Easy

Cheddar and apples are great together, and the combination gets even better when you add some superior-tasting slab bacon. Any sweet-tart apple—Macoun, Mutsu, Greening, Winesap—works well here.

The key to making a great broccoli omelet is to slightly overcook the broccoli. One of the best cheeses to pair with broccoli in many a dish is Cheddar because of its sharp, tangy taste.

As the name implies, this is a workingman’s or -woman’s omelet, bulging with crispy chunks of slab bacon, potatoes, and onions. It’s also great with leeks. There’s no need to fold this before serving. It’s served as is, flat and round, and right out of the skillet. Serve with Zucchini Bread with Zucchini Flowers (page 48).

If you’re using fresh crabs, you want to use the meatiest ones you can find, such as Dungeness crabs from the West Coast. The little blue Maryland crabs are good, too, but they are a lot of work to get the meat. I usually figure about one-third of the whole crab weight will be meat. So, for every pound of crab, you might get one-third pound of cleaned meat. If fresh crabs are not available, you can usually find freshly picked lump crabmeat at your fish market. If all else fails, frozen pasteurized canned crab will suffice. Serve with Asparagus Potato Hash (page 210).

For this luxurious omelet, choose a good-quality lean ham, but avoid pepper ham or mapleglazed ham because you don’t want to distract from the flavor of the Gruyère, which has a wonderful taste and melts beautifully. If you don’t have Gruyère, you can use Emmenthal or Beaufort. This recipe doesn’t call for salt because both the ham and the Gruyère are naturally salty. Serve with Steamed Sesame Spinach (page 216).

Chorizo sausage gives this omelet a little kick and is a nice foil to the creamy-smooth avocado. For some extra spice, serve with Pico de Gallo (page 290) and fresh corn tortillas.

This is a springtime treat, when asparagus is at its peak and you can get the young, thin stalks. Making this with thick stalks is fine, though you may want to peel the tougher bottom half of the stalks before cooking. Blanching rather than steaming helps the asparagus retain its bright green color and firm texture. Serve with Niçoise Salad (page 160).

In my house, eggs in the hole were also called one-eyed sailors. Whatever they are called in yours, this is a great dish that children will love. It consists of bread with a hole punched in the middle, griddled with butter, and an egg dropped into the hole and then flipped over to griddle the other side. Depending on the thickness of your bread, or the type of bread, you could create a little “eye patch” by griddling the punched-out part and setting it on top of the egg. This dish is quite versatile. For a more sophisticated variation, try adding basil and Parmesan cheese or a smear of anchovy paste, a clove of roasted garlic, a slice of goat cheese, American cheese, or sharp Cheddar. Put a blanket of crispy fried ham over the “little sailor.” For a romantic brunch for Valentine’s Day, you could use a heart-shaped cookie cutter to punch out the hole in the middle of the bread. For heartier appetites try cutting a larger hole in the bread and cooking two eggs rather than just one.

The beloved picnic classic is updated here with generous dashes of Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce. Be sure to give yourself time to boil the eggs in advance, so they can chill for at least an hour.

Sometimes you just need the taste of some eggs cooked in butter or cream. Shirred eggs fit the bill: They’re baked in hot fat or heavy cream. At Bubby’s, we use either butter or bacon fat. They are baked in the same dish in which they will be served—a 4-inch oval ceramic ramekin is perfect.

This pink-hued cake is filled with rhubarb, which is in season during the spring and early summer. The cake freezes nicely and has a high ratio of fruit to cake—always good in a brunch sweet. Sliced into wedges, this coffee cake is a nice way to round out a seasonal bread basket of fruit muffins.

My adopted grandmother, called Mema by dozens of grandkids, step-grandkids, and us adopted grandkids alike, as well as scores of great-grandkids, always made these popovers for Christmas dinner. They are just as tasty for brunch. Popovers rise in the oven due to steam, not a leavener such as yeast, and then they deflate somewhat after baking. Good with butter, jam, or honey, they are best eaten warm. I like using a cast-iron popover pan, but you can also use a good, solid muffin pan. For the puffiest, airiest popovers, make the batter at least 2 hours ahead of time. Refrigerate the batter for 1 hour, and then let it sit out at room temperature for 1 hour.

James Beard’s excellent biscuit recipe can hardly be improved upon. But by using sour cream in the recipe, we feel the biscuits are a little creamier. If you prefer the original Beard biscuits, just omit the sour cream and double the heavy cream.

These scones are easy to make and can be rewarmed quickly in a 300°F oven for about 10 minutes. They work well with either fresh or frozen berries.

Thanks to a combination of aromatic spices, this is an extraordinarily good pumpkin bread, and it’s also easy to make. Be sure to use plain canned pumpkin and not the pumpkin pie version, which has spices already added to it.

This rich, dense bread is flecked with green from the zucchini and adorned with delicate zucchini blossoms on top. The flowers, which are available at gourmet specialty stores, are a beautiful addition, but the loaf is equally delicious with or without them. You can also use this batter for muffins, in which case you’ll have about twenty-four muffins and you’ll need to bake them for 20 to 25 minutes.

The sweetness of the honey and the spiciness of the jalapeños make for an intriguing flavor combination in this rich corn bread. Wear rubber or plastic gloves when handling and chopping hot chile peppers—the chiles can make your fingers sting—and wash your hands thoroughly afterward. Serve with butter, honey butter, Maple Butter (page 274), or jam.

Banana bread was one of the great rewards for not eating all the bananas Mom bought for our lunch boxes. This hearty loaf is full of crimson berries and pecan chunks. When sliced and served in a napkin-lined basket, it rounds out any brunch. Leftovers are equally good for breakfast the next day. You can also bake the batter in muffin pans.

This recipe could almost be labeled a health bread, except that it tastes too good. It’s packed with a generous quantity of bananas, plus an assortment of mix-and-match dried fruit. Spread the bread with any of our fruit butters (pages 270–272) and serve at a fall or winter brunch.

In springtime at the farmers’ market, rhubarb is a gloriously welcome sight after a winter of squash and potatoes. If possible, buy rhubarb at a farm stand or farmers’ market. If you are craving rhubarb when it’s not in season, frozen rhubarb is available at most supermarkets. Remember, if you pick your own rhubarb, use only the stalks, not the leaves as they are poisonous.