the summer of '07
plus: strawberry brita cake
Monda, June 6, 2022
Good morning!
The Ridiculous Egg Machine That Changed My Breakfast Game (New Yorker)
Twitter was all aflutter last week with “Swedengate” and I, too, have many questions. Here’s a little primer. (Independent)
I might be going through a fit of nostalgia — I tend to do these embarrassing things after wrapping up big projects (in this case, my third cookbook, which will out this fall) — but I realized this week that a whole lot of the things I like to cook the most in the summer are from the summer of 2007 on smittenkitchen.com. [It’s absolutely wild that I can have a website that’s over 15 years old while I remain so young, haha, but here we are.] In the summer of 2007, the Smitten Kitchen was about to turn a single year old, and I want to make this absolutely clear: I had no idea what I was doing. [Arguably, I still don’t, but we can save that for another newsletter therapy session.] I’d started the site as a place to share recipes I felt were worth repeating, and fully expected it to last six months before it fizzled into oblivion as I knew very little about cooking and presumed most people preferred to get cooking advice from people who had a clue. Instead, I was heading into the site’s one-year mark with a steadily growing audience and despite lacking any central guiding philosophy aside from “I want to make this today,” I still love so many of these seemingly random picks. I hope you find some new again favorites, too.
Cheers,
Deb
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, meringues tops that wobble and crumble as they please, berries tumbling free. I've kept this one from you too long. I hope it goes immediately on your baking agenda.
Some favorites from the summer of ‘07
quick zucchini sauté
Inspired by the zucchini sauté at the late, wonderful Red Cat restaurant in Chelsea, this forever favorite summer vegetable dish takes 5 minutes to make, uses all of 3 ingredients and tastes like 10x the sum of its parts. Plus, it helps keep summer's real torment at bay: insurmountable heaps of zucchini.
red pepper soup
I realized that red pepper soup will always play second fiddle to tomato soups and corn chowders in the summer, but this is, to me, perfect bowl of soup for a rainy summer day. I'm also deeply attached to it because it was a dinner party menu staple for many years -- it's simple, cozy, and looks really cute in small cups with a swirl of cream.
ratatouille-style ratatouille
I don’t mean to get all emo here but I think this was my first viral recipe, but back then we didn’t call it viral, it simply crashed our pathetic web servers for a day. Ratatouille, the movie about a rat, a rat who wants to be a chef, had just come out and the chef makes a very gussied-up ratatouille that won hearts and minds and everyone who saw the movie craved it after. I attempted to recreate it from what I remembered — blissfully unaware that it was based on a Thomas Keller dish, confit biyaldi — I still think it’s the most delicious summer dish.
dilled potato and pickled cucumber salad
Adapted from a 2004 Bon Appetit recipe, this my family's favorite potato salad, one that's as populated with vegetables — crunchy, delicious ones, like radishes and lightly pickled cucumbers — as it is with potatoes, so it feels like something you might eat with any dinner in warmer weather, and not only as a bbq side.
gateau de crêpes
Pre-kids, I had a lot more time to make wildly elaborate birthday cakes for friends, family, and in this case, myself! Lacy crepes layered with whipped cream-lightened and vanilla bean-flecked pastry cream, then topped with caramelized sugar as if it were a crème brûlée, this is an absolute dream of a celebration cake and, as my birthday is this week, I might just be crazy enough to take it on again.
strawberry chiffon shortcake
Featherweight vanilla and lemon-kissed cake layers with all of the whipped cream and fresh strawberries, stacked and party-ready, this has always been what a perfect June party cake looks like to me.
black-bottom cupcakes
An old-school recipe for a chocolate cupcake swirled with cheesecake. No frosting on top, and no frosting needed, which means you get to enjoy these that much sooner. I adapted these from David Lebovitz’s Great Book Of Chocolate, a book as wonderful as ever.
My favorite blueberry muffins are tall, almost equal parts berry and muffin, and have the crunchiest bronzed lid on top, perfect for lifting off in a satisfying shell and swiping with salted butter. They're also one-bowl and -- you could be eating them in no time.
My third cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers, is now available for preorder, coming out this fall. I cannot wait to share with you all of the new recipes I’ve been working on behind the scenes.
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!
