it's raining strawberries 🍓
plus: dinner this week
Monday, June 5, 2023
Good afternoon!
5 Tips For Better Veggie Burgers from Lukas Volger, whose book, Veggie Burgers Every Which Way, is out tomorrow! [Substack]
Your secret weapon to becoming a better cook costs nothing [Salon]
Please Throw Away All the Scary Stuff in Your Freezer [Eater]
Greetings from an airplane! Ah, it’s like old times (November-January, at least) except this isn’t for a book tour stop but something fun I’ll show you this fall. It’s still hard to leave home, though, the kids, the husband, and further down the list but maybe not as far as it should be, the sheer delight of NYC farmer’s markets in June, brimming with strawberries. My birthday is next weekend [it cracks me up when people say “ah, a Gemini! I knew it!”] and it is, in my mind, so intertwined in strawberry season that in Smitten Kitchen Keepers, my most recent cookbook, I shared the birthday cake I created just for me, the Strawberry Summer Stack Cake. It a wobbling triplicate of the Strawberry Summer Cake that’s better than 3x it’s parts, so you know what I’ll be making as soon as I get home. Until then, I’m sharing below a few other strawberry recipes I don’t want you to miss plus, a few dinner ideas for this week, should you not wish to subsist on strawberries and cream alone.
Cheers,
Deb
I’ve written three cookbooks and I’m a tiny bit biased, but I think you’d love them all. I’m thrilled that this warmer weather means you might be able to cook some of my summery favorites from my most recent cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers, such as: zucchini cornbread and tomato butter, snow peas with pecorino and walnuts, cucumber salad with garlicky dill yogurt, clam chowder with bacon croutons, zucchini and pesto lasagna, and crispy chili garlic butter shrimp, raspberry crostata, strawberry summer stack cake, and the blondie chipwiches (on deck this week, and every week of the summer).
STRAWBERRIES EVERYWHERE!
strawberry milk
I always thought strawberry milk was an inferior alternative to chocolate milk, not something delicious in its own right. Then I made Gabrielle Hamilton’s version -- ice-cold, slightly thick, creamy, lightly sweetened, and deep pink and now I'm all in. It's perfect.
strawberry brita cake
My favorite part of brita cakes (aside, of course, from how delicious they are) is the gorgeous chaos of it all -- teetering stacks, raw edges, whipped cream with no regard for boundaries, meringue tops that wobble and crumble as they please, berries tumbling free. I hope this one goes immediately on your weekend agenda.
strawberries and cream biscuits
Like a strawberry shortcake stuffed inside a cream scone but when it bakes in the oven, the berries try to trickle free of their 2x1 confines. Who could love such a terrible thing?
strawberry graham icebox cake
A graham-cracker cookie cake filled with a lightly cheesecake-d filling and paper thin layers of fresh strawberries, which soften quickly (no overnight nap needed, hooray) into the happiest summer thing.
strawberry cornmeal griddle cakes
Shh, don't tell the other pancakes, but these are my summer favorite. Crisp edges, plush, ungritty centers, just-tangy-enough bits of strawberry and they keep fantastically in a warm oven as long as you need them to.
strawberry sorbet
Buried way back in the SK archives, the fourth entry on the site, is the best strawberry sorbet I have ever eaten, credited to the River Cafe in London. An unusual ingredient -- a whole lemon, blended to a pulp -- brings out everything excellent about strawberries and the result is impossibly refreshing.
the red and black
You are a few muddled berries, a sparkly kicky black pepper simple syrup, some lime juice, and white tequila from making one of my favorite cocktails of all time. I think you will love it, too.
DINNER THIS WEEK
piri piri chicken
Inspired by the chicken we had in Portugal years ago, you can make this recipe with any level of heat, a whole chicken or just parts, on a grill or roasted. It's so streamlined and simple, you can make it for dinner tonight and it always comes out this good.
foolproof cacio e pepe
Cacio e pepe, one of my favorite dishes, as good at you’d have in Rome -- that is with only cheese, pepper, pasta, and water and not one other thing. You could be eating this in 20 minutes.
arugula, potato, and green bean salad
Not potato salad, per se, but a salad *with* potatoes. Green beans, arugula, and a lightly creamy walnut dressing have made this one of my favorites for over a decade. It's highly tweakable, so try it with what you've got around.
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!
