Monday, April 28, 2025
Good afternoon!
How did our tastebuds get to spoiled? [NYTimes, unlocked]
Today — 75 degrees, sunny, all of the things in bloom — would be a fantastic day to play hooky, don’t you think? Alas, ho-hum, being an adult requires that we get to work, even when the weather whispers you should take a nap in the park. Fortunately, this newsletter is bursting with so many good things, I hardly mind. First, we’ve got a new recipe to use that head of cabbage I know has been sitting neglected in the back of your fridge since late winter. Free it, and free up space for all the spring produce to come. Next, we have a new podcast episode all about French Toast and we’ve got Cook’s Illustrated/Milk Street’s Chris Kimball on as a guest. We’ve got an interview with the wonderful Meera Sodha (you might remember her from this sheet pan favorite), whose new cookbook, Dinner: 120 Vegan and Vegetarian Recipes for the Most Important Meal of the Day just came out. And finally, for those of us feeling the strain on our wallets these days, a collection of budget-minded recipes that deserve a place in our cooking rotation. I hope you find a few new favorites.
Cheers,
Deb
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 flowers are budding and the air is warming? I thought you’d never ask! Try the pea, feta, and mint fritters, toasted ricotta gnocchi with pistachio pesto, baked orzo and artichokes, and fettuccine with white ragù. To finish, I recommend the bee sting bars and the carrot cake with brown butter and no clutter. 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.
charred salt and vinegar cabbage
New! Neglected cabbage in the back of your fridge awaiting culinary inspiration? Meet: My favorite way to roast a cabbage. It’s going to seem too charred, too vinegary when you first pull it from the oven, but I promise the pan will not make it to the table intact.
“One of the winning elements of ‘The Recipe’ is that it’s not prescriptive — rather than settling on one universal ‘perfect’ recipe, the chefs explain their personal preferences, then give listeners the information they need to make their own adjustments. By breaking their recipes down ingredient-by-ingredient, digging into what each one is doing, they make the science of cooking approachable and fun.” — New York Times, 7 Podcasts to Inspire a New Hobby
“J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Deb Perelman’s new podcast gets to not only the heart of how they make their recipes—but also the why behind each decision, too.” — Esquire, The 26 Best Podcasts of 2024
The latest full episode of my podcast with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, The Recipe with Kenji and Deb, is all about French Toast! And we’ve got a guest today: Chris Kimball! You can listen to it anywhere you get your podcasts, such as Apple, Spotify, and more.
roasted carrots with lentils and yogurt
These carrots don’t just want to be a side dish. Roasted to perfection and layered over a lentil salad with a bright vinaigrette, a puddle of yogurt, and a fistful of herbs, the whole thing is so knife-and-fork delicious, serving size becomes an abstract concept.
a really great pot of chickpeas
8 arguments for turning a pot of deeply flavorful, deeply economical, brothy chickpeas into dinner -- from a swirl of olive oil or salsa verde, sprinkle of parmesan, handful of wilted greens, spoonful of tomato sauce to burrata or an egg on top or even ladled over grilled garlicky toast. We're just getting started.
miso sweet potato and broccoli bowl
Wild rice, roasted sweet potatoes and broccoli and a miso-ginger-tahini dressing all piled into one bowl make this one of my favorite everyone-approved weeknight dinners -- use any kind of rice or combination of vegetables you've got; the dressing is the star.
black bean and vegetable bake
Letter of recommendation: Make a deep skillet of your favorite taco or burrito filling, cover it with cheese and broil the lot of it until lightly charred and gooey on top, then scoop it up with tortilla chips. Repeat as needed, which will be often.
spiced cauliflower and potatoes
Aloo gobi (spiced potatoes and cauliflower) is one of my favorite vegetable dishes, here with extra char from a sheet pan then finished on the stove. It comes out perfectly every time. (Trust me, I've been making it for 15 years.)
