a fall cooking bucket list 🍂
plus: chicken rice with buttered onions
Monday, October 2, 2023
Good afternoon!
What Goodfellas Got Right About Garlic [Taste]
When Did Cabbage Get So Sexy? [Grub Street]
The Pumpkin Spice Latte Will Outlive Us All [NYTimes, unlocked]
Welcome to fall! Sure, it began 10 days ago but I cannot broach the divide into the land of pumpkin spice until October. But now? I’m here with abandon and I think it was worth the wait. I’m kicking off fall with the essential Smitten Kitchen recipes I think you should make before the season slips away — these recipes feel, to me, classic but never boring, and fit squarely within my favorite season, both in- and outside the kitchen. I hope you bookmark this one and send it to everyone you know who can’t wait to get back into the kitchen.
Plus: A new Thanksgiving partnership with Williams-Sonoma (including a favorite cooler-weather mocktail) and stay tuned, as a small Thanksgiving tour is coming. 🍂
Cheers,
Deb
I’ve written three cookbooks and I’m a tiny bit biased, but I think you’d love them all. I’m excited that this weather means you might be able to cook some of my early fall favorites from my most recent cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers, such as the endive salad with apple matchsticks, double shallot egg salad, winter squash soup with red onion crisp, creamy tomato and chickpea masala, charred brussels sprout toast with ricotta, portobello hoagie, and the turkey meatloaf for skeptics with crushed ranch-y potatoes, and please don’t forget the carrot cake with brown butter and no clutter, butterscotch apple crisp, and apple cider old-fashioned. Were you looking for a list of all the recipes in each of my cookbooks? I’ve added these in a separate page and hope it makes it easier for you to find everything you want to cook.
chicken rice with buttered onions
New: The most cozy, comforting fall dish that's gone into heavy rotation at dinnertime because the ingredient list is short, the chicken tender, the rice flavorful, the leftovers reheat phenomenally, and it's budget-friendly. You cannot imagine a better aroma to come home to.
apple and cheddar crisp salad
A peak fall apple and cheddar crisp salad in which I share three tricks to make the kind of fancy, cool, crunchy, dynamic, and gorgeous salads I can never resist on a restaurant menu at home with little fuss for so much less. I'm obsessed.
fall bliss salad
A favorite centerpiece salad that feels like the epitome of late fall with roasted squash, toasted pepitas, pomegranate, and a showstopping sherry-shallot vinaigrette.
brussels sprouts, apple and pomegranate salad
A bright, crunchy and abundantly welcome salad, this is a forever fall staple.
broccoli cheddar soup
Broccoli cheddar soup, exactly the way I always wanted it to be -- a lot of broccoli, a little bit of richness, and the coziest thing when the temperatures drop.
squash toasts with ricotta and cider vinegar
One of my favorite fall combinations, ever, here roasted winter squash is half-mashed with a tangy mess of onions (cooked down with cider vinegar and maple syrup), heaped on ricotta or goat cheese toasts and finished with fresh mint. It's ridiculously good with green salad and could make a squash convert out of anyone.
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.
mushroom marsala pasta bake
A sizable portion of intensely flavored mushrooms, al dente noodles, mozzarella and a crunchy parmesan finish bake into something that couldn’t be further from the overcooked-to-collapse ziti most of us associate with baked pasta -- lucky us.
winter squash and spinach pasta bake
Inspired by Ottolenghi, this pasta bake is savory fall brilliance. Every ingredient is tossed raw into a springform for a long bake in the oven and what emerges is resplendent: layers of tender squash and spinach with noodles, soft in the center and burnished to a snatch-able crisp on top, the aroma of garlic and toasted cheese everywhere.
pizza beans
It is exactly the right weather to bake giant white beans as if they were ziti -- vegetables, a robust sauce, and a finish with bronzed, melty cheese. We call them pizza beans, because it brings more bean-skeptics to the table. Did I forget to mention that we serve them with garlic bread? I hope that sweetens the deal for you, too.
butternut squash and caramelized onion galette
It's my favorite time of the year in the Northeast -- crisp air, leaves in every color, and, most importantly, it's finally butternut squash and caramelized onion galette season. It's my every-October-without-fail thing, and I hope you make it yours too.
apple cider caramels
This is my favorite candy I've *ever* made. It compacts a whole bottle of fresh apple cider into a salt-flecked, cinnamon-y, buttery caramel that is so loud with everything awesome about fall, no October is complete without it.
pumpkin bread
I want this to be the last recipe for pumpkin bread you'll ever need: towering with a crisp cinnamon-sugar lid that's impossible not to pick off in deeply satisfying bark-like flecks. It's also one-bowl and uses a full can of pumpkin in a single loaf. I refuse to believe that an October day cannot be improved by one of these coming out of the oven.
big apple crumb cake
A bouldered and plush intersection of baked apples and New York-style crumb cake, i.e. 50% cinnamon-brown sugar topping, 50% golden, sour cream-enriched cake, and 100% the best kind there is.
cranberry pecan bread
A cranberry pecan bread studded with tart berry gems, orange-zested, and finished with a snowglobe-like crunch on top that's so perfect that I've not only forgotten every quickbread that came before it (pumpkin who?) but that I once thought I didn't like nuts in loaf cakes at all. It's that magical.
pumpkin cinnamon rolls
Pumpkin-enriched, fall-spiced, cinnamon-swirled and cream cheese-frosted: I have the perfect cloudy morning treat for us.
even more perfect apple pie
A few adjustments to my usual apple pie yielded one perfect than I knew was possible, with a tall heap of cinnamon-and-spice apples nestled in a caramel-like sauce within a flaky, buttery crust. This is exactly how October should taste.
shop my favorites
Ever wonder where I get my cutting boards, paring knives, offset spatulas and more than 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. I recently added several new favorites I’ve bought in the last year. For each item, I've attempted to provide a range of shopping links so we're not just focusing on one giant retailer.
See you next week!
