sweet corn and all the berries
plus: a napa cabbage wedge and an interview with jenny rosenstrach
Monday, August 26, 2024
Good morning!
I will never admit how many times a day I think about this “wedding cake”
An article about the SK Classroom Wishlist Project, more details below.
Greetings from coastal Maine, where we are on vacation this week with family, getting our fix of lobster, blueberry pie, flat beaches at low tide, flag-draped weathered barns, and um, mosquitos, which are having a good laugh at what passes for bug spray in NYC. I will throw a pity party for this inconvenience by trying out every doughnut shop we can walk or drive to, so I must hurry off, as many close at noon.
This week we’re taking a deep dive into all the sweet corn and berry recipes, because they’re too good in late August not to be celebrated. You can find my favorite recipe for blueberry pie (it also contains blackberries) too! Plus, a new recipe for a highly addictive Napa Cabbage Wedge with Miso Dressing. And, this week we have an interview with Jenny Rosenstrach whose new, and perfectly-timed cookbook for the back-to-school/back-to-the-grind chaos, The Weekday Vegetarians Get Simple: Strategies and So-Good Recipes to Suit Every Craving and Mood is out tomorrow.
Cheers!
Deb
The Smitten Kitchen Classroom Wishlist Project 2024 is going strong! In the US, a tremendous number of teachers don’t get the funding they need to set their classrooms up for success. Most will end up paying out of their own pockets to buy educational materials, which is all wrong. I’ve asked teachers to send me their wishlists in hopes that we can help clear as many as possible, as we did the last two summers. Help out if you feel you’re able — you will unquestionably make a teacher’s (and their students’) day! [Project information. Direct link to spreadsheet.]
Deb
napa cabbage wedge with miso dressing
New! A crunchy, vibrant, and wildly delicious Napa cabbage wedge-style salad with an unforgettable miso dressing, crispy shallots and radishes. You should just go ahead and double everything because I don’t think you’ll want to just eat this once.
corn fritters
This is my platonic ideal of a corn fritter: crunchy, golden brown, and mostly sweet corn kernels with just the tiniest amount of batter to tether them together. These have scallions, chives, and cheddar and they're exquisite (with a dab of mayo, if you dare) but I've suggested at least four other flavor combinations (mm, cacio e pepe, miso-scallion...) I didn't get to -- yet.
corn chowder with chile, lime and cotija
This is my favorite corn chowder: a hearty soup with beans instead of the usual potatoes, with a rich and salty lime and cheese finish, plus baked tortilla chips on the side for all the crunch.
leek, chard and corn flatbread
Leeks and corn find their perfect sweet/salty rhythm against crumbled goat cheese in the most summery thing you could do to a pizza dough.
charred corn tacos with zucchini-radish slaw
One of my favorite cooking discoveries of the last few years was that I could char sweet summer corn over a gas flame for the most incredible caramelized flavor that otherwise eludes us grill-less city dwellers. Then I turned it into the most summery tacos yet. Can you blame me?
corn cacio e pepe
The only thing I love more than the combination of salty, funky pecorino cheese and copious amounts of black pepper on a tangle of linguine is the way I make it in the summer: adding sweet, crunchy corn. It's the perfect complement; they're made for each other. Hurry so you can make this before the corn disappears and the cardigans arrive. 🍂
corn, cheddar and scallion strata
This strata with corn, scallions, cheddar, and sourdough is a late summer favorite for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It reheats gorgeously, if you want to plan ahead for a delicious weekend.
summer succotash with bacon and croutons
I always thought succotash was one of those dishes parents made to trick kids into eating lima beans until I tried the late Gourmet's version. In it, shell beans, sweet corn, spicy arugula, crisp salty bacon, croutons and a glug of sherry vinegar transform into a sweet, crunchy, salty, zingy, blissful bold bowl of summer.
blueberry pancakes
Classic blueberry buttermilk pancakes and 10 pancake tips from deep in the archives, just in time for peak blueberry season. The pancakes are now one-bowl and ready to ease us all out of bed on a sleepy morning. T[Video below!]
easy drop berry shortcakes
A tall, craggy, crunchy-edged shortcake that’s a cinch to make, requiring no rolling pins, round cutters, unusual ingredients, or more pressingly, advanced planning to put together. Just add berries and cream.
triple berry summer buttermilk bundt
This is the happiest summer cake — bronzed with a faint crunch at the edges, tender to the point of pudding-ness in the center, dotted with jammy berries, and welcome wherever you get to share it.
swirled berry yogurt popsicles
Lightly sweetened Greek yogurt + half-blended fresh berries = popsicles for breakfast are sheer heat wave brilliance.
cheesecake bars with all the berries
My favorite simple, fuss-free cheesecake is poured into a sheet pan (for better proportions and more servings) and then heaped with every summer berry you can get your hands on -- or basically all of them; they're gloriously in season right now. This is a perfect summer dessert.
blackberry-blueberry crumb pie
A two-berry pie with a gorgeous hue and the fluffiest cobblestone of a crumb topping. Swap equal amounts of another fruit combination, if you wish. Just don't skip the topping.
