easy freezer waffles

A few months ago, and honestly not for the first or realistically the last time, my family betrayed me. It started, almost predictably, with the youngest. I made waffles one morning, so proud of myself for remembering to start the yeasted waffle batter, my favorite, the night before — and my daughter told me that she prefers the waffles at grandma’s house. “What kind does grandma make?” I asked. “They’re in the freezer,” she told me. “I think they say ‘egg’ on them?”

I think we all know where this was going. I was traveling a wee bit over the last few months and decided before a trip to surprise her with a giant box of Eggos in the freezer. When I got home at the end of the week, the whole box was gone. It turns out that it isn’t just my daughter who prefers them, it’s my son too, and even my husband. The treachery!

Recipes

pasta with longer-cooked broccoli

I’ve been working up the courage to tell you about this dish for a few years. Why courage, you might ask? What’s courageous about the timeless combination of broccoli and pasta, Deb? It’s the cooking time. This broccoli is not al dente. It does not “retain a crunch,” “still have some bite to it,” or keep any of the verdant green hue it entered the pan with. And, even more audacious, it doesn’t wish to. This broccoli applies a philosophy of vegetable cooking times fairly polarized from our current moment, when the minutes we walk vegetables by the fire have plunged so far that some of us even advocate for eating cauliflower, asparagus, and even broccoli raw. [Or, in a twist on the words of a steak cooking chart I once saw on the wall of a restaurant in Texas: A good farmer could still save the vegetable.]

Recipes

cauliflower salad with dates and pistachios

a clean-out-the-fridge salad

I spend a possibly unhealthy amount of time … oh you thought I was going to say scrolling TikTok and watching other people clean their apartments? I mean, yes, that too. But I was going to say debating whether one *needs* a recipe for something I like to make, such as a salad. Doesn’t everyone just grab random things that need to be used up and assemble them with a dressing? Yet my other favorite thing on social media is when something appears in my feed that I didn’t know I was craving and I spontaneously must stop what I’m doing and kick all of my existing cooking plans to the curb to make it. What if this is the one that provides this for you?

Recipes

baked brie with garlic butter mushrooms

Welcome to the decadent meal I dream about every late December, when I want even simple foods to feel festive. Yes, I am seriously making the argument that baked brie should be a dinner dish. Or, if not dinner, maybe a luxe part of it, so perfect for this blustery, celebratory time of year. For dinner you might eat this with a big green salad and a cup of soup. You might set this out as a side dish with a big roast. You might put it out as part of a party spread too, an oasis of savory among all of the cookies and molten cakes.

Announcements, Recipes

green angel hair with garlic butter + smitten kitchen keepers is here!

Today my third cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers, comes out and thank goodness, because it’s been impossibly hard to keep it from you this long.

It feels downright unfair that I figured out how to make the best molasses cookie — thick, tender, but also one-bowl, no hand-mixer required, the kind that makes your whole home smell like the holidays — and you’re only finding out about it today. My favorite pot roast is in there; sometimes I add rice shortly before it’s done for a truly one-pot meal-of-a-braise that feels perfect for this cold week. There’s a warm hoagie that’s practically a vegetarian cheesesteak. The most perfect chocolate chip cookie I could possibly dream up is there (it has salted walnut brittle inside). A deep dish, actual doorstop of a broccoli cheddar quiche that serves a crowd and an egg salad, just for us. The easiest three-layer chocolate party cake that could ever exist is filled with a salt-flecked milk chocolate buttercream and it’s designed to fit in the bottom of a shopping bag so you can take it everywhere with you. The actual craziest thing I’ve suggested you do with cabbage (salt, vinegar, and char it), might lead to the craziest thing you do with cabbage (eat it from the pan, standing up). There are cream cheese and jam challah buns that make me think of my dad and there’s a pound cake that I hope could be worth the cover price alone.

Recipes

apple and cheddar crisp salad

This is an apple and cheddar salad and I would humbly argue an excellent one, the best I’ve ever made, but this recipe is also an excuse for me to share a few of the best tricks I keep up my sleeve (I always wanted to be a cook who said things like that, when what you might actually find is a lost piece of popcorn) to make the kinds of complex salads I can never resist on a cafe menu at home as simply as possible. Because we deserve to have fancy, cool, crunchy, dynamic, and gorgeous salads at home, even if we do not live a life that allows us to afford fancy salads made by others on a regular basis.

Recipes

focaccia onion board

Welcome to the cutting room floor. Whenever I finish a cookbook, there are recipes that didn’t make the final book not because they’re flawed in any way, but because they weren’t necessary. Smitten Kitchen Keepers already has a couple great savory breads and sufficient caramelized onion magnificence, so I pulled this recipe out because I knew it would be perfect for the site, right now. Why? This week is the most significant Jewish holiday of the year, Yom Kippur, a day of atonement. It is traditional fast for the day, and the fast is traditionally broken with a dairy meal, quite often a giant spread of bagels and fixings. But that wasn’t the first time I made this. In March 2020, when the whole world shut down, so of course did all of the bagel shops in my neighborhood. I started making easy bagel-y breads so we could still enjoy our cream cheese and lox weekend fix. This one has a cool history, too.

Recipes

apple dumplings

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, my first cookbook, turns 10 years old in a few weeks, and inside it is what I call one of the best summer desserts I’ve ever made, peach dumplings with bourbon hard sauce. These were a whim that occured to me one morning before dawn when my then-baby (and, as of 11 days ago, a Bar Mitzvah) woke up early and lacked interest in going back to sleep and my mind drifted, as it does, to things I’d like to cook.

Recipes

turkey pesto meatballs and orecchiette

As long as we are a full six days before fall begins, I am allowed to sneak in one more zucchini recipe. It would be right there in my contract, had I one, above the expectation of ironed shoelaces and below that of a daily slice of chocolate biscuit cake. I’d actually intended this recipe for July (and the eggplant involtini for August). But July was so hot, and August wasn’t much better; I couldn’t bring myself to publish recipes that require oven time, so I waited for a better moment to arrive. Our patience has been rewarded; this brothy, late summer-y bowl of pasta and meatballs is absolutely perfect for right now, with the kind of sunny warm days that require a morning and evening cardigan — i.e. the very best weather on this earth, full stop.

Recipes

eggplant involtini

It makes no sense at all, but for most of this past winter, I craved eggplant parmesan. I tried to tell myself that we were half a year to eggplant season and would I prefer some… cabbage or turnip parmesan instead? (I would not.) I made it a few times. I ordered it in a few others. I finally got it out of my system and then in the past month I’ve seen Reel after TikTok for eggplant involtini and the magical combination of silky eggplant, tomato sauce, and sharp, melty cheese’s hold over me has returned. At least this time my craving has seasonal compliance.