[2] Amaranth porridge with almond milk and maple syrup. Here’s the recipe from Food Heaven Made Easy (photo © Food From Heaven Made Easy).

[3] Elegant presentation: cooked farro pressed into a ring mold, unmolded and topped with fruit, at Villard Restaurant | Lotte New York Palace Hotel (photo © Lotte New York Palace Hotel).

[4] Special occasion Porridge Brûlée. Here’s the recipe from Pom Wonderful (photo © Pom Wonderful).

We love oatmeal, a whole-grain comfort food that warms the belly in the morning.

If you’re an oatmeal fan, you may have had other common types of porridge:

 
If you like food adventures, searching for new taste experiences, venture into alternative grain porridge territory.

In fact, the same grains that have become popular for sides at dinner and grain bowls at lunch are equally delicious in the cereal bowl, with milk, fruit and sweetener.
 
 
ALTERNATIVE GRAIN CEREALS

 
If your market doesn’t carry them, you can find them at a natural foods store, including Whole Foods.

If you have leftovers from dinner, heat them up and serve with your favorite breakfast cereal toppings.

Bonus: All of these are whole grain cereals. A longer list of whole grains, plus why you need to eat them.

Bonus Tip: We also heat our cereal milk in the microwave. Aside from adding to the comfort food level, it keeps the cereal warmer, longer.
 
 
HOT CEREAL TOPPINGS

As with oatmeal, the sky’s the limit; or at least, the kitchen ceiling is.

Use whatever you have to add flavor dimensions to your bowl of porridge:

 
 
WHAT IS PORRIDGE?

Porridge is a dish made by boiling ground, crushed, or chopped cereal grains in water or milk. It is alternatively known as gruel, hot cereal and mush.

Optional flavorings can be added, from spices to fruits or cheese.

Porridge is usually served hot for breakfast, in a bowl or dish. It may be sweetened with sugar or served as a savory dish (cheese grits is an example).

Worldwide, barley, fonio, maize, millet, rye, sorghum, triticale and quinoa are also made into porridge.

We’ll get to today’s tip in a minute or so. But here’s what inspired it.

Frenchly.us is a website for Francophiles in the U.S. that covers news, arts, culture, style and all things French.

Which includes food.

In the past, the website sponsored a Best Baguette competition in different cities, naming some 15 finalists from the best in bakeries the city. Buy a ticket, and taste them all in one place.

This year it was the Best Croissant competition, which we attended recently. If you’re a croissant lover, imagine being in a venue with the city’s 15 best croissant bakers, who bid you to sample as much as you’d like.

More than 700 eager eaters went from station to station in a Manhattan location, eating as much as they desired. How many croissants do you think you can eat?

We’d be stuffed at two…although we calculated that if we only ate two bites of 15 croissants, that would be about three croissants.

But the bakeries brought more than their classic croissants. They brought almond croissants, chocolate croissants (pain au chocolat), specialty flavors like pistachio, along with muffins, fruit breads and rustic loaves.

Plus unlimited coffee, tea, jam, butter, and other French delights like pâté.

What’s a taster to do?

For one thing, don’t order the optional brunch. You won’t have room to sample the cornucopia of croissants.

The competing bakeries are shown in image #3.

While every bakery’s products were of the highest quality, participants were asked to vote for their favorites.

And the winners are…

 
 
PARTY IDEA!

Coordinate your own Best Croissant competition. Ask friends and family to bring the best from their neighborhoods.

You can do this with any food, from brownies, chocolate chip cookies and éclairs to non-baked, savory foods like bagels and chicken wings.

Our friend Cricket has an annual Super Bowl event where everyone brings their favorite wings for a wing-off.
 
 
WHAT ARE CROISSANTS?

Croissants are French breakfast breads, served with jam and butter, and coffee.

They belong to a category called Viennoiserie, “items of Vienna.”

[2] For chocolate lovers, pain au chocolat (chocolate croissant [literally, “chocolate bread”; photo courtesy The Bojon Gourmet).

