tomatoes triumphant 🍅
plus: a salted caramel peach crisp and an interview with caroline chambers
Monday, August 12, 2024
Good morning!
I’m in Cup of Jo’s newsletter talking dinner parties and kitchen favorites. [Big Salad, gift link]
I’m on the She’s My Cherry Pie Podcast with Jessie Sheehan talking icebox cakes! [Listen: Apple, Spotify]
How to Make a Nation of Meat Eaters Crave the Humble Bean [NYTimes, unlocked]
The newsletter is running late — yes, yes, I know it always is — quite specifically because I went to the Union Square Greenmarket this morning to see if I could find more of the wonderful baby artichokes [“Get in and get out, Deb, you can do this” I coached myself as I arrived, as I know me well.] I got last week at Norwich Meadow Farm and entirely forgot they existed the moment I arrived and every table looked like a ball pit of heirloom tomatoes in every glorious hue on the red-orange-yellow-green-brown spectrum. My eyes widened, my mind emptied of any promises I’d made myself just 10 seconds prior, and after a frenzy of purchasing activity, I was half a block towards home before I realized I’d forgotten to buy artichokes.
I’m sorry; tomato season has that effect on me. How fittingly, however, as it’s this week’s theme, and it’s exactly on time. Below, a selection of a few of my favorite recipes in the Smitten Kitchen tomato archives, although narrowing it down wasn’t easy. But that’s not all. There’s a new recipe on the site for an impossibly delicious Salted Caramel Peach Crisp, a showstopper if there ever was one, and a very special interview this week with Caroline Chambers, whose new cookbook 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
salted caramel peach crisp
New: The summer peach crisp to end all peach crisps, infused with and sweetened by an easy (promise!) salted butter caramel sauce that’s also drizzled over the final crisp, along with melty scoops of ice cream (not optional, sorry). When I asked on Instagram what recipe you wanted to see next, a staggering 6700 of you voted for this — the Smitten Kitchen, as always, aims to please!
slow-roasted tomatoes
I have just the project for us because there is no higher tomato calling than slow-roasting, which basically turns them into tangy tomato candy. They're dreamy with pasta, in omelettes, salads, and on sandwiches, or you can just eat them straight. Because: candy.
three-ingredient summertime salsa
The best salsa is also the easiest.
tomato bread
A staple of Catalan cuisine, pan con tomate hardly requires a recipe, just the right season, which is exactly now. Make this while the tomatoes are still awesome. Make this with the olive oil you’ve been saving for something special. Repeat as needed, which will be often.
herbed tomato and roasted garlic tart
Roasted garlic, parmesan cheese, blistered cherry tomatoes, capers, olive oil, chives, parsley and oregano baked onto a buttery puffed pastry base is breakfast, lunch, dinner, or, why choose, all of the above this weekend.
roasted tomatoes with white beans
This is one of my favorite summer meals of all time and it's wildly simple, just cherry tomatoes quick-roasted with olive oil, garlic, and salt until saucy, and then we tumble in a can of beans and let them drink it up. Finish with basil and eat straight from the pan, or ladle it over crostini. Repeat as long as tomatoes last.
naked tomato sauce
My favorite tomato sauce is made from tomatoes and almost nothing else. Not onions or carrots or celery. No tomato paste, no slow-roasted garlic, no tomato variety so rare, you need to grow it yourself. Just tomatoes, cooked until saucy, finished with a quickly-steeped basil and garlic oil. [Video below!]
tomato and fried provolone sandwich
Not sure what to make for dinner? Not sure you even want to make dinner? Welcome; you're among friends. Here is something we can all agree on: Thick slices of cheese, griddled until crisp. Slide it onto toasted bread with a little mayo, and add big slices of the freshest tomatoes you can find, seasoned with salt and pepper. Repeat until tomato season ends.
one-pan farro with tomatoes
Dinner tonight? I think you should make my One-Pan Farro, the recipe that converts all of 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.
fusilli with baked tomato sauce
A spectacular tomato sauce that you can make from even grocery store grape tomatoes and if that wasn't enough to sell it, this is a 25-minute dinner and one of the better ones in the category. My Wednesday just got so much easier.
roasted tomato soup with broiled cheddar
What happens when American-style tomato soup and French-style onion soup get together? Blissfully: this, with an open-faced grilled cheese sandwich broiled over the top. Don't miss this one.
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 CAROLINE CHAMBERS
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 Caroline Chambers. Her cookbook What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking is out tomorrow, 8/13.
1. What inspired your cookbook?
I've always love to cook, so much so that I made it my profession, as a recipe developer. After I had my first son in 2019, suddenly, for the first time, I could relate to all of my friends who constantly told me how much they hated cooking dinner every night. I was trying to figure out how to work and mom and ya know, not be a nervous wreck all the time, and I never had the time or energy to cook anymore. The way that I cook changed completely. "Project cooking" went out the window, in favor of quick, simple, flavorful meals. I still wanted to eat really good food, I just wanted it to be really fast and easy. I pitched this cookbook idea -- "What To Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking" in late 2019 and was rejected by every single publisher because I "didn't have enough social reach". I was bummed and rejected, but also got it? I was working as a freelance recipe developer at the time, and hadn't built a social presence at all. Then, March 2020 happened. And suddenly I had no freelance work coming in. So I decided to let it rip, and really focus on growing my social media presence and sharing the types of recipes that I love cooking. I quickly grew a following who came to trust me for my quick, dependable recipes. In late 2020, I decided to launch the same "What To Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking" concept, but as a newsletter on Substack. Paid subscribers have received a new recipe every single Saturday for 3 1/2 years now. Then, about 2 years ago, an editor from Union Square & Co. approached me about making "What To Cook" a cookbook. And now, it's almost here! The wild thing is, I felt so dejected after being told no back in 2019, but I know that now, in 2024, the cookbook I made is such a profoundly better version of the book than it would have been then. I have not just one but three little boys now, and I truly think I've become a better recipe developer with each kid, because I've had less time, less energy, and thus more motivation to cook really good food in a really quick and easy way.
2. What recipe are you the most proud of in the book, or felt the most triumphant when you got it right?
I love, love, love the three "one-skillet chicken and rice situations." In each of them, we cook the rice in the oven, underneath chicken. There's a burrito sich, a gingery chicken with a coconut curry sauce sich, and a pesto rice with asparagus sich. They're all so good, and they really embody the vibe of this cookbook -- simple, but really flavorful, happy food.
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?
Ok, since it's summer, I'm going with the "Grilled Lemon Harissa Chicken & Zucchini" from the 15-ish minute chapter of the book. Coat some chicken in harissa, olive oil, salt. Grill the chicken and some thinly sliced zucchini. While it's cooking, stir together a creamy white thing (yogurt, labneh, mayo, whatever) with more harissa and lemon juice. Serve the chicken and zucchini with the harissa yogurt and fresh herbs showered over top. It's so good, feels so fancy, and it truly takes 15 minutes.
4. What's something you wish more people knew about your book?
I love that the chapters are organized by how long the recipe takes -- 15ish, 30sh, 45ish, 1 hour -- so that you can think about what to cook in terms of how to fit it into your busy schedule. In the back, there's a secondary index that catalogues the recipes by protein, and also by mood: "what to cook when you feel like showing off," "what to cook when you're in the mood for something cozy" etc.
Thank you, Caroline! You can preorder What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking right here.
naked tomato sauce
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!
