smitten kitchen » Breakfast

apple cider doughnuts

deb — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:35:29 +0000

I have never met a variety of deep-fried dough I didn’t like. Yet, given that most doughy fried items out there are rather mediocre* — say, the chain donut shop steps from my apartment — I don’t find myself indulging this habit as often as I’d like. The exception to this rule is apple cider doughnuts, which I am absolutely weak in the face of. Despite the fact that even the loveliest looking ones at the farm stands tend to disappoint, I eat them anyway. Because it’s fall and crunching through ochre-tinted leaves, wrapping your fingers around a paper cup of mulled cider and eating even lackluster apple cider doughnuts is the right and proper thing to do.

Or it was. Although I am sure my timing couldn’t have been worse — you know, with a four week old to take care of, no biggie — I got a hankering something fierce last week for the kind of apple cider doughnut I almost never find around here — save this piping hot and off-the-chart perfect ones Alex and I shared at Hearth this past Valentines Day. When I realized that recipe was readily available on the Web, it was a short and slippery path to posing my infant son to a 3-pound tub of trans fats… er, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

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jalapeño-cheddar scones

deb — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:41:15 +0000

I wore heels to the hospital when I showed up for my induction four weeks ago. Heels. And a sundress. Oh, and my mother and I decided to walk there from the doctor’s office, since it was such a nice day (we only made it ten blocks, but still). Heels. Sundress. A stroll on a lovely September day. I say this not to point out how ridiculous I can be — because really, I believe it points itself out — but to outline this thing I do where I get an absurdly ambitious ideal in my head and spend the rest of my time trying to close the gap between the dream and my reality.

Hm, perhaps that didn’t make much sense. Let me put it in food terms. Before I had the baby, I attempted to spend some time baking and stashing, no, not practical things like meals to save us from an endless rotation of diner eggs and takeout pad thai, oh please no. I made things like treats to woo extra-awesome care from labor and delivery nurses and granola bars that our families in the waiting room might enjoy and some date cake we could all enjoy with some fresh baby and coffee the next day. Like I said, absurd. I also imagined that we’d have an influx of visitors in the weeks after we took Jacob home, and realizing I’d have no time to put out my usual spread, decided to ambitiously bake some things we could set out as needed … like banana bread. And lemon cake. And scones. Except I only got to the scones. At least I picked good ones.

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breakfast apple granola crisp

deb — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:57:12 +0000

As excited as I am to be — slowly, tentatively — back in the kitchen, I seem to be stuck at the beginning, or at least the beginning of the day. I’m fixated on granola and eggy things, breakfast-y quick breads and this thing I made for the sole purpose of eating with my morning yogurt, and I suspect it has everything to do with us feeling almost constantly like we’ve just woken up. And too early, sigh.

Fortunately, the cause is really cute and so we’ve decided to keep him, even if he at the advanced age of three and a half weeks has decided he no longer wants to sleep in those four-hour stretches he had teased us with in his misspent youth. However, I am stubborn and refuse to complain about the sleeplessness because there is nothing more predictable than new parents complaining about sleeplessness, and I hate being predictable. Instead, I have decided to embrace it, thus if I constantly feel like it is breakfast and I need a cup of coffee, then well, breakfast and a cup of coffee we will have.

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granola bars

deb — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:24:48 +0000

Some of you have asked me to share what kind of cooking I’ve been doing to stash in the freezer and hopefully tide us over for the coming storm (T-minus 22 days, not that anyone is counting). I know it’s common, in a fit of impatient nesting, for soon-to-be mamas to tuck away pans of enchiladas and lasagnas and meatballs and other hearty, freezable fare so that they don’t starve in those early weeks when the baby demands constant surveillance (okay, cooing), but despite understanding the logic behind this, I should confess: I’m prepping nothing.

At least one of the reasons I’ve decided to ignore sound advice to cook and stash while I can is that food could not be easier to come by around here. Hummus platter with fava bean stews, pirogis and borscht and/or Tom Collichio-crafted sandwiches arrive so quickly after you call, we’ve become convinced that they’re actually preparing in our building’s basement and you don’t even want to know how many Thai and sushi restaurants there are per block around here (at least two). Plus, both of our families live within an hour of the city and (Hi Mom! Hi Alex’s Mom!) our moms are not only good cooks, but have vowed to keep us from starving. Wasn’t that sweet of them?

... Read the rest of granola bars on smittenkitchen.com

ranch rugelach

deb — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:29:38 +0000

We just can’t stop with the buns in the ovens over here, people.

After a long day of demonstrations at the Lodge, Ree and I decided to take it extra easy last Sunday. Or at least, I did, but when I find out what Ree puts in her coffee that gives her so much energy, I promise, you’ll hear it here first. Ree showed up in the early afternoon with a batch of her cinnamon roll dough, rising, and gave me a challenge: “I want you to put your own Smitten Kitchen spin on my recipe,” she said.

I protested. “Nooo! Please don’t make me!” You see, I firmly believe that things that are not broken (and oh, The Pioneer Woman’s Cinnamon Rolls are anything but broken, a conclusion I came to after… let’s just say many “tastings”; ranch life is indeed hard.) should not be “fixed”. Nothing good could come of this. I’d make something that I am would be edible and possibly even tasty, but would anyone choose it over classic cinnamon buns? Oh, heck no. Even I wouldn’t.

