Dairy Free

You can use honeydew, cantaloupe, or any other firm-fleshed melon for this light and luscious brunch dish. The important thing is that your melon be perfectly ripe and juicy, so sniff, pinch, and choose carefully. Make this a couple of hours in advance, so it has time to macerate in the port.

Hoppin’ John is the must-have dish for southerners on New Year’s Day; it’s widely believed that if you eat black-eyed peas on that day, you’ll have good luck all year. This a great dish for a crowd and can definitely be prepared ahead of time. Since the black-eyed peas need to soak overnight, start this a day in advance. Serve with my variation on Mr. Beard’s Cream Biscuits (page 54).

Another great make-ahead dish, this is an appealing way to serve zucchini at room temperature or chilled. Salting the zucchini and letting it sit for about 30 minutes gets rid of excess liquid and keeps this dish from becoming watery. If you make this ahead of time, remove it from the refrigerator about thirty minutes before serving and taste it. You may find that you need extra shakes of salt and pepper, and an extra squeeze or two of lemon juice.

A springtime-only treat, wild ramps, also known as wild leeks, resemble broad-leaved scallions and have a flavor that’s both oniony and garlicky. Ramps are a great match for asparagus, and the lemon brings out the best of both vegetables. You can prepare this dish ahead of time and chill it, tightly covered, for two to three days in the refrigerator. Serve it chilled or at room temperature.

Beet greens, with their dark green leaves and pungent, earthy flavor, are especially tasty with white beans. A nice alternative to beet greens is mustard greens, which are a little spicier.Other options are turnip greens and broccoli rabe. Start this dish a day ahead because the beans need to soak overnight.

Bacon is a natural fit with Brussels sprouts because the salt in the cured meat complements the earthiness of the vegetable. This dish is particularly hearty due to the meaty bâtons of bacon. You may have to have a good butcher slice 1/4-inch-thick strips from the slab of bacon. As for the Brussels sprouts, choose tightly closed sprouts with no yellowed leaves; the ones that seem heavy for their size are the freshest and best.

With its nutty flavor and beautiful dark green color, this is a good make-ahead brunch dish that tastes best chilled, but it’s also good at room temperature. If you prepare it in advance, taste for seasonings before serving; you may need to add a little extra salt or lemon juice.

To make this dish, you’ll need a mandoline, which is a hand-operated slicing appliance with assorted blades for thick to thin slicing. A metal kitchen utensil known as a spider, which vaguely resembles a spider web with a long handle, is handy when frying because it lets you quickly remove hot food from the oil without removing much of the oil. It’s inexpensive and sold in most kitchenware shops. Soaking the julienned potatoes before cooking them removes some of the starch and yields a crisp shoestring effect.

Also known as latkes, these crispy, golden treats are a childhood favorite and are best served with caramelized onions, sour cream, and fresh, tangy farmers’ market applesauce. Allow yourself about twenty minutes to soak the grated potatoes in the cold water to remove the starch. Otherwise, they become gluey as the starch cooks in the potatoes and they won’t get crispy.

This homemade cereal is hearty, wholesome, and filled with nutritious ingredients such as walnuts, rolled oats, raisins, and sunflower seeds. Granola is very flexible, so you can add whatever fruits and nuts are your personal favorites. This granola is great with milk or yogurt, or even as a topping on pancakes. Because raisins can make the granola soggy, we add them right before serving. The granola keeps well for a long time, so this is a big batch—it makes three pounds. Just keep it in an airtight container and eat it for breakfast all week, as we do at Bubby’s, or cut it in half to feed a smaller crowd.

Fried oysters are essential in a Hangtown Fry, which also includes eggs and fried bacon. The dish is thought to have been created during the California gold rush in a camp called Hangtown, near Sutter’s Mill in the Coloma Valley. The town acquired its gruesome name because of frequent hangings, often carried out by vigilantes. For this recipe, you can either shuck the oysters yourself or buy fresh shucked oysters from your fishmonger.

A luxurious treat, sweet, crisp crab cakes can be made with lump or backfin crabmeat. Frying the crab cakes just before you plan to serve them will ensure that they don’t get soggy upon standing. Serve crab cakes with scrambled eggs, inside a crusty baguette, or with lemon wedges and Rémoulade Sauce (page 284).