[3] The 15 finalists in the 2018 Best Croissant competition.

Viennoiserie includes such favorites as brioche, cheese and other flavors of danish, chausson aux pommes (apple turnover), chouquette (dough sprinkled with pearl sugar and sometimes filled with custard or mousse), pain au chocolat, pain au lait, pain aux raisins, and others.

The Original Croissant

The original croissant (croissant is the French word for crescent) was plain laminated dough. Puff pastry yeast dough alternates with layers of butter—many layers, a process known as laminating.

Subsequently, bakers created what have become standards: the almond croissant, filled with frangipane and topped with sliced almonds; and the chocolate croissant, correctly called pain au chocolat, baked with a piece of dark chocolate in the center.

Others have soft fillings, such as lemon curd, jam, coffee crème.

There are also pretzel croissants, which are not laminated dough, but adapt German soft pretzel dough into the crescent shape.
 
 
CROISSANT HISTORY

Stories that the roll was made in the shape of the crescent of the Turkish flag, after the defeat of the Turks in the Siege of Vienna in 1683, are a perpetuated myth.

 
Today…

 
Ahhhh!

We’ll get to today’s tip in a minute or so. But here’s what inspired it.

Frenchly.us is a website for Francophiles in the U.S. that covers news, arts, culture, style and all things French.

Which includes food.

In the past, the website sponsored a Best Baguette competition in different cities, naming some 15 finalists from the best in bakeries the city. Buy a ticket, and taste them all in one place.

This year it was the Best Croissant competition, which we attended recently. If you’re a croissant lover, imagine being in a venue with the city’s 15 best croissant bakers, who bid you to sample as much as you’d like.

More than 700 eager eaters went from station to station in a Manhattan location, eating as much as they desired. How many croissants do you think you can eat?

We’d be stuffed at two…although we calculated that if we only ate two bites of 15 croissants, that would be about three croissants.

But the bakeries brought more than classic croissants. They brought almond croissants, chocolate croissants (pain au chocolat), specialty flavors like pistachio, along with muffins, fruit breads and rustic loaves.

Plus unlimited coffee, tea, jam, butter, and other French delights like pâté.

What’s a taster to do?

For one thing, don’t order the optional brunch. You won’t have room to sample the cornucopia of croissants.

The competing bakeries are shown in image #2.

While every bakery’s products were of the highest quality, participants were asked to vote for their favorites.

And the winners are…

 
 
PARTY IDEA!

Coordinate your own Best Croissant competition. Ask friends and family to bring the best from their neighborhoods.

You can do this with any food, from eclairs to chicken wings. Our friend Cricket has an annual Super Bowl event where everyone brings their favorite wings for a wing-off.

[2] The 15 finalists in the 2018 Best Croissant competition.

Croissants are breakfast breads, traditionally a breakfast bread served with jam and butter, and coffee.

Variations include the almond croissant, filled with frangipane and topped with sliced almonds, and the “chocolate croissant,” correctly called pain au chocolat, baked with a piece of dark chocolate in the center.

There are also pretzel croissants, which adapt German soft pretzel dough into the crescent shape.

The rich, buttery, crescent-shaped rolls are made of puff pastry. Puff pastry layers yeast dough with alternate layers of butter, a process known as laminating.

Stories that the roll was made in the shape of the crescent of the Turkish flag, after the defeat of the Turks in the Siege of Vienna in 1683, are a perpetuated myth.

[2] Cayenne chiles (photo courtesy Good Eggs).

While the first chile may have been domesticated in Bolivia, the oldest known traces of have been found in bowls in Ecuador, dating back 6,100 years*.

Chiles were carried to different parts of Latin America, where soil, climate and cross breeding created many different species. Today there are six species of chiles in the genus Capsicum.

But how did we get so many different spellings for the chile? And why are chiles called peppers?

 
And by the way:

Chiles are a fruit, not a vegetable. Here’s the difference between fruits and vegetables.

But Columbus’ name stuck, but it isn’t correct. Our suggestion is to simply call hot chiles—ancho, jalapeño, habanero, serrano, etc.—chiles.
 
