Whole-grain mornings : new breakfast recipes to span the seasons

249 Pages·2013·5.51 MB·English

by  Gordon

Copyright © 2013 by Megan Gordon
Photographs copyright © 2013 by Clare Barboza
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of
Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com
Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
All photographs by Clare Barboza with the exception of photographs AU01, AU02, AU03, AU04, AU05,
AU06, AU07, AU08, AU09, AU10, AU11, AU12, AU13, AU14, AU15, AU16, AU17, AU18, AU19,
AU20, AU21, AU22, AU23, AU24, AU25, AU26, AU27, AU28, AU29, AU30, AU31, AU32 which are by
the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gordon, Megan, 1979-
Whole-grain mornings : new breakfast recipes to span the seasons / Megan Gordon.
pages cm
1. Breakfasts 2. Cooking (Cereals) 3. Grain. I. Title.
TX733.G66 2013
641.3’31—dc23
2013015594
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-60774-500-6
eBook ISBN: 978-1-60774501-3
Printed in China
Food styling by Julie Hopper
v3.1
Contents
BEGINNINGS
THE PANTRY
BASICS
The
SPRING
coasting
SUMMER
settling in
FALL
gathering
WINTER
looking ahead
SOURCES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INDEX

to MY MOM AND DAD,
with immense gratitude.
to SAM,
with my whole heart.
BEGINNINGS
I LEARNED TO COOK BY OBSERVATION AND TRIAL AND ERROR. As a girl, I’d sit
on the counter while my mom made dinner, feet dangling, snacking on Cheerios.
On nights when we’d have lasagna, she would reserve the broken shards of
cooked noodles and I’d form small ricotta roll-ups to busy myself. I’d lay them
out in neat rows, smitten with my own productivity. A few years later, I realized
that a whole pan of lasagna was really just ricotta roll-ups on a larger scale: an
act of repetition with noodles, sauce, and cheese. Soon I was making my own
lasagna with very minimal assistance—beaming with pride the whole way
through.
On Sunday evenings after putting my sisters and me to bed, my mom would
write out what we’d have for dinner that week as a way to organize her weekly
trips to the grocery store. The sheet of yellow legal paper was always taped to
the refrigerator, so when we’d pass by the kitchen Monday morning, excitement
grew as we thought about our favorite upcoming meal. Generally it was simple
food that could be tackled after a long day of teaching, with small kids
underfoot: spaghetti and meatballs, turkey potpie, tuna casserole, or baked
chicken. Our meals never looked like those picture-perfect moments of dinner
that we’d see on television, with everyone digging in and sharing the details of
their day. Instead, that hour was filled with three picky girls (or later, moody
teenagers) and tired, overworked parents. But we always showed up nonetheless.
In our house dinnertime was a statement that cooking and eating together at the
same table was important. It was family.
Much like my mom, my grandmother is a gracious home cook. She makes a
mean coconut cake with seven-minute frosting and her Jell-O salad is
enthusiastically requested at holidays and reunions. My other grandmother, my
dad’s mom, also tended toward simple recipes. From each of them, it wasn’t
noteworthy dishes or standout techniques that were passed down, so much as an
appreciation and affinity for practice, repetition, and tradition. And so today I
call myself a home cook, too. There’s a certain pride in the term that itself seems
passed down by generations of women who learned by watching their mothers,
reading cookbooks, paying attention, and pulling up a seat at the table. By
dabbling and then diving in. So here we are.
ABOUT THIS BOOK
I’ve always wanted to write a breakfast book. It’s the meal we all start with, the
meal that ushers us into the day. Even more, I wanted to write a book that
reflects the way I do breakfast, acknowledging the fact that what we eat looks
different on a cold, gray morning in February than it does on a sunny morning in
June. A busy Wednesday brings about different breakfast options than does a
leisurely Sunday. Sure, some of that has to do with the available produce. But a
lot of it has to do with what we’re drawn to in those different months or what our
bodies crave. So I decided to split this book into seasonal chapters and further
divide each chapter, noting which recipes are best for busy weekdays, slow
Sundays, or brunch. I hope you return to the book as the months pass, the
seasons change, and friends and family trickle in and out to join you at the
breakfast table throughout the year.
In addition to a seasonal breakfast book, I wanted to write a somewhat
personal book, beginning in the San Francisco Bay Area and ending in Seattle. A
book that tracks a particular season in my life, as much as the many breakfasts
from that time—the story of a high school English teacher searching for a new
school and landing in a bakery instead. The story of that accidental baker waking
before sunrise to crimp pies and bake granola, finding herself looking at the
work of a graphic designer one thousand miles away who might be able to help
with branding the business.
That story is obviously mine. And that designer, Sam? It’s now his, too. Sam
worked for me for a little less than a year as I began my baking business, Marge.
During this time, we met once face-to-face at a little café in the Fremont
neighborhood of Seattle, discussing websites and logos and drinking spicy chai.
As was often the case, we fell into our usual digressions about folk music, films
we liked, and good cheese. When our client relationship had come to an end, we
threw ourselves into much longer phone calls, letters, travels across several
states, and more than a few breakfasts together. Then, after too many seasons
apart, Sam flew down to help me load a large U-Haul and make the long drive
up the coast from San Francisco to a new home in Seattle. Today we share a
bright blue craftsman house, a modest garden, and a very large comingled