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cinnamon swirl buns + so much news

deb — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:30:46 +0000

Friends, we have so much catching up to do. I promised before I went to the Bahamas that when I got back, I’d have some cool stuff to share, but somehow it is over four weeks later and we are really overdue for a pow-wow. Plus, it’s Tax Day and I’ve been moping around all week with my pockets inside out since I was presented with a bill with an impossible number of zeros after it, and hey, wouldn’t we all rather focus on the cheerful stuff? Of course. So without further ado:

The Smitten Kitchen is moving: Well, not urls, thank god (though in a fit of obsessiveness last week, I decided at once to go on a domain shopping spree and you can now get here via smittenkitchen.org, smittenkitchen.biz, smittenkitchen.info or smittenkitchen.net. Wish I could go on normal people shopping sprees, like for shoes.). But as I have alluded to — namely through griping about the packing and the sorting and the boxes, and lord, the boxes — we’ve found a new apartment and we’re moving this weekend. And we can’t wait. I lived in the East Village when I first moved to NYC in 2000, and am thrilled to have found an excuse to move back. Perhaps I’ll even check out this “Trader Joes” you kids are always going on about!

But who cares about the neighborhood? Let’s get down to the brass tacks. That sound you hear? It’s the sky opening up and the angels singing in the new smitten kitchen, as there is a large white machine whose sole purpose is to wash dishes for us. I can barely handle all of this excitement at once. Alex, who we all know deals with the brunt of the dishes here, is already wondering whether we can just pack up this week’s dirty dishes and just wash ‘em when we arrive this weekend. The jury is still out on that one.

... Read the rest of cinnamon swirl buns + so much news on smittenkitchen.com

migas with tomato-chipotle coulis

deb — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:26:40 +0000

One of the chefs I was most excited to meet at last week’s Bahamas-fest was Sue Torres, the talent behind two of my favorite places to eat in my neighborhood, Rocking Horse (she’s no longer there, but was the one who put their stepped-up Mexican menu on the map) and Sueños (her current, inordinately delicious hidden-away new-Mexican restaurant, replete with a designated tortilla cook). Sure enough, her demo was totally packed and I have her mussel recipe still waiting for me to give it a spin at home, however, when I got home from a week of pork belly and fois gras and four to seven course meals, what I really wanted was something simple.

So I hunted around and hunted around — look, I don’t even want to admit how long I did. I seem to be going through a phase of more extreme than usual pickiness coupled with laziness so basically I was looking for a dinner that took 20 minutes or less to cook and was made of magic — and le voila, Torres’ migas recipe crossed my browser and dinner was, at once, decided.

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meyer lemon and fresh cranberry scones

deb — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:58:01 +0000

The fresh cranberry gets no love. I can’t tell you how many recipes I have sifted through recently that boasted cranberry in their titles only to find out that they were actually calling for those shriveled and over-sweetened dried ones. Why must fresh cranberries be “the neglected stepchild of the season“? It is totally undeserved.

Fresh cranberries are prettier. They’re impressively hardy, keeping for weeks in the fridge and even longer in the freezer with no noticeable aging. And even though I think this is what puts people off, they have a tartness that makes everything they touch better. Because when you put something tart against something sweet, you get a fantastic contrast and this complexity, my friends, is a very good thing.

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olive oil muffins

deb — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 04:58:19 +0000

You all have no idea how close I was to dropping this charade of daily posting each November tonight. Because I was over it? Sadly, not close. (I’m apparently a glutton for punishment.) No, it was because I just plain forgot. Some friends came over for dinner (fantastic dinner, mind you, just you wait until I get those pictures off the camera!) and it got late and tired and whoops!

That pretty much brings us up to now, and some muffins I made a couple weeks back. They’re from Giada DeLaurentis’s old show (the one where her cooking was “Italian” and not simply “Italian influenced”) and the moment I saw them, I knew I had to try them. Not very different from a standard muffin, the cool part is the oil is olive and not something neutral. I dug that she didn’t try to hide its flavor, and I really enjoyed the balsamic pick-me-up.

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apple pancakes

deb — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:27:47 +0000

Am I glad I spilled out my frying pan angst to you all yesterday or what? This morning (and by “morning” I think we all understand that it was 1 p.m., right?), when faced with the task of an apple pancake recipe I’ve been wanting to make for eons, the thought using that stainless steel pan was enough to make me skip it.

But since two hundred and thirty two of you (approximating, you see) suggested I get back in with cast iron, I decided to give it another shot. I’ve had a big (and omg, so heavy!) 12-inch cast iron pan for years. It was a whopping $18 and I hear, supposed to be the best investment I’ve ever made. But despite my repeated no-soap, re-reseasoning and tomato-avoiding efforts, the seasoning had never gotten to that “nonstick-like” place. Or so I thought! This morning, I heaved that thing up onto the stove for the pancakes, warned Alex that this might be “bagel run” kind of morning in the end, after all, and got to frying those babies up.

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