smitten kitchen

I know, chickpea salad? What a letdown, right? Well, what can I say except that there is simply no way to chase cookies with bits of tangy toffee and bitterish walnuts in a cookie that is pure brownie awesomeness in the middle, replete with the shiny crackled lid…

I’m sorry. I just had to get one more. I can stop anytime. (Also, we’ll be out soon, anyway.)

But there must still be a place in our hearts and gullets for chickpea salads, lest I wish to be a story on evening network news about the crane that had to come and extract me from our walk-up when Alex could no longer roll me down the stairs. And this one–yet another great find from Deborah Madison–is no bad place to start: fresh roasted pepper strips, capers, a little mint and a little garlic, it was just another salad in a spread that has turned out to be one of my favorite thrown-together dinner parties in ages. Almost everything made in advance, I actually got to (get this) sit down and hang out with my friends! Revolutionary, I tell you.

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“No kitty, that’s my pot pie!”

People, if I were savvy enough to know how to insert a voice recording of Alex doing his Cartman voice, or savvy enough to convince him to let me record it in the first place, I think we could safely say that Alex could quit his day job (hey, it’s all the rage). His impression is impeccable.

I got to hear it at least six times this week, which alone was enough reason for making Ina Garten’s Un-freaking-believable Chicken Pot Pies for dinner last night. I don’t think calling this recipe a “hit” even halfway does it justice. They are fantastic, transcendent. Lumped in a toasty category with Chicken and Dumplings, they were so good that I almost wished it was 20 degrees colder–an absolute sacrilege in a place that has the nerve to stay winter-like through May–when this recipe will be no doubt dusted off again.

And again.

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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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I cannot resist buying pomegranates. When they start start popping up in stores each year, I have to take them home with me and either beg Alex to take them apart in his neat or organized way (show off), or do it myself and splatter the walls and my shirt and stain my fingertips a telltale pink for days (typical). It’s all worth it. They are this seafood-phobic’s caviar.

But aside from, well, you know, eating them straight, which is nothing to complain about, I rarely know what to DO with them. What does one make with pomegranates? Oh, I am sure all of you creative people have 100 ideas. You make pomegranate upside down cakes and delicate custards with whole seeds suspended in them. You freeze them into bubbly sorbets. But me, I just have this salad.

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