smitten kitchen » Vegetarian

creamed spinach

deb — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:26:48 +0000

I started fixin’ for some creamed spinach when I was pregnant — yes, they aren’t kidding about those iron cravings — but I never got to making it this summer. Because I didn’t have… time. Now, just pause for a second while I reach through this computer to throttle my summer self for thinking she knew what not having time was all about.

Then I had a baby and I was still craving creamed spinach but, you know, then I had a baby and really didn’t have time. And a week passed and then a month and a second month after that and on the very first day of his third month of life I was still drooling over an imaginary bowl of creamed spinach and decided enough was enough.

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swiss chard and sweet potato gratin

deb — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:08:23 +0000

Surely I’m not alone in this: When I’m eating starchy foods, I think I should be eating more greens. When I’m eating my greens, I wish I had heavier foods to balance them. And pretty much all of the time, I wonder why it has been so long since I made macaroni and cheese.

And this is what happens when I stewed all of these thoughts together in my head over countless feedings. I love sweet potatoes but I find most preparations of them too heavy and sweet (which is why I stick to spicing, curry-ing and/or spicing, curry-ing and frittering them); I love chard but I find most preparations of it too earnest but when I put these together in a gratin I ended up with the most bubbling, gurgling, cooing delight of a fall comfort there could be.

(Or maybe I’m just talking about the baby.)

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moroccan-spiced spaghetti squash

deb — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:36:19 +0000

I keep promising you all some quick, easy recipes but sharing instead a mousse that requires at least five bowls and an electric mixer that must be washed down no less than three times, a quiche that has at least three different components, cauliflower that demands you cook each ingredient separately and a from-scratch doughnut recipe that entails reducing, rolling, freezing, frying and dipping. I have no doubt that you’re standing out there in front of your monitor, hands on hips, demanding answers. Except I don’t have any logic or rationale that will explain I choose to use my limited free minutes of time to make elaborate recipes and not, say, dinner, I only have this one peace offering today.

There’s a caveat, however. This is a ridiculously quick recipe if you have a microwave. We used to but don’t any longer so it still took over an hour, but it’s an hour that requires only a few minutes of hands-on time. Still, it is my favorite preparation of spaghetti squash, not only because it is delicious but because it approaches winter squash in my favorite way: by waking it up. I’ve never had a taste for squash recipes with cream or sugar or piles of cinnamon; I think the natural sweetness of squash is best contrasted with bolder ingredients, like garlic and tahini, jalapenos, olives and preserved lemons, chile-lime vinagrettes, hearty beans and ham or cayenne-dusted caramelized onions. I think you get the picture.

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cauliflower with almonds, raisins and capers

deb — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:18:23 +0000

Look, I know what most of you out there: “How on earth is she cooking with a newborn to take care of?” and that, quite possibly, one of two scenarios might be going through your head. One is that I am SuperDeb, a mutant human with cooking, sleep-deprivation-handling and time management superpowers, sweeping around my tiny apartment and even tinier kitchen in my Smitten Kitchen cape, trying to make all the other barely-holding-it-together new mamas look bad. Another scenario would be closer to something that you’d hear about on the evening network news scare report: Maybe Deb is a Bad Mother! Maybe little Jacob is crying and neglected while his mother selfishly pursues her cooking interests! You can practically hear viewers clucking their tongues in dismay for miles.

The truth, as is so often the case, is much more melodrama-free, I hope you’ll be relieved for me to admit. The truth is that I’ve had a ton of help, namely in the form of Jacob’s papa, who was not only granted two weeks mpaternity leave, but his kind bosses let him work from home for another two, amounting to a whole month of round-the-clock assistance. That all came to a screeching halt this week when Alex returned to his office and I was left, for the first time ever, in the solo care of my own child. Needless to say, this week has been a leetle bit different in terms of idle time in the kitchen.

... Read the rest of cauliflower with almonds, raisins and capers on smittenkitchen.com

roasted tomatoes and cipollini

deb — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:02:01 +0000

You were so enthusiastic when I recently told you about that cubed, hacked caprese I throw together a lot in the summer, I am clearly overdue to tell you about one of my other, favorite “tossed together” meals. Except that while I really like that caprese salad, this roasted tomato and cippoline dish is something of a religion to me: my obsession with it borders on fervor. I don’t understand why I can’t run off with it.

Though the players may seem familiar — there go those white beans and peak-season tomatoes again! — after “roasting the hell out of them” (the directions I usually give friends when they ask how I made them), they become something else entirely. Sometime so delicious, tears well up in my eyes remembering the last time we got to eat this. Like I said, I get a little carried away.

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tomato and corn pie

deb — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:35:58 +0000

Let me tell you about something that always happens, and it’s the best thing, ever: A month or so ago, a reader emailed me and asked me if I’d ever tried a tomato pie. No, not the Italian-American tomato pie seen in New York and New Jersey — a thick, bready pizza dough slathered with sauce and broiled with Romano cheese on top then served in squares — but a Southern thing, baked in a pie shell. Where I’m from, “tomato pie” is the Italian-ish thing I’ve described it above, thus I responded that I’ve never heard of it before and added “but mark my words, not two days after I send off this email, I will have heard about it three times.”

