Rice & Grains

Oatmeal is one of the healthiest and most energy-packed breakfast foods around. To give our loved ones a great start to their day while keeping a lazy weekend morning—well—lazy, we created this casserole. The three kinds of dried fruit and touch of vanilla dress it up just enough so that it still feels like a treat.

Our zucchini casserole tastes just as good as Mom’s, but we’ve trimmed out many of the calories. Rich in flavor, this dish is a perfect partner for our Mamaw’s Stuffed Peppers (page 58), Jayne’s Baked Spaghetti (page 62), and Chicken Penne Pasta with Pink Sauce (page 74).

Helping kids everywhere learn to love broccoli! This classic broccoli, cheese, and rice casserole will quickly become a favorite in your family. (Maybe they’ll forget to complain about eating something green.)

You betcha it ’s a hot dish! The history of the “hotdish” goes back to when budget-conscious farm wives needed to feed their own families as well as congregations of the first Minnesota churches. This filling side resembles a quiche and is packed full of flavor. Evaporated milk, which is thicker and richer than regular milk, helps give this dish its creamy texture. Perfect for cold winters, when you just need something warm and tasty in your belly.

Or as we like to call them—Hungarian pigs in a blanket! (We’re a bit silly, if you haven’t noticed.) This dish traveled into our hearts long ago and has satisfied our families for generations. It was surprising to us that this comfort food that we grew up on wasn’t that bad for you! Made with lean ground beef, rice, and veggies, and covered in a tomato sauce, these rolls will fill you up but not weigh you down.

Say no to grapefruit diets, and yes to feeling satisfied. Similar to a burrito filling, this casserole boasts a creamy rice mixture made with low-fat sour cream and green onions, all covered in a spicy meat sauce and topped with reduced-fat Cheddar. Round out a healthy dinner by serving this dish with either a fruit or green salad and dinner rolls. It’s also perfect to use as a filling for whole wheat or corn tortillas.

We actually got this brilliant idea from our World’s Greatest Chicken Pot Pie recipe (page 48), borrowing some of its staple flavors to create an entirely new dish. The mild flavors of the tarragon and white wine sauce complement the leek mixture in this new creation. Baking the salmon en croute keeps the fish moist and seals in its natural flavors. When you find a flavor combination you love, experiment and find new ways to make it work for you!

No special equipment needed here. Leave the paella pan at the store and let your casserole dish do the work. Packed with fresh seafood and accentuated with the alluring flavor of saffron, your kids may call this pimpin’ dish “The Bomb,” which means it’s good. This dish lives or dies by the freshness of the fish. The beauty of paella is that it is a flexible dish, so talk to your local fishmonger to get recommendations on the best catch of the day. If you don’t like seafood, the dish actually works really well without it, too.

Crystal’s “Mamaw” Cook served these delicious stuffed peppers with a delectable buttered bread-crumb topping. These bad boys are sauce-free, and preferred that way so that the taste of the pepper comes through. But neither Crystal nor Mamaw Cook will take offense if you want to add a little sauce. (See opposite for a tomato sauce that’s a great match for this dish.)

Chances are, if you grew up in the South, you have eaten your fair share of grits. You’ve probably eaten your share of shrimp, too. It’s no wonder that these two Southern staples come together in one of the best dishes of all time. Crystal grew up eating grits almost every morning and had always considered them a breakfast dish—until the day she was served shrimp and grits for dinner. That was when her obsession began. Instead of seeking help, Crystal continued to make shrimp and grits on her stove top, working and reworking the dish to find the perfect recipe. Her work definitely paid off. Here is her winning combo of smoked Gouda cheese grits and Cajun spiced shrimp, topped off with an herbed tomato mixture. Perfection indeed.

For years polenta reminded me of the Cream of Wheat my mother used to send me off to school with in the morning. It was totally boring. But once I started making polenta for myself I discovered I LOVED it. My special twist? I fat it up with milk, Parm, Fontina cheese, and mascarpone until it’s creamy, decadent, and delicious. Just remember, the kicker here is to season the liquid with plenty of salt in the beginning—it makes all the difference.

When you use my Risotto-Without-a-Recipe technique (opposite), you can flavor it with anything you like. Sweet little rock shrimp, bright lemon, and fresh herbs are one of my favorite combos.

Farro is an ancient grain that’s used in traditional Tuscan and Umbrian cooking—kind of like a cross between barley and wheat berries. I love making farro in the style of risotto—a.k.a. farrotto. By using my Risotto-Without-a-Recipe technique (page 136) and substituting farro for rice, you end up with something rich and chewy and nutty all at the same time. Like risotto, farrotto is a blank canvas for whatever you’re feeling passionate about. Whatever ingredients are in season, whatever flavors you’re in the mood for, whatever’s freshest. Whenever I cook for big events and have to feed a lot of people, I always make farrotto because it’s quick, it doesn’t cost a lot, and it’s a huge crowd pleaser. It’s a win-win-win.

If you wheel your grocery cart down the rice aisle, you will not find “risotto.” Risotto is not a type of rice—it’s a method used for cooking Arborio or Carnaroli rice. And once you learn how to make risotto using my Risotto-Without-a-Recipe method, you’ll be able to make any kind of risotto simply by adding ingredients and flavorings to this basic technique.

I love to make these for company because the polenta can be made WAY in advance. And you can top the cakes with almost anything—I like to use a nice stinky cheese, but after that really anything goes. Tomatoes give you a nice burst of sweetness, but dried fruit is fun, some fresh herbs, whatever you want! No matter how you top them, these corn cakes are little bites of melty, cheesy deliciousness.

Although replacing the sugar in the donut recipe with agave nectar takes the crunch factor down a level, these are equally as important to your breakfast arsenal. If you still want that crispiness and are open to experimenting, try switching out the agave for coconut sugar (helpful substitution suggestions on page 24!). Either way, you can’t go wrong. The donut here is shown topped with the Agave-Sweetened Chocolate Glaze (page 124).

Even though this cake is visually a stunner, it’s probably the easiest cake you will ever make. Don’t worry about putting too much filling between the layers; the messier the preserves and chocolate glaze get, the better.

My brothers and sisters cringed when I told them I was including Irish soda bread in this cookbook. I can’t really blame them. Grandma McKenna used to force it on us when we’d pop by her house after church, as if it were punishment for interrupting her Sunday afternoon cleaning spree. My brother Bill pointed out that Grandma would ask him if he wanted some candy and when he said yes she’d sit him down with a thick slice of Irish soda bread. My brother Frank noted that her solution to gripes was, “Put some butter on it!” Instead, I decided I’d simply update this old-world snack so that it stands a fighting chance against the evolution of tender tastebuds.

Like bubble-gum ice cream, Sno Balls were one of those grocery-store items I coveted as a very young girl. All I knew was that they looked like Barbie food and that was precisely what I wanted and needed. And then I tried one. Absolutely awful. Like, terrible. I wondered how something so pretty could taste so wretched. And then, when it came time to write this book, I decided, No, something so adorable need not be so incredibly foul-tasting. So I reworked them. In the process, I stumbled on a new bakery favorite. What’s more, you get two recipes in the process of making a batch of these; head over to the recipe for Bread Pudding (page 102) and see just one idea for what you can do with the unused part of a cupcake.

I don’t think I’m alone in my ever-so-slight embarrassment about being a fan of the Nilla Wafer. They are like the frozen burritos of cookies: You don’t particularly crave them, yet every time you’re checking out at the grocery store, there they are. They get eaten. And not because they’re the only things available; it’s because they are sneakily delicious. This is a tried-and-true cookie icon, no matter what anyone says.