sandwich. Panelle can make a great accompaniment to fish or meat, but everybody loves them passed around as an hors d'oeuvre. Convenient to prepare in advance, they can be cooked up in a big batch, left to cool in the sheet pan, then refrigerated for up to 3 days. You can cut out a few panelle and fry them for a snack or side dish whenever you want. If you're serving bite-sized panelle for a cocktail party, I suggest you fry all the pieces ahead of time and keep them warm in the oven before your guests arrive.