smitten kitchen

It’s a fun, fun day at Smitten Kitchen–did you know that? Today I am presenting you with not just one new recipe but FOUR. Four recipes! Someone is trying to be the valedictorian of food blogging NaBloPoMo, huh? Valedictorian, medalist and also winner, mind you.

Funny story about that, actually.

Mom: So, what is this nablop thing? Is it a contest?
Me: NaBloPoMo? Oh, it’s just a Thing, mom.
Mom: A thing that you win?
Me: No, a thing that you do. To do. Because the other kids are doing it.
Mom: But why?
Me (totally irked because I am realizing I don’t get it either): It’s obviously too complicated to explain.

Right, so the four recipes! One catch: none of them are here.

The first three are in my most recent Kitchen Window column on NPR all about one of my favorite topics: dumplings. Yes, my dumpling obsession has actually outgrown this site, and it’s gotten so costly that I had to offshore it to India. Also Korea and Italy. Hm, I suspect that this joke is only funny to me. Nevertheless, over at NPR I talk about dumplings of the world, and include recipes for spicy lentil-potato samosas that can be baked or fried, beef-tofu mandu and spinach-ricotta agnolotti. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

The fourth recipe–my mother’s sour cream cinnamon chocolate chip coffee cake–may be familiar to some of you who have been around for a while, but today it is in the Boston Globe, a sidebar to an article about, well, this site and little old me. Thanks be to Jonathan Levitt for making me sound coherent.

And just to keep you at the edge of your seat (my sense of self-importance is staggering, no?), tomorrow I’ll tell you about one of my favorite recipes from this batch, the one that didn’t make the cut. So you come back now, you hear?

Elsewhere:

• Beyond Potstickers: Professions of a Dumpling Lover

• Big Tastes from a Tiny Kitchen,
  Chocolate-Chip Sour Cream Coffee Cake

One year ago: Ganached Guinness Goodness

I know this sounds like the tiniest of triumphs in a world of people who have respectable accomplishments to be proud of, but nonetheless, it brings me great pleasure to announce that I have found a pumpkin soup that meets my approval.

Yes, I know, who talks about pumpkin soup in November? It seems like strictly an October affair. Pumpkins crowd the markets, and the people gather round with an evil glint in their eyes, eager to carve them up and roast their innards, mwa-ha-ha. You can barely turn your head without finding another half dozen pumpkin recipes, and oh, I know, I’ve spread my share around.

Alex and I bought three smallish pumpkins to carve this year, but the weeks leading up to Halloween were chaotic and we never got to them. Feeling guilty that they were about to go to waste, I roasted and pureed one and a half of them (and stupidly deleted the pictures before, uh, downloading them from the camera), before deciding it was an absolutely excessive amount of work and entirely not worth it. I hear everyone goes through this same process once in their lives.

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Apples at their simplest can be their very finest. Sure, I love an oozy, heavily spiced and lidded apple pie, but I also think there is something matchless about apples, butter and sugar, baked until bubbly. This classic apple tart is from Alice Waters, but she says that it was actually Jacques Pepin who created it at Chez Panisse more than 20 years ago. I can see why they’ve never gotten tired of it.

You start by making a very simple pate brisee, yes, that kind, but this one doesn’t demand precision. You’re going to want to roll it out really, really thin. Now, the original recipe suggested that you use a tart pan, but I think you can skip it, and go galette-style.

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Short and sweet tonight because someone (aheeeem) already forgot that she had something she was supposed to be doing every day in November!

I hope you don’t only allow yourself to eat stuffing on Thanksgiving. I mean, why is it that something so delicious, so universally adored (as least in our families) is limited to just one day a year? We don’t only eat apple pie once a year, perishthethought.

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You know how you know it’s November? I actually made breakfast this morning. I’m sorry if that shattered your pristine image of me. Sure, I occasionally cook big, elaborate brunches for friends or family and I even spoil myself from time to time with yogurt with pumpkin butter and pepita granola, but pretty consistently, Saturday and Sunday morning I chew on my fingernails until Alex wakes up, or sometimes, if I’m really hungry and he’s still sleeping (the boy is a sleep MACHINE) I’ll sit next to him on the bed and stare until he wakes up and brings us either bagels from Murray’s or eggs from the diner. Yes, you heard that right. I get a fried egg and toast take out. Yes, I am ashamed to know myself sometimes, too.

Nonetheless, as it appears that despite my caveats this NaBloPoMo thing is on, I figure that if nothing else I can use it to clean out the refrigerator. Have you ever bought something but forgotten to eat it then found six weeks later that it was in the very back of the refrigerator, still in perfect condition? Did it make you feel wildly uncomfortable about the preservatives that must be in your food? Did you get over it and eat it anyway? Well, I did. I found some little green apples in the produce drawer this morning that Alex, despite loving green apples, had been staunchly avoiding because they had actually ripened (true story: the boy doesn’t like ripe fruit), and then there was some leftover ricotta from a dish we’ll get to next week and a lemon that really had better days, but wouldn’t my grandmothers be proud that I hadn’t wasted food?

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