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.
everyday meatballs
My everyday meatballs are one-bowl, one-pot, frying-free and have so much flavor, they work as a standalone dish or with a side of salad, and by "salad" I mean garlic bread. Make a big pot of these on Sunday, bake some mozzarella and parmesan on top, and let everyone scoop it onto segments of bread and see if anyone lets you make anything else for a party ever again. [Video below!]
crispy cabbage and cauliflower salad
A crispy cabbage and cauliflower salad with a sharp tahini dressing that is fully inhale-able; we've never had leftovers. Don't skimp on the charring; the best moment is when the vegetables just begin to soften against the dressing -- each bite is both crackly and tender.
blondies, infinitely adaptable
My favorite blondies are quick, one-bowl, require no butter to be softened or advanced planning, and are infinitely adaptable with chocolate or nuts or dried fruit or, yes, all of the above. They are exactly perfect for right now.
homemade chocolate wafers + icebox cupcakes
These chocolate wafers are insanely easy to make, whizzed in a food processor and then sliced from a refrigerated log. Crisp and not overly sweet, they’d be good with anything from coffee to ice cream to fancier things, like ice cream sandwiches, crumb crusts and these icebox cupcakes. The possibilities are endless and I would like to taste one of each. I’m ambitious like that.
AN INTERVIEW WITH MEERA SODHA
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 Meera Sodha. Her new cookbook, Dinner: 120 Vegan and Vegetarian Recipes for the Most Important Meal of the Day, is out now.
1. What inspired your cookbook?
Dinner is the cookbook that wasn’t meant to be!
A few years ago I lost my love for food and cooking. I was suffering from extreme burnout and had to take a step back from work and writing books. Then one day my husband, Hugh, after doing all the parenting, cooking and everything, was starting to struggle too and asked me to cook for him. After months of not even feeling a single spark to cook, I jumped up and made him a dal curry, a simple store cupboard aromatic coconut dal we both adore and ate truckloads of in Singapore.
I felt my fingertips fizzing again! I enjoyed making it. I suspected it was because I was cooking out of pleasure, so I promised myself from then on, I would cook but from my belly and heart and not for Instagram likes, an audience or work. I’d only cook for myself, my family and friends.
At first, I didn’t cook much - a lot of omelettes, noodles and things I could bung in the oven or a pot and I only ever wanted to cook dinner - but I recorded these recipes in an orange notebook and it filled up over time. Cooking dinner gave me a sense of purpose again, a sense of my creativity and the ability to get people around a table - which I adore. But the food was all so simple and not at all fancy. I felt I had to write this book because I wanted to share the magic of cooking dinner, but as if nobody was watching.
2. What recipe are you the most proud of in the book, or felt the most triumphant when you got it right?
I am very proud of my 18 carat laksa (read: carrot). It’s a spiced coconut noodle soup based on a Malaysian style laksa and it’s the one recipe that took a decade to write. To explain: my husband buys a bag of carrots every week and we don’t always use them so I'd been trying to find a way to turn a couple of pounds of carrots into dinner for years. Years!
While I was eating some roasted carrots, I had a (small) eureka moment in that I realised they have a similar sweet, savoury profile to prawns and seafood which often feature in traditional laksa and they take spice really well and so the laksa came to be. I dress them with quick pickled beansprouts and I love to dunk in some fried tofu puffs to soak up the lovely coconutty soup.
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?
Stop what you’re doing and make the baked butter paneer immediately! It’s one of my favourite things to make because…it’s fantastically easy and the end result is a whopping great rich, creamy, flavourful curry with a heavenly spiced tomato sauce and lovely soft chunks of paneer. It tastes so much better for the fact that the oven did most of the cooking, I think.
4. What's something you wish more people knew about your book?
That I wrote it for myself and I wish more food writers did that because I think the most interesting food is what people really cook for themselves and their family and friends when social media isn't the judge of what's delicious.
Thank you, Meera! You can order Dinner right here.
everyday meatballs
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!
