Deb Perelman - Smitten Kitchen Every Day: Triumphant and Unfussy New Favorites

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Text and photographs copyright 2017 by Deborah Perelman

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Simultaneously published in Canada by Appetite Books, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Smitten Kitchen and the SK logo are registered trademarks of Deborah Perelman. Used by permission.

Portions of this work originally appeared, in different form, on SmittenKitchen.com .

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Perelman, Deb, author.

Title: Smitten Kitchen every day : triumphant and unfussy new favorites / Deb Perelman.

Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2017] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017010179| ISBN 9781101874813 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781101874820 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH : Cooking. | LCGFT : Cookbooks.

Classification: LCC TX 714 . P 4429 2017 | DDC 641.5dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017010179

Cover photo by Deborah Perelman

Cover design by Janet Hansen

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ALSO BY DEB PERELMAN

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

For Anna Helen and Jacob Henry,
who made our family complete

contents

BREAKFAST

SALADS

SOUPS AND STEWS

SANDWICHES, TARTS, AND FLATBREADS

VEGETABLE MAINS

MEAT MAINS

SWEETS

cookies

tarts and pies

cake

puddings, frozen things, etc.

APPS, SNACKS, AND PARTY FOOD

against drudgery

(or, in praise of the unfussy but triumphant)

One of the delights of life is eating with friends; second to that is talking about eating. And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends. People who like to cook like to talk about food. Plain old cooks (as opposed to geniuses in fancy restaurants) tend to be friendly. After all, without one cook giving another cook a tip or two, human life might have died out a long time ago.

LAURIE COLWIN, Home Cooking

We home cooks have never gathered in force to speak out in defense of home cooking. So the image of cookery as drudgery lives on.

MARION CUNNINGHAM, Lost Recipes

T his isnt the cookbook I had expected to write.

When The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook headed to the printer in 2012, we were a family of three. Our two-year-old was eating table food, but in a dabbling way. Mostly, I cooked the food that I was excited to eat, and little about having a kid changed how I went about it. In the years since, weve added another delicious little human to our family, and while most people will tell you that going from zero kids to one is the big adjustment, in the kitchen, the shift from one to two was more dramatic. All of a sudden, it wasnt just us plus an extra half-portion stripped of offending chile peppers or with some couscous on the side to bait a suspicious toddler to the table. Quickly, half our family (ahem, the noisier half) needed square meals at predictable times and I, wellI began to understand why not everyone jumps with joy when its time to make dinner.

On any given night, most of us have countless really excellent reasons not to cookbe it picky kids, spouses, or roommates, or the extinction of a 9-to-5 workday that might actually get you home in time to assemble dinner for yourself, your friends, or your family. Even the people who are ostensibly cheering for you to cook can do more harm than good, be they restaurant chefs who forget you may not have a line of prep cooks at your disposal, recipe writers who alienate the budget-conscious by insisting on the best olive oil, or home-cooking advocates who tell you the very best thing you can do for your health/your childrens IQ/the economy/environment/nothing short of this earth (oh, the pressure!) is cook dinner every nightpeople who have clearly not spent a lot of time in the chaos of most households at Hangry OClock. (Roughly, 30 minutes after pizza would have been there already, at least around here.)

I began to wonder if it was time to write about the realities and practicalities of cooking. You know:

• How to Keep the Joy in Cooking

• 42-ish Minute Meals (But Youll Have to Rush)

• Things to Make with Broccoli and/or Sweet Potatoes, the Only Vegetables Everyone Agrees on This Week

• Just Kidding, the Baby Ate Blueberries for Dinner Again

There was only one problem: I didnt want to write this book at all. And so I did not. I continued sharing new recipes a couple times a week on my website, Smitten Kitchen. I launched a newsletter. I worked with people to usher the technology behind my site into its second decade of web life. I started working with Food Network on a digital series. I spent a lot of time around the table with friends and family and couldnt help but notice that what was regularly taking placetelling stories, workshopping silly armchair philosophies, cracking up over the babys anticsbarely resembled the compromised, plodding hypotheses Id set out about cooking when life gets busier.

What I have always loved about cooking is the way a happy discoverya new way to meatball, a four-ingredient farro that has caused more than 800 comment section exclamation points, cookies that look like clouds and taste like pink lemonade, crunchy spaghetti with crispy eggs, a birthday cake you can make from scratch in just over an hour (yes, really) or maybe even four of themhas the power to completely change the course of a day.

I like the way that when you make something new and awesome, the first thing you want to do is tell another friend about it so they can make it, too. I like the way following a recipe to the letter can feel like handing the reins over after a long day of having to make all the decisions, but also that pulling off a good meal when you least expected is the fastest way to feel triumphant, even if your day left you short of opportunities to. I like the way that when you sublimate your wanderlust in a disha cacio e pepe addiction picked up in Rome or a Thai-ish salad with crispy shallots, lime, and fish sauceit becomes a gateway, or an escape hatch, to so much more than dinner. I like the way that when you cook at home, you dont actually have to compromise a thing; you get to make exactly what you want, exactly the way you want it, and then you get to invite all your favorite people over to pass the dish around. I like the way a great meal makes grouchy people ungrouchy or turns a thankless day filled with thankless stuff into a hilarious one. And I like the way the prospect of a fudgy one-bowl chocolate cake with a raft of chocolate frosting one hour from now might make us cancel our other plans.