Deb Perelman's Blog, page 37
May 17, 2016
roasted carrots with avocado and yogurt
Me and this salad go way back. In 2007 — you know, back in the days when I imagine that all of our conversations might have gone “What should we do today?” “Oh, I don’t know, anything we want .” — I had this salad at the then new-ish Spotted Pig in the West Village and attempted to recreate it. It didn’t go well and because I was as mature then as I am now, I had a tantrum and didn’t get back to it until 2009, at which point I made a roasted carrot dish with a bit of cumin and topped it with avocado slices that had been tossed with some lemon and everyone was happy. However, in 2011, Jean-Georges Vongerichten published a book of his homecooking favorites including this salad, which is also on the menu at ABC Kitchen and in 2012, April Bloomfield included the recipe in her first cookbook and I’ve thought it might be nice to circle back to these more complexly spiced and textured versions.
Can I veer off for a moment here? [I mean, that’s kind of my thing, not being able to finish a sentence without at least one other tangentially-related sentence inside it.] Okay, so I get a lot of cooking ideas from restaurants I go to and I jot them down but it’s not because I want to do anything sinister like pretend I came up with them first, but because I want to do something with the impression it made on me. It’s like going to a museum and admiring the soft colors in a painting and realizing you want to soften the palette in your own artwork; nobody is going to mistake you for Monet any more than anyone is going to mistake me for Beyoncé if I buy thigh-high tights and wear them as pants. (They’re more likely, in fact, beg me to never do this again.) People have said to me, “Why don’t you just ask the chef for their recipe?” or “But this recipe is published! Don’t you want to make their version?” but I actually don’t for two reasons. First, I want to stay true to what I remembered about it, even if it might have been incorrect, because it was my impression that got me daydreaming about a new flavor combination or approach to an ingredient. Second, holy moly, are chef recipes usually a headache! For restaurant purposes, this makes a ton of sense (each element prepared separately before service so it can be assembled and cooked to order) but to cook like this at home — at dinnertime no less, when everyone is hungry — is madness and a short path to being so exhausted you might need a week of takeout to recover.
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permalink to roasted carrots with avocado and yogurt | 44 comments to date | see more: Avocado, Carrots, Photo, Vegetarian, Weeknight Favorite
May 12, 2016
confetti cookies
The rules of cookie math, whether or not you have underlings dictating them to you, are as follows:
Cookies with butter > cookies without butter
Cookies with vanilla bean > cookies with vanilla extract
Larger cookies > smaller cookies
Cookies with fewer words in the title > cookies with more (see: chocolate, butter, Oreos)
Cookies with rainbow sprinkles > cookies with chocolate sprinkles and also all other things, ever
A while back, I shared a picture of a sprinkle-covered leftover cookies from an Italian-American bakery — you know, the kind that seem to be permanently staged in every office kitchen, everywhere — on Instagram asking how people felt about them and received a yield of comments and fervor of opinion usually reserved for political websites. Here, at least, we had some consensus: they’re the best (sprinkles! nostalgia! coooookies!) but mostly the worst (artificially flavored, butter substitutes, gummy sprinkles, usually stale). The resolution was clear: make your own at home with real butter and even better vanilla.
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permalink to confetti cookies | 63 comments to date | see more: Cookie, Photo
May 9, 2016
crispy tortellini with peas and prosciutto
Several years ago, a harebrained idea to make a wedding cake for friends led to me sharing a picture of the cake layers stacked up in my freezer, ready for their big debut. You’d think people would comment on the cake, right? Nope. More like: “You have an empty freezer. You have an empty freezer. How?” “I didn’t know it was possible to empty a freezer.” And I was all “People have full freezers? We just use it for vodka and ice cube trays.” Oh Deb of 2008. Come see your circa-2016 freezer and witness the havoc 8 years and 2 kids have wreaked on it.
Vodka? Used it up to make vanilla extract. Ice cube tray? Currently empty as we use a bag we bought for a party and are too distracted to make more. The freezer these days is something you open an inch at a time, so no blocks of baby food, soup stock, ice packs, monkey-shaped ice packs for boo boos, teething rings, bread and boxed frozen things (fish sticks, mini pizza bagels, zucchini pancakes) for lunchboxes fall on your feet. Sure, there’s lovely stuff like a tray of mac-and-cheese and a chocolate babka, but the are in equal measure with potstickers and tortellini.
