easy dinners for the cooking-ambivalent
plus: plum and cream scone cobbler
Monday, July 17, 2022
Good afternoon!
One day I will pull this off. (TikTok)
In defense of garlic in a jar (The Walrus)
How is your summer going? This time of summer can feel sleepy, either because it seems like everyone but us is on a farflung vacation but also because it’s also just too hot to think very hard or do very much. My cooking energy has been, save a few big feasts, relatively low this month because the kid who actually likes my cooking is at sleepaway camp, leaving me with what we affectionately call Buttered Noodles for Frances, a recipe I’m very tempted to write as I’ve been mastering it for seven straight years. Thus, a very timely newsletter: summer cooking for times of ambivalence, recipes so easy I don’t mind that they take, at most, five minutes longer than waiting for takeout, all with summer produce in mind. I hope you find just the right thing for dinner tonight.
Cheers,
Deb
plum and cream scone cobbler
New: A cobblestoned cobbler for ripe summer plums (or other stone fruit) as simple as can be: no peeling fruit, no guesswork, no rolling pins, and no cookie cutters. The almond-scented scones find each other in the oven, some tumbling over, sopping up some of the bubbling juices below, and browning on top. A scoop of vanilla ice cream melting over the top is nonnegotiable.
✨ My third cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers, will be out in just over four months and I cannot wait to share it with you because I’m very bad at keeping secrets and am absolutely restless for you to be able to make this green swirly spaghetti and the summer dinner cobbler and my favorite fuss-free lemon poppy seed cake. I hope you will consider preordering it so it’s deposited at your doorstep the moment it’s out in the world and you can dive in right away. Details here! ✨
angel hair pasta with raw tomato sauce
Dinner tonight could take 15 minutes to make and showcase tomatoes in nearly their purest form, naturally sweet and faintly tangy, then garlic-infused and tangled with fresh basil and strands of spaghetti into everything you could want in a mid-July meal.
crisp black bean tacos with feta and slaw
These tacos are a stealth archive favorite for over 13 years now -- they seem so simple but they hit all the perfect weeknight dinner notes with a quick black bean filling, easy slaw, and pan-crisped taco shell we should never be deprived of.
crisped chickpeas with herbs and garlic yogurt
This is a Top 5 favorite warm-weather meal for me -- pan-crisped chickpeas on top of blistered lemony zucchini on top of a salty garlic yogurt sauce, finished with herbs and more lemon juice. It serves exactly one person and it's not sorry about it at all.
eggs in purgatory, puttanesca-style
Who likes meals you can make in 15 minutes? Me me me! Classic eggs in purgatory with a sauce that's more puttanesca (spicy and bright) than the usual marinara.
mediterranean baked feta with tomatoes
Feta, tomatoes, garlic, and chickpeas roast in olive oil until the tomatoes blister and soften, the feta becomes creamy, and the whole mixture is a dream to scoop onto flatbread. It's almost endlessly tweakable. Dinner should always be this easy.
bacon corn hash
Breakfast for dinner? This has four ingredients -- crisped bacon, potatoes, corn cooked in the renderings, and a heap of scallions -- plus one fried egg on top and we're going to immediately wonder why we don't make this more often.
skirt steak salad with arugula and blue cheese
Steak salads are a favorite of ours because they check so many boxes -- a little luxurious, lots of greens, and a bright vinaigrette makes them anything but sleepy.
almond-crisped peaches
Forget pies and crumbles; the peaches here *are* the crisp, maybe even brushed with bourbon before filling their centers with a mound of crumbly buttery almond topping, which bakes into a caramelized brittle lid.
This dish converts all the farro skeptics. It's easy (everything cooks at once, all together, with ingredients you probably already have around), quick, vegetarian, and yet tastes anything but austere.
shop my favorites
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. For each item, I've attempted to provide a range of shopping links so we're not just focusing on one giant retailer. Let me know if there’s anything I’ve left off that you need.
See you next week!