If you live in the U.S. (we can’t address other countries):

 
MORE

_____________________
*Science magazine, February 16, 2007.

†Taxonomy includes Kingdom, Subkingdom, Infrakingdom, Superdivision, Division, Subdivision, Class, Superorder, Order, Family, Genus, Species. The simplified list is Kingdom, Division, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. Black pepper (Piper nigrum genus and species) and chiles (Capsicum genus, 6 different species), are not related at all, although both are in the plant kingdom.

Their only relationship is that they are both members of the plant family in the official taxonomy.

Taxonomy is the branch of science concerned with classification of organisms plants and animals.

PIPER NIGRUM

Kingdom Plantae Plants
Subkingdom Viridiplantae
Infrakingdom Streptophyta – land plants
Superdivision Embryophyta
Division Tracheophyta – vascular plants, tracheophytes
Subdivision Spermatophytina spermatophytes, seed plants
Class Magnoliopsida
Superorder Magnolianae
Order Piperales
Family Piperaceae – peppers
Genus Piper L. – pepper
Species Piper nigrum L. – black pepper

[Source]

CAPSICUM

Kingdom Plantae – Plants
Subkingdom Tracheobionta – Vascular plants
Superdivision Spermatophyta – Seed plants
Division Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants
Class Magnoliopsida – Dicotyledons
Subclass Asteridae
Order Solanales
Family Solanaceae – Potato family
Genus Capsicum
Species Capsicum annuum
Species Capsicum baccatum
Species Capsicum chinense
Species Capsicum frutescens
Species Capsicum pubescens
Species Capsicum praetermissum

[Source]

[4] Bell peppers, the non-spicy chile.

[2] You can buy pistachio flour or grind your own from pistachio nuts. See the technique below (photo courtesy Gourmet Food World).

[3] For more festiveness, look for green foil muffin/cupcake liners (photo courtesy Fox Run).

February 26th is National Pistachio Day: a perfect day to bake something with pistachio nuts.

We love the concept of pistachio “surprise” muffins: The surprise is the melted chocolate center.

A lesser surprise is that they’re sweet enough to be served as dessert; in which case you can call them cupcakes and serve them with ice cream or whipped cream.

 
This recipe was adapted from an Italian recipe blog, Agnese Italian Recipes. Here’s Agnese’s original recipe.

Jumping from Italy to Ireland:

St. Patrick’s Day is in less than three weeks: Another occasion to make these tasty green muffins.

Use green food coloring to make the batter as green as you like.
 
 
RECIPE: PISTACHIO MUFFINS WITH CHOCOLATE CENTER

Ingredients 12 Muffins

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 350°F. Prepare the muffin tins: Line the wells with paper or foil liners.

2. WHISK together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, baking soda. In a separate bowl, whisk together the yogurt, egg, oil and milk. Add the dry mixture into the wet, and blend with a wooden spoon.

3. ADD the coffee and the pistachio flour, and the optional food color. Divide the mixture into 2 bowls.

4. ADD a heaping spoonful of the batter into each muffin cup. Next, place a square of chocolate in the center of the cup, and top with another spoonful of batter. The muffin cups should be 2/3 full.

5. BAKE for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out dry.

What You Need

 
Preparation

1. PLACE the nuts in the food processor and pulse until they are a flour-like consistency. Don’t over-pulse or they will turn into pistachio butter.

2. ADD the ground nuts to a sieve and sift them into a bowl. Re-pulse pieces that are too large to fit through the sieve and repeat as necessary.

You can store the flour for one month in the fridge or several months in the freezer. Don’t keep it at room temperature: The oil in the nuts can become rancid.

________________

*Each Baker’s Chocolate package has 8 one-ounce squares. You can also use squares from 3.5-ounce chocolate bars, which are better-tasting chocolate. You’ll need 3-1/2 large chocolate bars.

†Pistachio flour is expensive. Since you need only a small amount, it may make sense to grind your own from whole pistachios (or pieces).