Smitten with simplicity
POPULAR BLOGGER DEB PERELMAN’S unfussy recipes and conversational tone are captured in a new cookbook
Ihave been a devoted fan of Deb Perelman’s food blog, SmittenKitchen.com, which she has been writing since 2006, almost from the get-go. The girl is sassy and smart and doesn’t take herself too seriously, which is nice; she has a delightfully unfussy approach to cooking and food; her recipes are usually simple and always easy to follow — and they work. Also nice.
Plus, she has a knack for taking pictures. The photographs of the dishes she prepares in the tiny kitchen of her New York City home are lovely to look at — and there’s something about the way she illustrates whatever she has prepared that makes you want to head straight for your own kitchen and prepare your own version. I have done this more times than I can remember.
Perelman, a self-taught home cook, writes “like a good friend who just happens to be a whiz in the kitchen,” as one writer observed recently in the New York Citybased newspaper the Jewish Daily Forward.
What good news, then, that The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook: Recipes and Wisdom from an Obsessive Home Cook (Random House, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, $35) is finally available. It’s a lovely book to hold, to read — and to cook from.
Perelman devotes an entire section to breakfast, which cookbooks often neglect, and includes recipes for everything f rom French toast baked in a casserole to baked ranchero eggs with blistered jack cheese and lime crema. Most recipes begin with a little story: Her recipe for potato frittata with feta and scallions, for instance, begins with a tale of a diner in the East Village that served an all-you-can-drink brunch and a version of that frittata.
An inspired salad section features everything f rom sugar snap salad with miso dressing to honey and harissa farro salad to iceberg stack with blue cheese and radishes.
Perelman has no problem being outspoken: “I have spent a good part of the last few years believing that the world would be a better place if we could all stop pretending that kale tastes good,” she writes in the preface to, of all things, a recipe for raw kale salad that works, she says, because it includes pecans, dried cherries, soft goat cheese and a honeyDijon dressing.
She loves iceberg, always orders it when it’s on the menu. “Between forkfuls,” she writes, “I will lament ice- ten Kitchen Cookbook. Regular readers of the blog will recognize some recipes in the book, but almost all are new. berg’s low place on the lettuce totem pole, how silly it is that elite food people revile it.”
She comes across as a real person — and that’s part of her appeal: followers leave fawning comments at the bottom of her posts. Smitten Kitchen has more than 96,000 “likes” on Facebook.
Followers of her blog know that she understands and respects vegetables, and is forever finding great ways to roast and sauté and otherwise incorporate them into the meals she prepares for her family.
A wild mushroom tart, made with a crust featuring cornmeal, in addition to flour, and three kinds of cheese, is wonderful. And for the timid, the recipe is accompanied by a gentle lesson in making crust. In this recipe, as in all the others, Perelman is a kind of cheerleader. “You can do this,” she seems to be saying. So we try — and we see that she’s right.
She includes two recipes for pizza dough: one for when you’re rushed and the other for when you’re not. She keeps a copy of the book’s Everyday Margherita Pizza recipe stuck to the fridge “to remind me that, for the constant question ‘What the heck can I cook for dinner when I haven’t shopped for anything and I feel like being lazy?’ there is always an answer.”
A vegetarian section offers up such dishes as roasted tomatoes and cipollini onions with white beans and slowcooker black bean ragout — great options as the mercury drops. Hearty main-dish recipes for sesame-spiced turkey meat balls and smashed chickpea salad, and tomato-glazed meatloaves with brown butter mashed potatoes, channel comfort food.
Desserts, too, inspire — everything from olive-oil ricotta cake with concord grape coulis to “tiny but intense” chocolate cake. And there’s a fun section featuring party snacks and drinks.
Perelman’s toddler makes occasional appearances in the blog and here in the book — and he is adorable. He’s the one to whom she dedicates the book. “For Jacob Henry,” she writes: “the best thing I ever baked.”
Here is one of the more than 100 recipes in The Smit- To make pastry: In a bowl, combine the flour and salt. Add the whole sticks of butter and, using a pastry blender, break up the bits of butter until the texture is like cornmeal, with the biggest pieces the size of pebbles. In a small bowl, whisk together the sour cream, vinegar and water, and pour this over the butter-flour mixture. Stir with a spoon or a rubber spatula until a dough forms, kneading it once or twice on the counter if needed to bring it together. Pat the dough into a ball, wrap it in plastic and chill it in the refrigerator for an hour or up to two days. To prepare squash: Peel the squash, then halve and scoop out seeds. Cut into ½-inch to ¾-inch chunks. Pour 2 tablespoons of the olive oil into one or two smaller baking sheets, spreading it to an even slick. Lay the squash chunks on the baking sheet in one layer, sprinkle with ½ teaspoon of the salt, and freshly ground black pepper, and roast in a 400 F oven for 30 minutes, or until squash is tender, turning the pieces occasionally so that they brown evenly. Set aside to cool slightly. Leave the oven on.
While the squash is roasting, melt the butter and remaining tablespoon of olive oil in a heavy frying pan, and cook the onions over mediumlow heat with the sugar and remaining teaspoon of salt, stirring occasionally, until soft and tender, about 25 minutes. Stir in the cayenne pepper, if using.
Mix the squash, caramelized onions, cheese and herbs together in a bowl. To assemble the galette: On a floured work surface, roll the dough out into a 16to 17-inch round. Transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Spread the squashand-cheese mixture over the dough, leaving a 2- to 2½-inch border. Fold the border over the squash and cheese, pleating the edge to make it fit. The centre will be open. Brush the outside of the crust with the egg-yolk wash, if using.
Bake until golden brown, 30 to 40 minutes. Remove the galette from the oven, let stand for five minutes, then slide onto a serving plate. Cut into wedges and serve hot, warm or at room temperature.