smitten kitchen

Last month, en route to a cousin’s baby shower in Connecticut, my mother, sister and I realized that we needed a new envelope for the card we’d brought and swung into a strip shopping mall which housed a crafts store. I ran in to buy one, and found myself smack dab in front of something so mind-blowingly awesome, it took me nearly a minute to remember to breathe: as if I couldn’t love her any more, Martha Stewart apparently has a line of crafts products, and people, if there are two things I’m powerless in the face of, it’s a rack that contains not one, not two, but eleven different types of crafts glue and their doyenne. That I walked out of the store that day with not a single MSC product is nothing but a testament to my refuse-to-overstuff-my-tiny-apartment willpower, but it’s been three weeks now, and still, almost every other worth that breathlessly escapes my lips sounds like MonkeyPartyinaBox! or PaperBagPuppetKit! I am nothing if not a sensible, level-headed individual.

Monday, the mailroom guy arrived at my desk with the Biggest Box in the Whole world, and people, it was from Martha Stewart Freaking Crafts Dot Com. I shit you not. I briefly worried that I had in fact lost what was left of my mind and ordered a Leaf Wood Stamp 1 whilst drunk or something. (Hey, some people drunk-dial exes, perhaps drunk-buying multi-colored Evening Terrace Decorative Adhesive could be my thing. Can you imagine what a riot it would be to tell this story at a party?) I mean, this really crossed my mind, and left me so panicked that I went to see if I had an account, or old emails confirming an order, but retrieved nothing. So I IM-ed Alex and confessed that I thought I might be placing orders on MarthaStewartCrafts.com in my sleep, and why couldn’t I just be a normal girl and sleep-shop for Manolos? And do you know what knee-weakening sweet nothing he whispered into my monitor? Do you?

“That’s box one of two.”

Hummuna. Did I score well or what?

I suspect you want to know what’s in this box, but I can’t tell you because I don’t know. My birthday, you see, is not until next week and frankly, the excitement of having this g’normous box in my cube–really, I’m like a one-year old, equally excited by a box and it’s contents–will definitely be able to hold me over until then. No peeking for you, either, okay? Until that time however, and because we’ve already dedicated this entry to how awesome my boy is, I have to tell you about this delicious we meal we cooked together last week.

It was a real team effort, and I dare say that it will inspire more going forward. The recipe comes by way of a New York Times Magazine article about artichokes by Sara Dickerman, and being equally huge fans of both the green globes as well as Sara’s column on Slate.com, I couldn’t wait to dive in.

If you can find those true baby artichokes (we’re talking 3″ or less in diameter), even better, as you can spare yourself the task of de-choking them, as there is nothing inedible inside.

The first time for either of us, we shucked fresh peas and favas which was pretty fun as far as prep work goes. They were stewed with baby artichokes, onion, pancetta and stirred with fresh mint and parsley in a Roman-style spring stew known as La Vignarola. Hefty and fresh, it was a stew like none I’ve eaten before and despite the loads of prep work–aided by good company and, of course, good wine–utterly worth it. I can’t wait to make it again next year.

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Sweet speckled sunshine, that was a good week. Never underestimate the power of blinding sun, square canvas umbrellas, swing barstools and ten thousand renditions of guantanamera to turn your mind back to tabula rasa. What did I do this week? Wish I could tell you, but every time I try to recall stretches of time, they skitter off like pieces of paper in a gusty breeze, just leaving me with small, unconnected bits, like the perfectly round, golf ball sized limes everywhere, sun so bright it demands your undivided attention, long piers that end in shade and a Havana-style eatery built from worn white wood, lounge chairs so comfortable, so well thought out you could lose a day–no a week–in one and not miss it at all. And so we did. And the only thing I cooked was grilled cheese sandwiches.

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Do you ever feel like a kitchen incompetent? That despite what seems like The Entire Rest of the World being able to cook something flawlessly, even going so far as to boast, “This is so EASY to make!” each and every time you try it, you fail? Believe me, it’s not just you.

Before this past weekend, nothing made me feel more unskilled and less deserving of your readership than gnocchi, which was a damned shame because it’s probably my favorite pasta in the entire world. After reading countless accounts by others about what a “cinch” gnocchi is to make and how you will “never buy it frozen again,” I tried to make it about a year ago and it was a complete and total disaster. I am not mincing words.

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Sometimes I’m worried that I might be boring you guys. Yes, yes, being plagued by feelings of dullness and inadequacy, how very… tired of me. But, let’s take some of the themes we have here; artichokes, beans, arugula, salad, bread and the most repetitive one of all: I ate something somewhere, and had to have it again ASAP so I tried to make it myself. Today, we’ve got all of them bundled into one. I try to say to myself, Deb, not everyone is infatuated by artichokes, arugula, beans and salads and every single way you can think of eating them either separately or together. I try to rationalize, although it’s not my strong suit. But then I imagine a world without people who get as excited as I do about artichokes! arugula! beans! and it makes me terrifically sad. Thus today I present to you: Artichoke, Cranberry Bean and Arugula Salad, or seriously the best thing I’ve gotten to eat twice in a week in way too long.

We went out to dinner at really-you-must-go-there Dressler in Williamsburg on Saturday night with our most newly-married friends. Alex and Steve had leaden cocktails and I, well you know, I did that thing you do with your married female friends where you make sure they’ve ordered something with alcohol? Or you’ll start with the irresponsible rumor-mongering? Oh, I know this because it happens to me like every freaking day and people, there is always wine in my hand. We’re all caught up now? Onwards, then.

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One thing I have heard a lot of since I launched this site but six months ago is “I just don’t know how you find all that time to cook.” And while my typical response is that “Oh, well I don’t have a life so that makes it really easy,” and I’m only a little bit joking — my office is 13 blocks from my apartment, I rarely work past 6:30 p.m., I tend to wake up hours before my husband on the weekends, eager to fiddle with recipes that would otherwise be too time-consuming, and I don’t have the energy or the liver to go out many nights a week anymore — the truth is that aside from making some fresh pasta with about two pounds of wild mushrooms two Sundays ago, I haven’t cooked dinner for us in weeks. And I hate it.

You know the song; gym, errands, dinners and drinks and too many nights of getting home with no energy or, frankly, ingredients to start anything but pasta with butter and garlic, delicious but probably not the best bang for your caloric buck. If you are what you eat, I should be about 50 percent steamed vegetable dumplings, 30 percent black bean soup, 10 percent tofu pad Thai and an equal part mushroom, leek and goat cheese crepe by now, and while all of these things are excellent examples of the range of auto-dial food available in my part of the island, it does not mean that they are met with any less groaning as we pour through white container after container, creating a hideous amount of both waste and food ennui. Sure, things do get prepared in the kitchen — a biga at 11 p.m. on a Saturday, a soda bread at 10 on a Thursday, a cake on a Saturday morning — but nothing before 9 p.m., or you know, pretty much the point-of-no-return to start home cooked weekday dinners.

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