10 great things to cook in december
plus: pumpkin basque cheesecake + an interview with tamar adler
Monday, December 1, 2025
Good morning!
What your signature dish says about you [NYT, gift link]
Maybe it is because Thanksgiving felt relatively late in November, but I have a hunch that December is going to whiz by this year, as evidenced by the fact that I cannot be alone in being shocked that it’s already here. I’m looking at the calendar and it’s filled with so many things I’m excited about but also so many things.* And so many things I want to cook! Narrowing it down was not easy but today I have a collection of recipes below that I don’t want you to miss this month, a mix of beloved dinners (those baked lentils! a hearty frittata!) and also a few holiday staples (hot chocolate mix, sugar and spiced nuts). I hope you’re inspired.
And that’s not all. I also have a new recipe for the easiest pumpkin basque cheesecake you’ll ever make. Don’t miss the video demo either, okay?
Finally, today we have an interview with Tamar Adler, whose new book, Feast on Your Life: Kitchen Meditations for Every Day, is out tomorrow. I love this book for us, yes us, something for us to read and insert moments of calm and introspection in a frenetic time of year.
Cheers,
Deb
*The antidote to this is what I call Sloth January, in which I do as little as possible. I’ll invite you along!
I’ve written three cookbooks and one audiobook and I’m a tiny bit biased, but I think you’d love them all. Not sure which one to check out first? Take a look at the recipe index and see which collection jumps out at you most.
pumpkin basque cheesecake
New! A dream of a pumpkin basque cheesecake that rewards last-minute planners with speed and ease. It’s almost halfway to pumpkin pie in flavor yet still a basque cheesecake, burnished edges and sunken-by-design center and all. It’s also just a little sweet, the perfect coda to a decadent meal (right as it steals the show).
latke waffles
There are few meals that cannot be improved by a coarsely shredded potato and onion pancake, fried until crisp, especially breakfast. But have you ever waffle-ironed them? I think you’ll be glad you did, especially with an egg on top.
french onion baked lentils and farro
These french onion baked lentils and farro are a dream of a winter dish, as perfect for a hibernation dinner as it is for a vegetarian main at a dinner party. It’s loose like risotto, hearty enough to be utterly filling, and tastes precisely like french onion soup, blistered broiled gruyere on top and all.
brussels sprout and bacon frittata
Occasionally (ahem, frequently) I realize that it’s time for dinner and nobody (else) has made it — the dinner frittata is here to save the day. This hearty one from Justin Chapple has bacon, brussels sprouts, gruyere, and chives and is a longtime favorite, perfect for a blustery day.
crispy potatoes with mushrooms
Crispy potatoes (fried or roasted, I’ll walk you through both) heaped with buttery sautéed mushrooms and onions, finished with dill and served with sour cream is one of my favorite Russian comfort foods, and this week’s chilly weather couldn’t be better timed to delight in it. [Video below!]
roast chicken with schmaltzy cabbage
Cabbage cooked slowly in salty buttery chicken drippings until charred at the edges and caramelized throughout is the real star of this deeply cozy and rewarding three-ingredient roast chicken inspired by the wonderful Helen Rosner.
gingerbread biscotti
The perfect dunking cookie for your December coffee, tea, or hot chocolate with a hint of winter spice. Make more than you think you’ll need, because they’re the kind of thing that’s fun to share.
peppermint hot fudge sauce
10 minutes from now, you could be ladling the most amazing thick, glossy, borderline chewy hot fudge sauce ever over ice cream. (Peppermint optional. A splash of bourbon instead? Hiii, let’s be friends.)
decadent hot chocolate mix
This cinch of a hot chocolate mix is one of my favorite things to keep around in the winter, and it makes wonderful gifts too. Just grind cocoa, bittersweet chocolate, sugar, and a few drops of vanilla together and whisk it into any kind of warmed milk (dairy or non-dairy) and finish with as many marshmallows as your heart desires, which in my case is a lot.
sugar-and-spice candied nuts
The secret to making unsticky perfectly-spiced nut mixes that pack up perfectly for gifts with a long shelf life? An egg white. These are a decade-plus favorite for gifts and treats.
white russian
I have a hunch that it’s too long since we last made White Russians -- they’re cozy and lightly sweet while packing a sneaky punch, so perfect for a snowy weekend.
