apple overload
plus: roasted carrots with lentils and yogurt, an interview with julia turshen, and ideas for dinner tonight
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Good morning!
Why So Many Chefs Don’t Want Restaurants Anymore [NYTimes, unlocked]
Fall tradition is to go apple picking, making enthusiastic promises that we will show self-control this year and only get one small bag, never anything more than we could eat in a reasonable frame of time, and failing spectacularly every time, hauling an unfathomable amount of apples back to the car and spending the next few weeks furiously cooking them into everything we can, no lessons learned. Thus, this newsletter is for me, and if that whole saga sounded familiar, you too.
But, as we cannot live on apples alone — much as I will have to try for the next month -— I’ve also got a few dinner ideas for us. And that’s not all! I’ve got a little announcement this week [the special audiobook edition of Smitten Kitchen Keepers will be out on November 12th and read by me!], a new recipe so absolutely perfect for right now, a new podcast episode [all about baked ziti] and an interview with the wonderful Julia Turshen, who we are big fans of in the Smitten Kitchen, about her new cookbook What Goes with What, out today. Did you catch all that? There will be no quiz, just keep reading and we will dive right in.
Cheers!
Deb
roasted carrots with lentils and yogurt
New: Perfectly roasted carrots with a bright lentil salad on a puddle of yogurt that are so much more than a side dish. We can’t get enough of this.
Big fun announcement time! We’ve got a whole new way to hang out in the kitchen.
I’m so excited to announce the special audiobook edition of Smitten Kitchen Keepers, Smitten Kitchen Keepers: A Kitchen Counter Conversation! Available on November 12th and read by me, I hope it feels exactly like you've pulled up a chair and I'm hanging out in the kitchen with you, discussing techniques, substitutions, and chatting about what I think makes each recipe special.
Bonus recipe: When you purchase the audiobook, you will receive a signed holiday card from me with a bonus recipe! To receive your card and recipe, complete the form with your purchase order number right here.
US Residents, 18+. Ends December 13, 2024. See terms here.
My podcast with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, The Recipe with Kenji and Deb, launched this spring. Our newest episode, out last week, is all about Baked Ziti! You can listen to it anywhere you get your podcasts, such as Apple, Spotify, and more.
apple and cheddar scones
Gently roasted apples and a small heap of cheddar bake into a craggy, toasted-edge, soft-centered scone that tastes like a wedge of October bliss. Breakfast, anyone?
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.
brussels sprouts, apple and pomegranate salad
Bright and crunchy, this is a forever winter staple.
breakfast apple granola crisp
Psst, If you make this, you can whittle away at your apple-picking supply, have the first serving with a scoop of ice cream for an above-average dessert, *and* have enough left for a week of dreamy October breakfasts.
apple latkes
Apple latkes for breakfast or dessert with a bonus recipe for a makeshift apple caramel sauce to make them especially hedonistic. I'm not even a little sorry.
apple dumplings
Fixation-worthy apple dumplings. When you cut into each packet, flakes of buttery crust strew everywhere, a trickle of brown sugar caramel floods your plate and mingles with the whiskey-infused glaze that had melted over the sides. Please make these soon; you'll be so glad you did. [Video below!]
even more perfect apple pie
Did you also, in a whirl of leafy fall bliss, pick too many apples? Here's a recommendation for the first 4.5 pounds of them: A few adjustments to my usual apple pie yielded one more 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 my forever apple pie.
apple mosaic tart with salted caramel
Did someone order a showstoppper? This tart is as simple as puffed pastry, apples, butter and sugar. It tastes, however, like the highest calling of all four due to an (easy, I promise) copper-colored salted caramel topping that bakes back onto the tart, glossing everything.
apple strudel
A delicate flaky shell of buttery pastry wrapped around vanilla, cinnamon, lemon and rum-kissed apples and raisins, with or without a dollop of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream trickling down the sides. I was so intimidated to make Apfelstrudel from scratch, I called my mother in for support. It turned out to be surprisingly simple — this straightforward recipe is nearly impossible to mess up.
apple sharlotka
Got apples? Sugar? Flour? Eggs? You should have sharlotka for dessert tonight. It has no butter or oil. It's mostly apples. Your Wednesday evening will be better with this in it.
