Deb Perelman's Blog, page 5
April 24, 2024
steamed artichokes
Artichokes are my favorite vegetable. My favorite way to eat them is the way I have my whole life: cooked whole, each leaf dipped in a sharp lemony sauce until you get to the heart, whose choke you free with a butter knife then schmear with the sauce like you’re thickly buttering a piece of bread, and eat it while holding the stem like a lollipop, your eyes closed as you absorb the heady bliss of it all. Clearly, it means a lot to me but I’m not sharing a recipe with three words: Just boil them. A few years ago I started steaming artichokes instead of boiling them and found I preferred it — less wet, and seemingly more evenly cooked. But it still didn’t warrant mention here, though, too simple.
April 12, 2024
spinach and artichoke pan pizza
Over the pandemic, I quietly broke up with every pizza dough recipe I’ve shared to date. I know I have some nerve only telling you this now. The family wanted pizza for dinner weekly, and I was overdue for a homemade pizza reckoning. Why? Because after years of trying to get my home oven even half as hot as the ones at pizzerias that crank out gloriously blistered and glistening pies, and too often ending up with disappointing textures, I finally realized I was chasing the wrong pizza dream. Instead of fighting an uphill battle, I replaced my usual pizza dough with a no-knead focaccia-ish dough that bakes up beautifully in a regular oven, perfectly every single time.
April 3, 2024
new york crumb cake
Hasn’t it always been too long since your last slice of profoundly perfect crumb cake? You know, the kind that’s a hefty square with at least as much height from big brown sugar and cinnamon crumbs as from a golden, buttery, sour cream-enriched and vanilla-scented cake? Yes, me too. I didn’t expect to be back here so soon, though. I truly believed I’d finished my Crumb Cake Degree in 2021 with the still-perfect-in-every-way Big Apple Crumb Cake. But sometimes, perfection is a process.
March 13, 2024
turkey meatloaf for skeptics
Meatloaf has a PR problem. It took me a while to come around to it; I didn’t grow up eating it, and certainly nothing about the name — a loaf, a loaf of meat — convinced me I was missing a thing. But, slowly, I have tiptoed into the light, and now I get it. It’s not cute, but it’s objectively delicious. Imagine if we only ate things that were camera-ready — it would be a world without gravy, mushroom soup, and lopsided made-with-love frosted cakes. We absolutely must not stand for that.
March 2, 2024
weeknight tomato soup
While this is not the Smitten Kitchen’s only tomato soup — there’s one with roasted summer tomatoes capped with an open-faced grilled cheese sandwich in the archives, and further back, a classic cream of tomato soup adapted from Cook’s Illustrated — neither are this: a seasonless tomato soup I can make on any rainy day, along with the nonnegotaible grilled cheese sandwiches, in under an hour. Both of the archived recipes have their charms; the first is great when tomatoes are at their peak. The second is excellent but fussy, more ideal for when you’ve got the time or patience to show off. But this has eclipsed both in the rotation for the last couple winters, and a few things make it perfect for us:
February 13, 2024
chocolate raspberry pavlova stack
It’s been way too long since we had a showstopper of a dessert. When I look over the last four years of archives, it seems that practical, slightly boring and grownup things like salad and dinner have nudged out cooking purely for the purpose of generating and distributing decadent joy. The Celebration Cake category looks like the land that time forgot. And so on this very snowy/slushy day, and the day before Valentine’s, no less, I’d like to recommend: Not a weeknight dinner.
Here is a three-tiered chocolate pavlova, a crackly-edged, pillowy-centered meringue, with a few messy, wonderful things between and on top of it: raspberry curd, barely sweetened whipped cream, a drizzle of chocolate ganache, fresh raspberries, and a dusting of snow, almost as pretty as what’s out my window right now. There are corners you can cut if you wish: you could use a drizzle of storebought chocolate sauce, you could make a quicker raspberry dessert sauce instead of making the curd, but as the curd uses 6 egg yolks and the pavlova uses 6 whites, you might find the balance of ingredients when you make both as satisfying as I do. You could also revert to the single-layer chocolate pavlova in the archives, should you need less of everything.
February 2, 2024
crispy potatoes with mushrooms
I like to think that I made a smashing impression on my Russian in-laws when I met them — at the time, I didn’t eat meat or, more importantly, smoked fish. I remain staunch in my dislike of beets. And shortly after we got married I started talking about quitting my day job to… blog full time. But I took a liking to pickles immediately. I make a pretty solid eggplant caviar, because I learned from the best. I’ve since figured out Honey Cake and Russian Napoleon. And although the vegetarian options were limited at the time when we first met at the Russian Vodka Room, I quickly discovered my favorite Russian comfort food, fried potatoes and mushrooms (kartoshka s’gribami).
January 12, 2024
french onion baked lentils and farro
This is clearly not a pasta bake, but it was supposed to be one. From November to December, I was pursued with a vision of an oozy, decadent french onion pasta bake — that is, the flavors of french onion soup applied to baked pasta with a bronzed and broiled gruyere topping. What was not to love? How could it not be delicious? But it was never right. I made it a few times and I never wanted to eat it. It was too rich and didn’t have enough to bite into, even by the intended standard of holiday indulgence. In the last round, I added cauliflower to it so it felt like more of a pasta-and-vegetable bake and I liked it even less (damp? somehow).
December 20, 2023
rolled spinach omelet
A frequently asked question I get about *all of this* (waves hands in the general direction of the internet/air) is where I get my inspiration from. And almost without fail, I will say “not here.” No offense to this space we’ve created, but inspiration hits when I’m not pressed to find it, like when I’m on a bus or in a cab, looking out the window, or traveling — in this case, in DC a few months ago. I was there for the wedding of an old college friend (hi Aaron!) and another friend (hi different Aaron!) had a brunch at her house the next morning to celebrate and the unbelievable spread in her gorgeous house included not one but two rolled omelets and I was riveted. “WHAT IS THIS!” and she said, “This old thing? It’s so easy! I’ve been making it forever!” and I was like, “No. Tell me everything.”
It turns out it comes from an April 2009 Everyday Food magazine, a shuttered Martha Stewart publication that was wonderful in every way. The focus was on weekday cooking for regular people with busy lives but the food was special. It was eventually folded into Living magazine and (I think) has dissipated* from there. This omelet perfectly exemplifies what everyday but special can look like because the ingredients are simple (frozen spinach, cheddar, eggs, milk), the process is quick (hand-whisked, bakes in under 15 minutes), but the presentation is gorgeous enough for the fanciest holiday brunch spread.
December 12, 2023
brown butter brown sugar shortbread
Fifteen Decembers ago, I shared a recipe for one of the delicious cookies I’d ever made or eaten: brown butter brown sugar shorties. I told you that because they were impossibly flavorful (nutty brown butter, brown sugar, vanilla, you’re welcome) but not terribly cute (beige, sprinkle-free) you should feel free to keep them home from parties where their feelings could be hurt as they were ignored in favor of the frosted, baubled, and brightly colored popular kids. They’re too good to share, anyway.
But the recipe turned out to fail one crucial test: It doesn’t work for everyone. The problem is the brown butter. All butter has some water content; when we brown it, the water content evaporates off and the amount of butterfat and milk solids left behind is variable. When you’re making salted brown butter crispy treats or a wedding cake with brown butter vanilla cake layers, it doesn’t matter: these recipes are forgiving. When you make a shaped cookie, like a slice-and-bake or cookie cutter shape that has to be consistent for everyone, it does. There were so many comments about the cookies turning into a crumbly mess that I had to add a note of caution, warning you to proceed only with modest expectations.