AN INTERVIEW WITH TAMAR ADLER
My shelves are full of wonderful books I don’t get to talk about enough, so I’ve added this section so you can get to know the cool people behind them. Today we’re chatting with Tamar Adler. Her new book, Feast on Your Life: Kitchen Meditations for Every Day, is out tomorrow, 12/2.
1. What inspired your new book?
There are a few ways to answer this: 1) Ross Gay’s Book of Delights inspired it. He wrote a short essay on a delight he encountered as often as he could during a year. I loved the idea. 2) My own depression, which I couldn’t shake. I didn’t have much of a choice other than to find a way to see my own life differently. That exercise took the form of finding my own daily joys, but in the kitchen. I chose the kitchen in part because I know it well, and write about it, and in part because I wasn’t finding any joy in the kitchen those days, so felt like I would be helped by looking for it there. 3) I have a culinary advice column on Substack, The Kitchen Shrink, where I already get to answer nitty gritty culinary questions. Getting to write something a bit more removed, that included how poetry affects my cooking, for example, or how light does, or how relationships do, appealed.
2. Is there a part of the book that you’re the most proud of, or felt the most triumphant when you got it the way you wanted it to be?
To be honest, I thought it was all terrible when I turned it in. I’m a firm believer in--and a relentlessly vigorous practitioner of--revision, though. I’m proud that I turned it in at all, and that I kept the faith that, if I revised it enough, I could lift it up to a level I could bear. This is my fourth book. I learned from writing my first that the book we end up with will never match the book in our mind, and I take great comfort from that. In this instance, my expectations were particularly low because I was simply, unremittingly, depressed. I was hanging on by my fingernails, and survival is a very good state in which to write because you don’t get in your own way. My favorite entry, though, is the one on finding a lobster band.
3. Is there a recipe that is so low-effort, high-reward that it’s worth cooking immediately, even if we’re tired and think we don’t want to cook?
I think Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce is the “recipe” I turn to the most often. I also think it’s the most immediately rewarding because of what the kitchen smells like when there’s a pot of bubbling tomato-onion-butter in it. I add basil, which she doesn’t, if I have any. It is the rare sauce that actually tastes just as good as it smells. I wrote about this at least twice in the book!
4. What’s something you wish more people knew about your book?
I feel terribly vulnerable answering this! I wish they saw it as a self-help book. I wrote it as one. I wrote it so that reading it, you might see that your own kitchen and your own life are perfect material for close noticing, and so for delight. I want people to use it like they use Atomic Habits (just an example! I haven’t used it.) Or whatever they’ve turned to for digging in and making things make sense.
Thank you, Tamar! You can preorder Feast on Your Life right here.
crispy potatoes with mushrooms
shop my favorites
Ever wonder where I get my cutting boards, paring knives, offset spatulas and more that you see when I cook? I've created a page on Smitten Kitchen with links to some of my favorite kitchen items, the ones I'm asked about the most — yes, including the the Smitten Kitchen x Staub Braiser. For each item, I've attempted to provide a range of shopping links so we're not just focusing on one giant retailer.
What’s the Smitten Kitchen x Staub Braiser? It’s essentially a lower profile enameled cast-iron Dutch oven that works as as well as a deep sauté pan as it does a soup pot, roasting pan, or even casserole dish that perfectly fits a pasta bake. Not a week has gone by in the decade-plus I’ve had mine when I don’t use it at least three times. Fun news: The braiser is now exclusively sold at Williams-Sonoma and available in six gorgeous new colors!
Looking for recipe inspiration for your new braiser? I created a category on the site to highlight some of my favorite dishes I make in mine.
See you next week!