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 on a chilly afternoon.
spicy squash salad with lentils and goat cheese
This is the anti-candy, a life raft in an ocean of all the formats of sugar that the end of October will entail. It's also crazy delicious, satisfying, seasonal and fashionably orange and black.
chicken curry
A shout-from-the-rooftops, last-recipe-you'll-ever-need-for chicken curry adapted from Chetna Makan. Not to oversell it or anything, we just love it that much -- and you can finish it in under an hour.
I’ve written three cookbooks and I’m a tiny bit biased, but I think you’d love them all. Wondering what you might cook from Smitten Kitchen Keepers now that school’s back in session and the leaves are changing colors? I thought you’d never ask! Try the peanut butter, oat, and jam bars, spiced sweet potato oven fries, tangy baked eggplant and couscous, and weeknight lemon chicken wings. To finish, I recommend the apple butterscotch crisp, the pumpkin snacking cake, and/or the 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.
AN INTERVIEW WITH JULIA TURSHEN
My shelves are full of wonderful cookbooks 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 Julia Turshen. Her new cookbook, What Goes with What: 100 Recipes, 20 Charts, Endless Possibilities, is out today!
1. What inspired your cookbook?
I started making and sharing cooking charts in my newsletter and got such a positive response to them. They were simple, handwritten charts that each explained the basic formula for a dish and then gave a few examples of how to put that formula to work to make different versions of that dish. Some of my earliest ones were for soups, one-pot rice dishes, salad dressings, and cocktails. I love making the charts because they're the best way I've found to express how I think about cooking (you can read more about the origins here). I heard from so many people that said they would love a book full of them so I went ahead and made one! WHAT GOES WITH WHAT includes twenty charts, each with five examples for whatever the dish is, and then recipes for each example (100 in total).
2. What recipe are you the most proud of in the book, or felt the most triumphant when you got it right?
Hmm, this is a tough one. The first one to come to mind is Jennie's Curried Chicken + Potatoes not because it's a difficult recipe (I don't think any of the recipes in this book are difficult), but because it's so personal. Anyone reading this who is familiar with any of my previous cookbooks already knows this, but the "Jennie" in the title is one of the most important people in my life. She was my babysitter for a decade, starting when I was three years old, and we continue to be very close. Jennie’s cooking is the food that always makes me feel most at home and this one-pot curried chicken is something I grew up with. Getting the flavors and texture of the chicken and vegetables to be just like Jennie's took some trial and error but I'm really proud of where it landed (and when I brought leftovers to Jennie, she said it was "nice" which is high praise).
3. What recipe is so low-effort, high-reward that it's worth cooking for dinner tonight, even if we're tired and don't want to cook?
Oh this is easy! The Fastest Chicken Noodle Soup is exactly what its title promises. It tastes like it was cooked forever but only takes about 15 minutes (seriously!). It's comfort in a bowl! Very little cleanup! No straining or long simmering or anything like that required. If I may offer another, I would say the Spicy Chicken with Lime + Cashews, which is a really fast sauté and just PACKED with so much flavor that you do very little work to create. Serve it over rice and maybe slice a cucumber alongside and you have a perfect dinner.
4. What's something you wish more people knew about your book?
It's incredibly personal. I took nearly every photo (which I've never done before in any of my books), plus I included some essays and conversations with my family members, did all of the charts in my handwriting, and, icing on the cake, my parents designed the whole thing. While all of my books have felt personal, this one is by far the most intimate and truly from my heart/hands to yours.
Thank you, Julia! You can order What Goes with What right here.
apple dumplings
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 — yes, including the the Smitten Kitchen x Staub Braiser, which is back in stock! 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!
