corn cacio e pepe

As the year is not 2017, when the cacio e pepe frenzy (outside of Rome, where it’s never not on the menu) seemed to have reached peak frenzy and when I put a cross between potatoes Anna and cacio e pepe on the cover of my second cookbook, I’d only choose the dog days of summer 2023 to talk about cacio e pepe once again for a single reason: A worthy update. The only thing I love more than the combination of salty, funky pecorino cheese and copious amounts of black pepper kicking up sparks of heat on a tangle of linguine is the way I make it in the summer: adding sweet, crunchy corn. It is, full stop, the perfect complement to the punchy cheese sauce; they’re made for each other.
Read more »

Recipe

raspberry streusel muffins

Once upon a time, I spent approximately a whole summer making blueberry muffins, gripped with an obsession (that would be worrisome anywhere but this page) to make what I hoped would be the last blueberry muffin recipe we’d ever need. You’d think after all that that the path to these raspberry muffins would be simpler, but it took five raspberry seasons to get here.

Recipe

buffalo chicken cobb salad

Earlier this summer, I made what I thought was just a dinner salad that turned out to be my new favorite dinner salad of all time and it was literally all I could talk about for the next few weeks. Incessantly. Insufferably. I didn’t even wait to ask if you’re into buffalo wings (of course you are), cobb salads (you could be, I can just tell) or looking for a dinner idea. It’s just not who I am.

Recipe

flaky chocolate cake

I know we’re in the midst of the nth heatwave of the summer and the idea of eating anything but a bowl of cold cherries or, worse, something that requires you turn your oven on sounds about as unappealing as that curiously empty subway car [that definitely has no a/c or worse] but trust me when I say that someone in your friend group, family, or life has a birthday coming up and they’re hoping that you make them this.

Recipe

summer pea salad with unexpected dressing

A little catch-up: Two days ago, our kids boarded a bus to sleepaway camp while dozens of parents waved like (I’d like to think adorable but also value self-awareness) lunatics as it pulled away. I learned a few years ago when my son went to camp for the first time that I become unmoored — who am I if nobody demands things and interrupts my thoughts all day?! — without the presence of my adorable but exhausting offspring. Last summer, I ran out of cooking steam while waiting for my daughter to request anything but noodles for dinner. This summer, despite the fact that she’s a baby who was just born (don’t tell me otherwise), my daughter also wanted to go to camp, mostly because she wants to be wherever her brother is and I’m not crying, you are. Fortunately, the photos I refresh, refresh on the camp app all day — in lieu of doing anything more productive or even hedonistic with my time — show them to be having a blast and how could they not be when the first night ended with whipped cream pies in the faces of the counselors on the losing team and nobody challenges their palates beyond pizza, chicken nuggets, and waffles?

Recipe

sliced egg sandwich

When things are quiet around here, one of two things are usually happening: I’m busy with a side project or traveling far from the physical Smitten Kitchen. Or, I’m really obsessed with eating something that I don’t expect to interest anyone but me. This month we have two for two. For the three weeks before I was briefly in San Francisco and Napa last week, I was absolutely fixated on this sandwich. Fixated! I craved it everyday. Sometimes it was breakfast; sometimes it was lunch. I could walk by a bagel shop wafting with warm everything seeds, by a cloud of bodega bacon egg and cheese sandwiches, and still beeline home to put a cold boiled egg on a roll with arugula. I know I make no sense. I decided to keep this weirdo thing myself but then I returned from California and yes, I had a suitcase full of Model Bakery english muffins and a stash of Dandelion Chocolate hot chocolate mix, and I still just needed this. I have finally accepted that the only way to move on, at least for long enough that I could tackle the rest of the amazing things I have on our cooking agenda for the summer, was to exorcise it, whether anyone cares to join in my strange little preoccupation or not.
Read more »

Recipe

easy strawberry lemonade

I would like to make clear from the outset that I do not think we, this site, or even the internet necessarily needs a new recipe for lemonade. I’ve covered lemonade that’s picnic pink (with any berry you like), with watermelon, with cucumber, with maple syrup and bourbon, and even lime and mint. But the thing I ran into when my kids left me, once again, with a basket of overpriced strawberries on their last legs — fruit they’d asked me to buy but then mysteriously lost interest in eating when it was presented to them at breakfast — and I decided to instead turn strawberries into strawberry-ade, so to speak, was that every lemonade recipe I’ve already published contains steps I lacked inclination to do.

Recipe

smashed chicken meatball sliders

There was a moment a dozen or so years ago when sliders were all the rage on restaurant menus. Precious little burgers (the traditional slider) and more clever ones like meatballs and fritters would teeter with tweezer-applied toppings on tiny buns and unless you unhinge your mandible to engulf (slide?) your wobbly prey whole, it was a bit of a mess too. So why am I channeling the year 2009? Sliders have been having a renaissance in my kitchen this spring because I finally realized their size is perfect for smaller eaters and makes for far more appetizing leftovers than, say, a cold burger with several bites removed, sogged into a day-old bun.

Recipe

hash brown patties

It’s not entirely healthy or sane, but I can fiddle with a recipe for years before finally getting it out the door. What is done? What is ready? Aren’t we all works in progress, forging paths to even more greatness? Sometimes it’s obvious when a recipe is ready to laminate and tuck in our forever files; I love those days. Sometimes, the longer I leave it, the more it metamorphosizes. What I’m trying to say is that in 2020, this was a tater tot recipe. In 2021, it became a giant tot, i.e. a thick hash brown patty, and also gluten-free. In 2022, because I’m so attached to the Trader Joe’s version stashed in my freezer and wanted these more like that, it became thinner.

Recipe

baby wedge salad with avocado and pickled onions

Merely three weeks ago, I lamented the mediocrity and afterthought-ness of most meatless entrees, so often cobbled together from sides of other dishes. Because I love a plot twist, it seems only right that this week I tell you about my favorite salad which happens to be — you guessed it — cobbled from the sides of other dishes. I used to order it from a taco place in our neighborhood before they changed the recipe, and even though I knew it was just the most filler-y lettuce, the pickled onions, sliced radishes, pepitas, and crumbled cotija they’d use to garnish their other offerings, masquerading as a salad, I did not care. Sometimes it works. Here, it sings. It’s absolutely perfect: crunchy, bright, creamy, and inhalable.