your favorite summer salads
plus: grilled chicken salad with cilantro-lime dressing + an interview with alexis deboschnek
Monday, August 11, 2025
Good afternoon!
Event: I’ll be interviewing the wonderful Joan Nathan next month in Manhattan. [Tickets here]
You’re Probably Storing Cucumbers Wrong [Serious Eats]
Aldi’s Passionate, Cultlike Following [NYTimes, unlocked]
Does anyone feel like this summer is whizzing by too fast? I blame the delayed start we had here in the Northeast with a month of cool, rainy weekends, which means it has to be way too soon for schools to resume around the country. We were just getting started! I’m not ready for fall color palettes (thanks, marketing emails), apple picking (even if the apples themselves are near ready), or a general return to an indoor life. The weather, however, is fully on my side with a hot, steamy week ahead which means there’s still more time to make all of our favorite summer salads one more time. Below, a few of your favorite SK summer salads, the ones we come back to year after year, plus a brand new one that I think should go immediately in your summer dinner repertoire.
This week we resume interviews with cool cookbook authors after a partial summer hiatus and we’re talking to Alexis deBoschnek, whose stunning new cookbook, Nights and Weekends: Recipes That Make the Most of Your Time, is out tomorrow.
Cheers,
Deb
The Smitten Kitchen Classroom Wishlist Project 2025 just kicked off this week! 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 have the last three summers.
If you cannot figure out where to start, let me help: I recommend picking a school in your area, or perhaps where you grew up, or search the descriptions for classrooms that might focus on something particularly meaningful to you. There is no purchase too small to unquestionably make a teacher’s (and their students’) day. Plus, buying crayons, pencils, and books that help kids learn and succeed feels really good. 🖍️📚🍎📓✏️ Thank you for helping out! [Project information. Direct link to spreadsheet.]
I’ve written three cookbooks and one audiobook and I’m a tiny bit biased, but I think you’d love them all. My most recent cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers, is a collection of new classics specifically written with making them forever in mind, and it has a special audio edition that I hope feels exactly like you’ve pulled up a chair and I’m hanging out in the kitchen with you. My first, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, is my love letter to approachable, uncompromised home cooking. And my second, Smitten Kitchen Every Day, is a celebration of triumphant and unfussy home cooking. Not sure which one to check out first? Take a look at the recipe index and see which collection jumps out at you most.
grilled chicken salad with cilantro-lime dressing
New! My favorite summer dinner salad with chili-rubbed grilled chicken, charred corn, fresh avocado, and the best, most habit-forming, most put-it-on-everything, most I-can’t-stop-thinking-about-it cilantro lime dressing on earth. A bowl of Fritos on the side and occasionally crumbled over is optional, but not in my house.
grilled nectarines with gorgonzola and hazelnuts
From Jess Damuck's Salad Freak, an aperitif hour [or dessert, or brunch] salad that feels vacationy right now, even if we are not. The grilled nectarines take on a pie-like fragrance even before you put anything on top, but the crumbled blue cheese, honey, mint leaves, toasted hazelnuts, and flaky sea salt coordinate blissfully into something so good, I wanted to eat the plate. [Video below!]
beach bean salad
This is my platonic ideal of a summer bean salad -- one that keeps well, getting better as it marinates, and travels fantastically to anyplace your sunny afternoon takes you.
green beans with almond pesto
My favorite way to prepare green beans takes longer to eat (which says a lot, given that I usually inhale them) than it does to make. Don’t have green beans? Don’t miss the almond pesto, which tastes good on basically every vegetable.
corn bread salad with buttermilk dressing
A buttermilk-lime dressing is poured over cornbread croutons, ripe tomatoes, tender and crisp lettuces, and paper-thin slices of sweet onion in one of the most summery green salads I've ever made.
greek salad with lemon and oregano
Too hot to cook again? I have just the salad for that. A mostly authentic (the lemon is my thing) Greek salad that will provide all of the salty tartness and refreshing crunch we need. Or hold us over until someone can transport us to a breezy Greek island. Do know I'm open to either.