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permalink to crispy tortellini with peas and prosciutto | 33 comments to date | see more: Photo
May 3, 2016
failproof crêpes + a crêpe party
I know what most people think of crêpes — they’re difficult, they require planning ahead, they’re fussy (coughFrench), they rip easily, the first one always goes in the trash — but I respectfully disagree, especially about that last bit (it goes in the nearest mouth). In fact, I think think that a great big stack of crêpes and a few easy fixings are the best thing that can happen to brunch. Hear me out:
The batter takes 120 seconds to assemble (including the 30 to melt the butter in the microwave).
You can prepare the batter 1 hour or 4 days before you need it; it doesn’t mind rushing or neglect.
Cooked crêpes are basically magic — you can stack them hot or cold, they don’t stick to each other. It’s like some sort of pancake voodoo.
They reheat like a charm so don’t you dare spend the morning frying crêpes. Make them all the day before and be amazed that the difference once rewarmed is undetectable.
Some people like Nutella and berries with breakfast, other people like ham and cheese. Crêpes are the ideal foundation for both.
The vast majority of things that taste good on crêpes require little more prep than chopping, if that — fruit or jam, cheese, dollops of ricotta or yogurt or cured meats. These, too, are meant to be prepared ahead, if you like to sleep in on brunch mornings as much as me.
Think taco bars are fun? This is the fancy brunch equivalent. Until you can put sprinkles on tacos (I implore you: just say no), crêpes are going to win this round.
If you’re besieged by tearing, flimsy exasperating to make crêpes, I think you’re due for a new recipe. Like mine.
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permalink to failproof crêpes + a crêpe party | 27 comments to date | see more: Breakfast, Pancakes, Photo
April 29, 2016
palm springs date shake + monkey flip
It’s been two months since I told you I was California dreaming and I fear it hasn’t passed. I thought maybe I just longed for warmer weather, but spring has more or less arrived and I no less crave avocados that don’t require a week of hovering to capture their narrow window of edibility. I thought maybe I just needed a vacation, but we took a short one and I still found myself looking at photos from a certain large music festival in the Coachella Valley and thinking it looked kind of fun. (WHO AM I.) And last month, I went down a date shake rabbit hole and I haven’t come out since. At least these we can easily make at home.
Date palms were planted in the desert between Palm Springs and the Salton Sea as early at the 1890s, but they suffered a popularity problem — mostly people considered them obscure curiosities. As the old people say, necessity is the mother of invention, or in modern terms, all that was needed with the right marketing campaign, and Russ Nichol, a date farmer, landed on the perfect one in 1928, building a roadside shack making milkshakes and malts blended with his oversupply of dates. It wasn’t long before it became one of the iconic symbols of Palm Springs.
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permalink to palm springs date shake + monkey flip | 38 comments to date | see more: Dates, Ice Cream/Sorbet, Photo, Summer
April 27, 2016
shaved asparagus frittata
As a person who at least two to three nights a week doesn’t understand why we plan menus and grocery lists when we could just be eating an egg on toast, scrambled, crispy, poached or soft-cooked and smashed, I, too, would expect this site to have more frittata recipes than it does. (It has one. Sorry.) But I don’t make them much at all because they always feel like a lot of work for something that’s essentially a baked omelet with none of the 2-minute butter-drenched speed of a French one. (We’re also on an omelet kick.)
I blame the parcooked vegetables. Be they peas or broccolini, they almost always requiring trimming (i.e. knife and cutting board), a pot of boiling water, a colander to drain them and then usually an ice bath so they keep their perky green crunch, after which you get to drain them again. Oh and then you’ll probably want to dab them dry on paper towels and all of this is before you even add them to the egg mixture. Maybe you enjoy a ramp frittata? Me too, but they’re going to need to be sauteed for a bit before you add eggs. It’s not like making croissants or anything, but the tiny tasks add up to something that usually outmatches my 5:45pm motivation level.
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permalink to shaved asparagus frittata | 29 comments to date | see more: Asparagus, Breakfast, Eggs, Gluten-Free, Photo, Spring, Weeknight Favorite
April 19, 2016
perfect garlic bread
Does anyone really need a recipe for garlic bread? I mean, garlic + butter + bread = it’s impossible to imagine a bad outcome. And yet I do use one. I mean, prior to today it was in my head and did not include baguette weights because despite the impression this site might give you, I’m not that crazy upstairs. I use a recipe because like most people in the year 2016, I don’t take carb consumption lightly, and garlic bread is even more of a rare luxury. Because of this, if I’m going to make it I don’t want it to be almost right but could use a little more salt, or too much garlic and too little butter, and absolutely not pale and soggy or crouton-hard. I want each time I make it to be like the best time I ever had it, a beacon of bronzed edges, lightly drenched with garlic butter with a whiff of herbs and a kiss of salty heat.