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.
My podcast with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, The Recipe with Kenji and Deb, launched this spring. Our tenth episode and season finale is the second of a two-part Mailbag episode where we answer as many of your questions as we can. 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. I hope you’ve enjoyed listening along to season one — season two is coming very soon, and it’s going to be so much fun.
AN INTERVIEW WITH JENNY ROSENSTRACH
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 Jenny Rosenstrach. Her cookbook The Weekday Vegetarians Get Simple: Strategies and So-Good Recipes to Suit Every Craving and Mood is out tomorrow, 8/27.
1. What inspired your cookbook?
When I published volume one of The Weekday Vegetarians a few years ago, it felt like the book struck a chord with people who wanted to dial back on their meat consumption, but weren’t quite ready to give it up altogether. That was me, too, so the book was a very personal journey, told almost in real-time. This new book, The Weekday Vegetarians: Get Simple continues with that mission, while also addressing the very real obstacles that prevent people from committing to more vegetable-forward cooking in general. I kept hearing people say “I would love to cook more vegetarian meals but it’s just so complicated!” So I was determined to figure out a collection of straightforward, simple vegetarian dinner recipes.
2. What recipe are you the most proud of in the book, or felt the most triumphant when you got it right?
The Tamarind-Glazed Cauliflower Tacos. A few years ago, my daughter, Abby, came back from a 16th birthday party at some downtown spot, and wouldn’t stop talking about the cauliflower tacos — a menu item that was just starting to show up in every restaurant across the country. I was intrigued, reminding her that she didn’t like cauliflower, but after a few follow-up questions, determined that the florets had been deep-fried to resemble popcorn shrimp, and deep-frying is something I will never have the energy or bravery to attempt in my own kitchen. But she kept on being like “remember those tacos?” so of course, I gave it a shot…and another shot…and another shot, trying to come up with a decent workaround for the deep-frying. Eventually I ended up borrowing a technique from Balaboosta chef (and crispy cauliflower queen) Einat Admony to achieve just the right texture, then it was just a matter of tossing in a store-bought tamarind glaze (lots of permission for using store-bought ingredients in this book!) and drizzling the whole thing with a bright green herby sauce. I have to say, even Abby would admit that I nailed it.
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?
This is a very hard question considering low-effort, high-reward is the literal concept of the book, lol. Some recipes earn this honor more than others, though. There’s a recipe for Menemen, or Turkish scrambled eggs with tomatoes and spices, which was inspired by a version I kept ordering again and again at a Turkish restaurant in Mamaroneck, NY called Roasters. Menemen is one of Turkey’s most popular comfort foods — it involves simply scrambling eggs softly, then tossing in tomatoes, onions, and Urfa biber (made from southern Turkey’s distinctly dark colored Chile pepper), which lends it a uniquely sweet depth. I am always looking to “dinner-fy” eggs and I took to this technique (and the urfa biber) immediately. Also, the tomato tart with blue cheese and chives is the cover recipe for a reason: It’s the almost embarrassingly beginner-level simple and yet always received with wide-eyed euphoria at my dinner table! Just the other night I was cooking for my nephews and nieces and saw I had a few extra tomatoes lying around, so I put a tart together in about five minutes as sort of an afterthought. I didn’t have blue cheese or chives, but I had ricotta and basil, and that is the beauty of it — it’s endlessly riffable. And for better or worse, steals the scene from anything else unlucky enough to sit next to it on a table, especially this time of year when the tomatoes are A-plus-plus-plus-plus.
4. What's something you wish more people knew about your book?
Last summer, I started getting emails from so many friends asking for easy vegetarian recipes — I remember one friend requesting dinners that were as “stupid-easy” as possible. This was of course, not unusual, I’ve been writing about easy dinners for almost 15 years now, but it struck me that these were all parents of kids who were in college — empty nest parents, who in theory should’ve felt a little relief from the relentless meal-making grind. I quickly realized though, that they were asking about recipes not for them but for their college-age and twenty-something kids, many of whom were out on their own cooking for themselves for the first time, and clueless about the whole dinner thing, i.e. how to cook but also how to plan, and how to shop efficiently and on a budget. So there is a chapter in the book about basic starter kit dinners that is devoted to those kids — my kids, I should note! — and it makes me kind of tearful to think about how full circle the whole love story really is.
Thank you, Jenny! You can preorder The Weekday Vegetarians Get Simple right here.
blueberry pancakes
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!
