Monday, June 3, 2024
Good afternoon!
11 Ways to Keep Avocados from Browning [Cooks Illustrated]
Is this the end of Instagram cookware? [NYTimes, unlocked]
Practical advice for cooking as caregiving [Julia Turshen]
Welcome to strawberry season, which I insist is the happiest of them all. Maybe it’s just the fact that they emerge right before my birthday, so I end up jettisoning all plans for the salted brown butter caramel and opera-like chocolate, espresso, and hazelnut cakes I crave the rest of the year for wobbly, messy cream and golden butter cake stacks overrun with fresh berries, not that you can blame me, right? This week’s newsletter contains many of my favorite things to make with strawberries (it was not easy to whittle it down), a few weeknight dinner ideas (for when you need to take a break from strawberries), a new podcast episode (all about asparagus), and an interview with the wonderful Khushbu Shah, whose first cookbook, Amrikan, comes out tomorrow and I know you’re going to love it as much as I do. Should you find yourself in NYC this Friday, I’ll be interviewing Khushbu on Friday at Essex Market, and you can get tickets here.
Cheers!
Deb
My podcast with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, The Recipe with Kenji and Deb, launched two months ago and our eighth episode, out today, is all about Asparagus. You can listen to it anywhere you get your podcasts and I’ve set up a podcast tab/page where you can keep up on it here, too. We will have new episodes every two Mondays. We’ve been working on this behind the scenes for the last year — I hope you enjoy listening along.
strawberry cornmeal griddle cakes
Shh, don't tell the other pancakes, but these are my strawberry season favorite. Crisp edges, plush, ungritty centers, just-tangy-enough bits of berries and they keep fantastically in a warm oven as long as you need them to.
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 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 strawberry season agenda.
strawberry cheesecake ice cream pie
Do you need a strawberry cheesecake ice cream pie in your life? What kind of question is that, even. Churn-free, egg-free, this is basically everything great about summer desserts in a single pie dish.
strawberry summer cake
It’s tiiiime! 🍓 A tiny bit of biscuit-like cake. A staggering pound of fresh strawberries on top. In the oven, the berries collapse into jammy puddles. Trust me, it's not strawberry season until we've made this cake.
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.
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.
chicken caesar salad
This is my ultimate chicken caesar salad -- tender chicken, perfect croutons, and my favorite unapologetically inauthentic caesar salad dressing that keeps well in the fridge. I’d never have seen it coming when I first published this in the early days of SK, but this recipe has become a star of our meal routine, especially in the summer when we can grill the chicken.
mediterranean baked feta with tomatoes
This in a foil packet on a grill + some hearty olive oil-brushed bread, grilled and rubbed with a clove of garlic + a glass of rosé with a couple ice cubes clinking around in it (not sorry at all) = the perfect kind of summer afternoon.
crisp black bean tacos with feta and slaw
These tacos are a stealth archive favorite for over 15 (!) 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.
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 for these warm summer days? I thought you’d never ask! Try the zucchini cornbread and tomato butter, two-bean salad with basil vinaigrette, spinach spiral bread, tomato and corn cobbler, and lamb skewers with crackly vinegar glaze. To finish, I recommend the big crumb pie bars, the blondie chipwich, and/or the strawberry summer stack cake. 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 KHUSHBU SHAH
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 Khushbu Shah. Her cookbook Amrikan: 125 Recipes from the Indian American Diaspora is out tomorrow, 6/4.
1. What inspired your cookbook?
I spent a lot of time traveling around the country through my work at Thrillist and as the former restaurant editor at Food & Wine. It became very clear to me very quickly that the food of the Indian American diaspora had its own very unique viewpoint, but it wasn't really being talked about! So this is my love letter to the culture and culinary brilliance of the diaspora.
2. What recipe are you the most proud of in the book, or felt the most triumphant when you got it right?
I am genuinely obsessed with the Saag Paneer Lasagna (pg. 169). It's most definitely one of the most delicious things I've ever had, and is a hit with every crowd I make it for. I had a very specific vision for it (lots of layers! no ricotta! paneer in each bite!), and it's so rewarding when reality tastes even better than your dreams.
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?
The Chili Cheese Toast!! You can use any type of sliced bread that you like — I love a fluffy shokupan, or Japanese milkbread — and it'll still taste good. It takes all of 10 minutes to really put together from start to finish, and you can get basically anything you need for the recipe at any grocery store. The Jaggery Fennel Rice Krispie treats are also very easy and full of flavor and always disappear fast.
4. What's something you wish more people knew about your book?
That it is a real glimpse at the culture of the diaspora and not just recipes. There's a B-I-N-G-O game that focuses on all objects you would commonly find in a diasporic house, I dive into the diaspora's complicated relationship with meat, with alcohol, and even caste. There is a lot of humor in the book, but also a lot of research! The pictures are really pretty, but I promise it is worth reading all of the words and the introduction, too!
Thank you, Khushbu! You can preorder Amrikan right here.
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 new braiser! 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!
