smitten kitchen

We had an election returns nail-biting and wine-drinking gathering last night (I refused to call it a party until given good reason to) and so, well, to say I’m a bit slow today might be a bit of an understatement. That said, even as I scrubbed grimy, chocolaty fingersmears off the sides of champagne flutes this morning with a raging morning-after headache, I never regret a good party.

Nothing worse than coming to a party around dinnertime that doesn’t actually provide dinner. But, since I didn’t want to have a dinner party, but the kind where you could come and go as your schedule allowed, hot food was out. Instead, we settled on cheese and breads, olives and salads, like this one.

Now, I love cauliflower. I always have. I like it in pasta, I like it in gratins (coming soon!), I like this dead-easy silky cauliflower soup and I like it curries and salads.

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This past summer, David Leite, whom you may know from the fantastic Leite’s Culinaria, set out to find the consummate chocolate chip cookie.

He spoke to Herve Poussot, a baker and an owner of Almondine in Dumbo, Brooklyn, who warned him it was more than a recipe he was looking for.

He researched the technique of Ruth Graves Wakefield, who owned the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusettes in the 1930s, where she invented the chocolate chip cookie, and who once wrote that she would let the dough rest overnight before using it. He spoke to Shirley Corriher, author of CookWise, a book about science in the kitchen, who agreed that an overnight rest was the best way to get a drier and richer dough that has fully soaked up the egg.

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Reading comments, emails and blogs everyday from people who like to cook all over the country, and all over the world, I have learned that not all kitchens are the same. And some of them are less the same than others. Some are downright shocking. Apparently, there are kitchens with more than one counter. There are ovens that fit entire half-sheet pans in them–and still close! There are kitchens with not one oven, but two. Some have not just two counters and two ovens, but more than six cabinets. Some kitchens have not just two counters, two ovens and a dozen cabinets but room for an entire set of tables and chairs… just for eating!

Excuse me, but I have to sit down for a minute. …Not in the kitchen, mind you. We have no room for a chair.

Alas, for the rest of us, those that may sympathize with our 80-square foot kitchen with a mini-oven, six cabinets and a single built-in counter, I have been asked enough times what advice I’d give to people trying to cook in a tiny kitchen that I thought I’d sum up some of the advice I give them today.

Five ways to max out your tiny kitchen:
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I bet I am not alone in this, but one of my favorite things is to find some odd ingredient in the fridge and try to figure out what I can make that will use it up that does not include, say, buying another ingredient that I will only half-use to do so.

(This reminds me of when of the time we discovered that we had been joined by a roommate of the tiny, scampering variety, an evil one that outsmarted all traps put in its path, and many suggested that we get a cat to “get rid of it”. But then how to get rid of the cat problem, I always asked, and people shook their heads and clucked their tongues at me. Okay, perhaps this story isn’t an exact parallel after all…)

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Saying that you don’t usually care for brittle because it is, well, awfully brittle is definitely grounds for mockery.

But it’s true! I can’t tell you how unappealing I find stained glass-like sheets of amber caramel that you’re supposed to willingly bite into. You either get alarmingly sharp shards that stab you like a serial killer on the loose in your mouth, or it gets so gunked into the scoop of your molars, it takes a chisel to extract it.

Right, so where were we? My grievances with brittle in no way mean it can’t be good, just that it’s usually not. And previously, I never liked the stuff enough to find The Recipe, the one that will be all you need. Fortunately, with such inspiration as Luisa and Karen Demasco, this was perfect on the first try: buttery with an awesome depth of flavor that came from some accidental slightly overcooking and sea salt. Taking a bite, the pepitas just crackle within the caramel, and not so hard that it shatters everywhere.

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