smitten kitchen

It’s not exactly news that I have a soft spot for pretzels. I’ve made pretzels into rolls, soft pretzels for a Superbowl Party and once, in the words of Alex, intentionally ruined dinner so we’d have no choice but go to the neighborhood restaurant with some curious egg noodle dish with crushed pretzels on top.

I see pretzel cookies all of the time, but they’re usually just cut from pretzel-shaped cookie cutter, and not actually twisty and knotted, which I consider totally unacceptable. It’s like one of those things I saw Sandra Lee use the other day which cut her pie lid into the shape of a lattice, without actually weaving it. Meh, I say. That would totally ruin half my fun.

However, I’m also an obsessive comber of recipe reviews when they are available online, a favor sites that embrace them. It is rarely enough for me to know that a recipe should be good, or is from a well-respected chef, I need to see some people to write in and say “awesome as is!1!!” or “wouldn’t change a thing!” Bonus points for a “this impressed my mother-in-law who thinks I am a terrible cook!”

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It has been seven days since I told you about the fennel ice cream I made last week, and indicated that I would be telling you about what I was going to pair it with (actually, I said “pear” it with, because I can never resist the opportunity to make people roll their eyes) within a day or two. And it’s been a week! My nerviness knows no bounds! How do you put up with this teasing? Will there be mutiny on the smittenkitchen bounty?

It’s probably not going to help when I tell you the following:

Vanilla
Brown Butter
Pear
Crisp

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Seeing as I complain mercilessly when I am convinced that I am not now nor will ever be skilled at making tart dough that doesn’t shrink or, as I say, “gives me noise,” it seems only fair that I tell you of the really-not-newsworthy–but still very exciting to me, and hopefully therefore you too–breakthrough I had with my pastry crust on Thanksgiving. Yes, the one three weeks ago. What? I don’t like to be rushed.

Little did I know that the road to shrink-free, or practically shrink-retardant crusts would be such a painless one. Even worse, I already knew about this technique, having seen it on Baking With Julia on PBS a while back, but had tucked this information in some inaccessible pocket of my brain, probably the part that knows which super-urgent errand I was supposed to run last night that slipped my mind. It always remembers the exchange to use if you’re out of buttermilk, cake flour or baking powder; also: birthdays. It doesn’t digress mid-paragraph.

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When I brought you rugelach pinwheels last week, I told the story of watching women make this on the Martha Stewart Show and grumbling to myself about why they felt the need to change a cookie that was just perfect from the outset. Why fix what wasn’t broken?

Of course, in the end, the recipe yields the most delicious rugelach in the whole world–even if not better than the original, well-deserving of a heroic place aside them in your repertoire. But, I still stick to my original schtick, which is that if you have a recipe that works splendidly each time, there is no reason to change it.

Why repeat this today? Because I did it–yes, again. Along with a few more recipes from last Saturday’s Hanukah luncheon I hope to work my way through this week, I of course made a batch of latkes. Yet for some harebrained reason I chose to use a new recipe, and not one of the two I made last year that were flawless in every way. They ended up undercooked, then overcooked in the when I decided to finish them in the oven and though not a single person complained, I seriously need to work on practicing what I preach.

Maybe next year I’ll learn.

Happy Hanukah to those who celebrate it! May you eat many delicious latkes, even if you do not.

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When I made my version of baked ratatouille back in July, I had intended to follow up with suggestions of other things you could do with leftovers, or leftover ingredients, as I always have leftover components but have not yet found a store that will sell me two-thirds of one zucchini and a half an eggplant. I really hate having a quarter eggplant leftover, because I’m very unlikely to use it and incapable of throwing it away, so what usually happens is I stash it in the fridge where it gets forgotten about, rots, is found a month later as when I scream in horror and throw it away afterall, having flashbacks to that time I lived with three friends and we were cleaning out the fridge and found something completely awful way in the back and Dave said “sorry, that was my kiwi” and I was like, “uh, that’s a lemon.”

I digress. Here are some of the other ways we have used elements of this non-traditional “ratatouille”:

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