Sure enough, tomato pie is everywhere this summer. I’ve seen a version from Paula Deen, Elise has a version up at Simply Recipes and my good old August Gourmet magazine — as packed with an impossible level of late-summer inspiration — adapts Laurie Colwin’s (remember her? We love her.) and James Beard’s (remember him? We love him.) nearly 20 year old version to include market-fresh corn, and updating the crust with a biscuit-like dough.

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grilled eggplant and olive pizza

deb — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:59:02 +0000

A few months ago, a friend called to say that she was telling her office mates about how I love to grill pizza and they set to searching for my recipe on this site and couldn’t find it. Gulp, I said, I’ve just never written it up! From that day forward, I made it my Summer Priority to walk you through pizza on the grill, but I have failed at each turn. Either we’ve made the pizza too late in the evening and the pictures came out anything but appetizing, or the day I decided to try again, it has rained. Seriously. If you want thunderstorms to suddenly threaten, let me promise to make you grilled pizza for dinner.

Last night was the final straw, or the day I finally threw my hands in the air and declared that a proper introduction to grilled pizza will probably have to wait until next summer. (Fortunately, Jen and Dietsch at Last Night’s Dinner won’t make you wait that long.) I have had this grilled eggplant and olive pizza on the agenda even since I spied it in this month’s Gourmet and knew that it immediately needed to get in my belly. Four days later (a typical time lag these days from “idea” to “execution”, sadly) I had the ingredients amassed, the energy to give it a try and even a friend’s yard to grill in, thus of course, the weather went downhill. But I persevered, climbing into the far reaches of our linen closet where we stash kitchen stuff that doesn’t get much use (whispering hello to my 12-inch wedding cake pans and canneler molds), unearthing my cast iron panini pan (hey, close enough, right?) and setting to grill to my heart’s content, weather be damned.

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spanakopita triangles + then some

deb — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:43:24 +0000

Apparently, making marshmallows at home isn’t as “normal” as I would have thought, but then again, I am the last person one should be using a yardstick of kitchen normality, or not as long as I am pickling grapes or making wedding cakes with a mini-oven and a single, eensy counter.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that my brand of crazy will match yours, however. I mean, someone actually asked if was going to make my own phyllo next. Are they mad? I hate working with phyllo. Who invented this stuff? It’s fragile and fussy and requires a ludicrous amount of manual labor, and then it leaves papery flakes of pastry everywhere, but mostly on this abdomen shelf I’m growing (sorry, kid. One day you’ll be more than just a crumb catcher! Just not today.)

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simple potato gratin

deb — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:52:30 +0000

I think that gratins get a bad rap. I mean, if you’re ordering them in restaurants, swimming in layers of triple creams and crusted with four different varieties of cheese, they might even (most deliciously) deserve it. But after coming home from the farmers’ market in our new neighborhood (!) last weekend with potatoes and shiitakes and no real inkling of what I wanted to do with them, I turned to Alice Wates — her books are increasingly become my cooking bibles these days — and realized that something I’d never much associated with easy, light meals, a gratin, was exactly what was in order.

At its simplest, a gratin is sliced potatoes, a cup of whole milk (yes, milk though you’re welcome to gild the lily with half, full and double creams) and a few pats of butter on top. Adding a wee bit of a cheese between the layers goes surprisingly far — once it is all baked together, you’ll feel like you’re eating a macaroni-and-cheese level dish, minus that extra pound-and-a-half of cheese, not bad for four ingredient dish! — and if you season it well, you wonder why you don’t make them more often.

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artichokes braised in lemon and olive oil

deb — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:09:35 +0000

Given that I can say, without pausing or so much as batting an eyelash, that artichokes are my favorite food on earth, it's kind of a bummer that they're so woefully underrepresented here. Sure, there are Artichoke Ravioli, a quick Potato and Artichoke Tortilla, a a scooped heart filled with fresh cranberry beans, a gratin and some crostini in which they play a supporting role, but when you love them as much as I do, this is not enough. Nothing ever is.

Artichoke season can't come soon enough for people like me, even if the best we usually get are cross-country, battered and overpriced visitors. It is never enough to deter me, and neither were these downright busted looking ones I saw at the store yesterday for a reduced price. I pounced on them, as even with shoddy leaves, their hearts are in the right place, that is, center and endlessly delicious.

I had the misfortune to find this braised artichoke recipe in the November 2008 issue of Gourmet, misfortune not because I had any doubt it would be the most delicious thing in the entire world, but because although I am never going to be the poster child for the eating local movement with my cross-country artichokes in March, November is just not a time to find decent ones in New York City (although I hear the west coast gets a bumper crop in October -- lucky!).

The wait nearly killed me, but I'm pleased to say that it paid off. Look, there's nothing quick about prepping whole artichokes -- just getting them down to their delicious hearts takes some time, and multiplied by eight, sheesh. But it's so worth it. There is no comparison in the flavor of fresh 'chokes to frozen or canned ones -- they may as well be different vegetables. And although the process can be intimidating, once you get it down -- and I hope these photos help -- you'll wonder what took you so long to try them.

One year ago: Vegetarian Cassoulet

Two years ago: Mixed Berry Pavlova [Perfect for Passover!]