Cara Eisenpress - In the Small Kitchen: 100 Recipes from Our Year of Cooking in the Real World

In the Small Kitchen

100 Recipes from Our Year of Cooking in the Real World

Cara Eisenpress and Phoebe Lapine

Photography by Josh Shaub with images by Allison Badea, Alexander Solounias, Jonathan Meter, and the Quarter-Life Cooks

Contents

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Forget the small kitchenI want to work my way through this wonderful cookbook. Ive adored Phoebe Lapine for her entire life, and through her, Ive come to know the fabulous Cara Eisenpress. Of course, I knew they were smart and beautiful, but I would never have imagined that two young women fresh out of college could emerge from their shells as fully formed cookbook writers. They cook and write with an ease and a voice that took me a decade of writing cookbooks to develop.

I love In the Small Kitchen so much. Its packed with brilliant advice and delicious recipes for anyone who wants to cook and entertainno matter what size your kitchen. If you think you dont have the time, the kitchen space, or the budget to entertain, think again. Cara and Phoebe show you how to do it. This book is for young people trying to make good food for themselves, or for anyone trying to get a special dinner on the table for friends. Its such fun to read and is filled with Phoebes and Caras personal experiences, from their disasterswhy no one needs to make Manchurian Cauliflower ever againto their triumphsI loved their oatmeal chocolate chip cookie competition. Theyve written a book filled with outstanding recipes, dating anecdotes, and great entertaining advice that all of us can relate to, no matter how small our kitchen.

In the Small Kitchen is organized by reasons to cookhome alone and hungry, a romantic dinner for two, a weekend brunch, and easy dinner parties. Dishes range from earthy to elegant and everything in between. But most of all, Phoebe and Cara are absolutely right when it comes to their cooking philosophy: getting into the habit of cooking makes your kitchen a place that everyone wants to be. And that alone is the reason everyone needs this book, including me!

Ina Garten
Barefoot Contessa

Veto Power

In November 2009, we fried our last batch of Manchurian Cauliflower.

Jordana is our best friend from high school, and Manchurian Cauliflower is one of her favorite things to eat. It is a transcendent dish: light, crispy cauliflower coated in a spicy and tangy tomato sauce, which gets stuck in the crevices of every last crunchy floret. Though its immensely lovable, weve come to regret its position as one of our signature dishes and wish our friends would forget its existence completely. For a crowd of fifty, making Manchurian Cauliflower involves mincing whole heads of garlic. Worse, it involves deep-frying cups and cups of cauliflower florets to order.

We made it for the first time at Jordanas twenty-fourth birthday party because we didnt know about the hassle. We didnt yet have the experience to envision how long wed be standing in the kitchen, chopping, frying, and plating the goddamn cauliflower. We also didnt know it would be such a hit. So when we cooked for Jordanas twenty-fifth birthday, it ended up on the finger food menu again. But as we were halfway through frying the third batch that night, guests began to arrive, and we abandoned all unfried cauliflower in a colander, turned off the burner under the oil, and called it a day. By that point, we understood that there were more important things than slaving away at the stove to achieve restaurant-quality food. It was our best friends birthday, there were piles of summer rolls and saucy meatballs to be eaten, and we no longer wanted to be behind the scenes in the kitchen.

Its within the window of that year, between those two batches of cauliflower, that most of this book takes place.

As time has passed and weve logged more hours in the kitchen, weve gotten better at knowing what kinds of dishes arent so conducive to feeding crowds of fifty. Weve gained enough authority to choose what gets set down on the table. We will not be making Manchurian Cauliflower for Jordanas twenty-sixth birthday. We will refer to it a lot, but there will be no recipe for Manchurian Cauliflower in this book. The dish may mark the beginning and end of our story here, but we say no to Manchurian Cauliflower. After all, a party is only as fun as its least happy guests, and we will continue to say no to all fussy dishes that make those least happy, frizzy-haired, sauce-covered guests us.

From Entry-Level Grown-Ups to Big Girls

It took us a long time to earn enough veto power to say no to a vegetable. Like most kids, we started out with menial kitchen jobs, setting the table for dinner or adding chocolate chips to cookie dough. Despite this early training, we pursued non-food-related corporate careers when we graduated from college in 2007 and moved back to New York City, our hometown. Cara got the editorial assistant position she thought she had always wanted at a great publishing house; Phoebe accepted a job she was pretty sure she had never wanted, doing marketing for a beauty company. Jobs led to apartments and to our very own kitchens. In September 2007, Cara moved into an East Village converted three bedroom with Lisa, her college roommate, and Jordana, of birthday fame. Five months later, Phoebe moved out of her parents place into a two-bedroom walk-up near Union Square with her friend from college, Caitlyn. That fall, Cara moved to her second apartment, a studio in Brooklyn, which she vastly preferred. In our new places, we really felt like adults. Even though we missed the daily proximity to friends wed had in college and mourned the loss of summer vacation, we were happy to be on our own.

However, jobs and apartments dont make a life. We also had to eat. Using those kitchens for feeding ourselves and cooking for our friends rounded out our post-college existence. On Monday mornings, while the rest of the world slept off their dread of work, Cara could be found making Spinach Pie Quesadilla (page 30) in utter silence, so as not to wake up her roommates. On Tuesday nights, Phoebe was probably running home to scramble together a fish taco buffet (page 194) dinner for ten college friends. On Wednesdays, Cara sometimes made late-night Saucy Tomato Orecchiette (page 56) when she and her roommates needed food to absorb the few drinks theyd enjoyed earlier. On Thursdays, Phoebe might be transforming leftover dip into Black Bean Bites (page 266). On Fridays, Cara packed Soy-Honey Baked Tofu (page 76) and Phoebe loaded Roasted Butternut Squash (page 102) into plastic containers to bring to a potluck with high school friends.

Whatever the ritual, it became clear that feeding ourselves and others was important. We started our blog, Big Girls, Small Kitchen , to figure out exactly how food was important to us. Our first post was published in November 2008, with a photo gallery of Jordanas twenty-fourth birthday party, including the cauliflower. We posted more blog entries, and we cooked and hosted more parties. We read food blogs and wrote new recipes and ate. A year passed. And somewhere in the passing days and nights we honed a cooking philosophy that we now believe in like dogma.