Susan Spungen - Open Kitchen : Inspired Food for Casual Gatherings

Simple, stylish recipes for fearless entertaining from the renowned food stylist, New York Times contributor, and founding food editor of Martha Stewart Living

As a professional recipe developer, avid home cook, and frequent hostess, Susan Spungen is devoted to creating perfectly simple recipes for good food. In Open Kitchen, she arms readers with elegant, must-make meal ideas that are easy to share and enjoy with friends and family.

An open kitchen, whether physical or spiritual, is a place to welcome company, to enjoy togetherness and the making of a meal. This cookbook is full of contemporary, stylish, and accessible dishes that will delight and impress with less effort. From simple starters like , the dishes are seasonal classics with a twist, vegetable-forward, and always appealing. Filled with practical tips and Susans get-ahead cooking philosophy, which ensures streamlined, stress-free preparation, this cookbook encourages readers to open their kitchens to new flavors, menus, and guests.

Perfect for occasions that call for simple but elevated comfort food, whether its a relaxed gathering or a weeknight dinner, Open Kitchen shows readers how to maximize results with minimal effort for deeply satisfying, a little bit surprising, delicious meals. It is a cookbook youll reach for again and again.

To my husband and BFF, Steve

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

A few years ago, I came across the word sprezzatura. Not only did I love the way it sounded, I was intrigued by its translation, which, simply put, means studied nonchalance. It deeply resonated with me because that is what I always aim for when I cookand especially when having people over. I want my food to be deeply satisfying, a little special, a little surprising but not seem like its trying too hard. I want my friends to feel cared for and considered, but I dont want them to feel bad, as if I went to too much trouble for them (sometimes people do!). So even though I may have put a considerable amount of work into preparing a meal, I want it to seem effortless and uncontrived but still elegant and a little undone, like a messy bun on a beautiful girl or a guys shirttail sticking out just so.

This idea translates to a kitchen strategy that involves breaking down my prep into stages, so I can spread it out over a day or two (or three) so that in the end it feels kind of nonchalant for me too. Doing everything all at once for a meal usually results in a sink full of pots and pans, and if its just me, it can be hard to keep up. I like getting some of the workand the cleanupdone well ahead of time. The one thing a professional home cook like me has over the ordinary home cook is years of experience as a restaurant chef, a caterer, a food editor, and a food stylist. These experiences have taught me how to mise things out (thats French for getting all your prep ready) in the best way possible. I know what I can do ahead of time and what I need to leave for the last minutethat final toss of the salad, sprinkle of herbs, drizzling of saucethe things that incidentally make things look beautiful and taste their best and freshest. This innate sense of timing takes time and experience to learn, but in this book, I guide you through each recipe with tips that tell you what you can do whenbeyond what the recipe itself tells you. My hope is that, armed with this more granular guidance on how to get ahead, you will develop your intuition and have more fun cooking, with some of the stress taken out of the equation. I hope it will help you get a beautiful meal on the table without too much last-minute fuss.

This is not a book about make-ahead food, even though some of it is, but rather about the concept of get-ahead cooking. Once you discover the joy of getting ahead, you will become a planner even if you never were before. If you want to be in the moment with your guests and join the party, its absolutely essential to start thinking and cooking this way. In fact, the recipes themselves are engineered specifically to make cooking for a party easier, whether its for four or fourteen. You wont find things that need to be finished la minute standing at the stove. Your oven is your best friend when it comes to getting ahead, and it is used often in this book; whether its to warm the you assembled yesterday, sending delicious aromas through the house and giving you a hands-off hour to do other things, be it setting the table or taking a shower. Your choice.

I really love cooking for people, and I do it often. Cooking makes me happy, and its a way I can make other people happy too. I feel like Ive really given something of myself, and because it is usually so enthusiastically appreciated, it is an incredibly rewarding experience. The by-product of all of this is that youve created a shared experience that will be remembered for a long time by everyone involved.

Being a professional recipe developer means there are days when Im cooking enough for a huge crowd and theres no one there to enjoy it, at least not in the moment. Its an occupational hazard I struggle with.

In my old days, cooking in the test kitchens of Martha Stewart Living, where I was once the top banana, I was grateful for the little kitchen, aka the pantry, where everyone in our office stopped for a cup of coffee, or a pretzel log, or, yes, a little gossip or venting over the water cooler. All day long, my staff and I would plop our creations down on the counter and watch them disappear (and sometimes notthose recipes didnt make the cut), but it would have felt really weird to be cooking tons of food all day long and have no one there to eat it. What would be the point?

I studiously avoid the word entertaining, as the stuffy stereotypes it conjures up are a bit dated. I used to cater parties in New York when I was youngeroften cooking in Park Avenue apartments (where I used the service entrance leading directly to the kitchen) and stodgy houses in Southampton where we had to choose which of six sets of china we were going to serve on. The tables were set with linens and crystal and silver. Things have changed, thankfully. I guess they never were like that in my world. This book is not about that kind of entertaining. The pressure is off and the doilies are long gone. My husband, Steve, and I have a lot of nice things we collect and like to use to serve food on, but our quirky tastes run more to handmade ceramics, especially Japanese ones. The food looks handmade too, so they complement each other. Its all more wabi-sabi than fancy-schmancy. Matching up the food you cook with a beautiful platter or bowl is half the fun and makes everything look more special.

We like to gather friends around our table as often as possible, and as casually as possible. Like so many people, we have an open kitchen, which has made me embrace get-ahead cooking more than ever before. As if the kitchen wasnt already everyones favorite gathering place, when people come to our house, they are standing around our open kitchen, which is what it was designed for! Our dining room is a long table right next to the back side of our stove (which is on a peninsula), which we often use as a buffet.