This is an elegant salad in which an abundance of colorful, crunchy vegetables really picks up the flavor of the crab. Spiked with lemon juice and lightly bound with mayonnaise, it can be an entrée served over fresh greens or a great sandwich filling.

The taste of homemade smoked trout is incomparable, making this recipe well worth the effort. Trout, like all fish, must be brined before smoking, so plan on several hours’ worth of brining time before you actually do the smoking. Unlike salmon, trout is hot smoked. Obviously, you’ll need a smoker for this recipe. The choice of wood is up to you: At Bubby’s, we strictly use apple wood. Once you’ve got smoked trout on hand, you may serve it as is or make it into some delicious Smoked Trout Cakes (page 195), a Smoked Trout Scramble (page 101), or Smoked Trout and Scallion Mousse (page 196). Figure that you need to start this recipe about five hours in advance. The salmon is best when smoked the day before you plan to serve it, so that the flavors can blend. To serve, cut the smoked trout into fairly large 2-inch chunks and arrange them as part of a smoked fish platter, along with Smoked Salmon (page 191) and herring (page 196).

A smoky and appealing cousin of the crab cake, these are excellent served on their own, perhaps as part of a salad, or alongside one of Bubby’s egg dishes.

A thick steak is essential in order to get nice rare slices for your buffet brunch. Be sure to let the steak rest for at least 15 minutes before slicing. This allows the juices to disburse throughout the meat and not go running all over the cutting board.

Smoking a whole side of salmon may seem like a lot of effort, but it is worth it, especially if you are having more than eight people for brunch. Not only is the salmon better tasting than many commercial products available, it is also about 80 percent less expensive. Smoked salmon is cold smoked. In other words, it is not smoked in a hot smoker; the smoke does not cook the fish. The fish is cooked through the brining process. Cold smoke imparts a subtle smoky flavor. With practice, you can develop your own levels of curing and smoke. This is an ancient way of preserving food, and there are myriad subtleties to achieve. Smoked salmon keeps in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. The process of curing and smoking salmon takes a couple of days. You need a refrigerator with enough room to let the salmon sit inside, unobstructed. The process involves curing, rinsing, crusting, smoking, and saturating in oil. Bubby’s uses a combination of maple syrup, sugar, and kosher salt to cure salmon. Besides these ingredients, you’ll also need a vented tin can, a piece of charcoal, apple wood chips, a barbecue grill large enough to hold a whole salmon fillet, and 4 quarts of canola oil.

This hard-to-resist ham makes a great centerpiece at a brunch. Moist and succulent within, it has a delicious crusted exterior that is both sweet and spicy. Leftovers are delicious in sandwiches as well as in many egg dishes.

Smithfield ham is the American answer to prosciutto. To be called a Smithfield ham, the ham must be cured and processed in Smithfield, Virginia. It is aged for twenty-four months and offers a unique taste. (You can buy Smithfield ham online at www.smithfieldhams.com. Order the uncooked bone-in version.) It requires some serious effort to prepare a proper Smithfield ham, but it is very worth it. The instructions are odd, even counterintuitive, but this is the way it is done! Smithfield ham is easiest to prepare when it’s cold enough to leave the ham outside. That means it has to be below 40°F all day and night. Otherwise, you have to refrigerate the ham while soaking it, and unless you have a walk-in refrigerator, it is nearly impossible. When you are ready to prepare the ham, remove it from the bag. Place it in a sink or a very large pot of water and scrub it with steel wool to remove the outside mold and grime. Don’t let the mold (a result of aging) worry you. Once it is scrubbed, place the ham in a pot large enough that it can be covered with plenty of water. The ham needs to soak for three days and the water changed every twelve hours, at least. Now you’re ready to cook the ham. The best way to serve Smithfield ham is with eggs and fresh biscuits.

With the fresh, zesty taste of basil and garlic, these juicy sausages are a perfect homemade accompaniment to a variety of egg dishes. Ask the butcher to grind up the pork butt, and make sure the pork is well chilled (32°F) before starting on this recipe. The meat and fat need to stay very cold during the grinding and mixing process. Otherwise, the sausage comes out mealy because the fat doesn’t maintain its form and melts into the meat.