I want this.
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permalink to perfect garlic bread | 36 comments to date | see more: Bread, Italian, Photo, Put An Egg On It, Quick, Vegetarian
April 12, 2016
sheet pan chicken tikka
In the game of weeknight cooking — which I feel, at best, is rigged and not in our favor especially if you (or you and your partner) are out working all day — our allies are as follows:
Children, should you have them, happy to eat dinner at 8/9 p.m. on a weekday. (Let me know where to find them.)
Prepping and planning meals over the weekend so everything is mostly ready to go when you get home from work. (Requires a desire to spend any part of the weekend prepping meals, which I, regrettably, do not.)
Mastering the slow-cooker, so your dinner is ready when you get home.
Mastering the pressure-cooker, so long cooking times can be reduced to smidgens.
Contentment with quick simple meals (scrambled egg toasts, frozen tortellini, sandwiches) and/or a deep arsenal of great recipes that come together quickly.
Meal delivery services, which take the recipe-selection, shopping and prep work out of cooking, making it go faster.
And so, with this, I am announcing that I’m leaving my job here at Smitten Kitchen LLC to go work for a meal delivery start-up. All the best food writers are doing it! I kid, I kid.
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permalink to sheet pan chicken tikka | 15 comments to date | see more: Cauliflower, Chicken, Indian, Photo, Potatoes, Weeknight Favorite
April 7, 2016
carrot tahini muffins
Do you think carrots get nervous around me? I managed to go a full two years after launching this site to bake with them the first time (classic cupcakes, not egregiously carrot-y) and from there, I haven’t stopped harassing them. They’re in salads with harissa and feta, and roasted with cumin in avocado salads, in savory Japanese fritters and in sweet American breakfast pancakes, in afternoon-ish cakes with apple cider and olive oil, and in celebration layer cakes with graham cracker crumbs and cream cheese frosting. They’re in miso-ginger dressing, and then a miso-ginger soup, and then in another soup-salad twinset with crispy chickpeas and tahini.
These last two are, of course, my favorites because I think carrots and tahini are exceptional together — it was just a matter of time before they collided again in muffin format. And isn’t it timely, too? Tahini, the Middle Eastern paste of ground sesame seeds that’s the “other” ingredient in hummus, baba ganoush, falafel and halva candy, despite having been around since at least the 13th century, is currently having a moment in the food world. These days, it’s the recipient a level of PR ardor previously reserved for kale, and has even launched an artisanal mill in Chelsea Market (that I’m bummed is never open when I do mad dashes through some mornings).
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permalink to carrot tahini muffins | 17 comments to date | see more: Breakfast, Carrots, Muffin/Quick Bread, Photo
April 4, 2016
potato pizza, even better
I have been holding out way too long on giving one of the great Roman pizzas, pizza con potate e rosmarino (which, like most things, sounds much sexier in Italian than the thudful translation of “potato pizza with rosemary”) the adoration-driven revisit it deserves on this site. I first talked about potato pizza here in 2008, but I never felt that the recipe did it justice. Jim Lahey, who had recently blown up everything we knew about making bread with his brilliant no-knead boule, was preparing to open a pizza place and had shared his potato pizza recipe with Martha Stewart, but I’d had trouble with it — the proportions seemed off (not enough potato, a persnickety dough), it was low on details I needed (like how big it was supposed to be), and it had pesky steps (like soaking the potatoes in several changes of ice water, so not fun if one lacks one of those fancy fridges with icemakers). But it wasn’t until went to Rome in 2013 that I realized exactly how far off it was from the ideal. (Don’t worry, Lahey is going to come rescue us in a bit.)
Roman pizza con patate is something else. A soft, almost goopy dough, is neither rolled or even tossed in the air like some sort of cartoon, but stretched, pressed, nudged and patted with oiled or floured fingertips translucently thin into a rimmed rectangular pan. Potatoes that have been soaked in salt water until they’re as floppy as deli slices are spread in many layers all the way to the edges, and even thicker there, as it will get darkest most quickly. From the oven, the crust is chewy and crisp and the most buried layers of potato become soft while the ones on top curl, brown and crisp like potato chips, and yes, that means you can tell everyone you’re eating potato chip pizza for dinner and watch the pangs of envy spread across their face.
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permalink to potato pizza, even better | 34 comments to date | see more: Photo, Pizza, Potatoes, Vegan, Vegetarian, Weeknight Favorite