poolside sesame slaw
A colorful, crunchy salad with optional protein and the best miso-sesame dressing I know how to make, designed with portability in mind. It wants to tag along with you on the good life, lounging by a sparkling blue pool this weekend (just tell me what time to arrive) or wherever the warm weather takes you.
mediterranean eggplant and barley salad
The kind of blissfully unsleepy grain salad that converts everyone to grain salads -- it has a sheet pan of roasted summer vegetables inside and makes lunch leftovers you'll actually look forward to.
pasta and fried zucchini salad
Not your usual pasta salad, this one has a pesto-like sauce, capers, lemons, peas, and zucchini and it's anything but boring. You serve it warm but I can attest that cold from the fridge leftovers will make for a perfect lunch tomorrow or the day after.
chicken gyro salad
Grilled chicken, tzatziki, pitas, and a salad in a great big help-yourself platter is one of my favorite recipes on Smitten Kitchen, and exactly what I want every summer weekend meal to taste like.
corn salad with chile and lime
Loosely modeled on the flavors of esquites, this salad has a creamy, cold and sharp dressing below, warm charred corn in the middle, and a mix of lime, pickled onions, and chile powder on top. The result is basically inhale-able. I could eat this every week all summer long.
AN INTERVIEW WITH ALEXIS DEBOSCHNEK
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 Alexis deBoschnek. Her new cookbook, Nights and Weekends: Recipes That Make the Most of Your Time, is out tomorrow, 8/12.
1. What inspired your cookbook?
The long story short is that my mom had a pretty serious accident (luckily she's okay now) and my husband and I suddenly had to take care of her while also managing our farm in the Catskills, our careers, and the list goes on. While this was happening I was noticing a real shift for my peers as they became parents and their jobs took on more responsibilities and felt like more than ever we all really needed easy, approachable, delicious meals to make in as little time as possible. While most people are roasting a chicken on a Tuesday night after a busy day, they might want to do that on a Sunday when they have a little more time. I wanted to offer recipes and ideas for every day of the week, no matter where you're at in life.
2. What recipe are you the most proud of in the book, or felt the most triumphant when you got it right?
This is in the Weekends section of the book for when you have a bit more time, but I'm super proud of the French Market Chicken. I wanted the chicken to mimic the texture of rotisserie but needed to make sure it could be done in a home kitchen. It gets cooked low and slow for three hours until the skin is crispy and the meat is falling off the bone.
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?
It's so hard to choose, but the Cod in Green Sauce has been a favorite of mine this summer. You make a punchy green sauce in the blender or food processor and then simmer cod filets in the sauce for about 10 minutes. The cod is flaky and perfectly cooked and the sauce offers a ton of flavor. I like to serve it over rice but crusty bread works too if I'm trying to do as little cooking as possible.
4. What's something you wish more people knew about your book?
Once the recipes were in a good place, I tested them at least three more times before I sent them along to my recipe tester and friends for feedback. If they had notes I incorporated them and tested the recipes again. All that is to say, these recipes really work! They're unbelievably easy but totally deliver on the promise of being delicious and easy to execute.
Thank you, Alexis! You can preorder Nights and Weekends right here.
grilled nectarines with gorgonzola and hazelnuts
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. For each item, I've attempted to provide a range of shopping links so we're not just focusing on one giant retailer.
What’s the Smitten Kitchen x Staub Braiser? It’s an 11-inch, 4-quart braiser — essentially a lower profile enameled cast-iron Dutch oven that works as as well as a deep sauté pan as it does a soup pot, roasting pan, or even casserole dish that perfectly fits a pasta bake. Not a week has gone by in the decade I’ve had mine when I don’t use it at least three times. And we just got in a limited run of a stunning blue color for spring!
Your braiser purchase contains three new recipes (two savory, one sweet) by me that work perfectly in your new pot. If you’re looking for even more ideas, I created a category on the site to highlight some of my favorite dishes I make in mine.
See you next week!
