pasta with favas, tomatoes and sausage

I wish I could tell you that the last meal cooked in the first Smitten Kitchen was a triumph, a fitting coda to four-plus years in a sun-drenched Manhattan kitchen with enough space to put everything away (not that I’m pointing fingers or anything, new kitchen) and space enough for two people (and at least one growing midsection) to settle comfortably within it. Alas, that was not the case.

Recipe

pickled grapes with cinnamon and black pepper

Wow, people, just wow. I expected a few baby squish, cow country and dishwasher-crazed compatriots out there to squeal with excitement when we shared our news but nothing, nothing like this. You are the nicest group of readers a girl could ever hope for and you make it so much fun to share bits of our lives, and tiny kitchen, with you. Thank you.

Announcements, Recipe

cinnamon swirl buns + so much news

Friends, we have so much catching up to do. I promised before I went to the Bahamas that when I got back, I’d have some cool stuff to share, but somehow it is over four weeks later and we are really overdue for a chat. Plus, it’s Tax Day and I’ve been moping around all week with my pockets inside out since I was presented with a bill with an impossible number of zeros after it, and hey, wouldn’t we all rather focus on the cheerful stuff? Of course. So without further ado:

Recipe

simple potato gratin

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 Waters — 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.

Recipe

chocolate caramel crackers

Yes, crack. As in “made with crackers”, as in “crackly like toffee” but also in reference to the addictive nature of this stuff. I may make what seems like an elaborate cake a week these days, I might bake my own icebox wafers and fill and frost my cupcakes but these things right here? They’re the thing everyone asks for by name, and they take almost no time to make.

Recipe

artichoke-olive crostini

My husband and I have different packing personalities. First, I need a clean apartment, you know, before I wreck sections of it at a time. Then I need to go through every single thing we own before any of it gets packed and determine whether it should stay or does it need to go. I cannot stand the thought of moving, well, useless baggage to a new and supposedly clean slate of an apartment. Then each box has to have a separate topic; if desk stuff gets in with book stuff, I get itchy and start pacing the floor. How does Alex pack? Oh, he puts stuff in boxes until everything’s packed. I probably don’t need to tell you who is better at getting the job done.

Recipe

artichokes braised in lemon and olive oil

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.

Recipe

bialys

Growing up, I never gave bialys much thought. The bagel shop where I briefly worked in high school had us front-end people take bagels off the machine rollers, pinch together the centers, schmear them with the onion filling and leave them on a tray for the professionals to bake, and that was about far as I’d considered them — a bagel variant. Oh, and that they were excellent toasted with salted butter.