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cold-brewed iced coffee

Posted: Aug 27th, 2008, 11:46am MST by deb

Since I began working from home, I have no doubt I have saved a ton of money by not buying those yogurt-granola cups and salad bar lunches everyday. What I haven’t saved even a penny on, however, is my iced coffee habit. If anything, it’s gotten worse.

Or better, depending on how you look at it. The first month, I spent a lot of time at Starbucks, yet not because I am addicted to their coffee, but the other unspoken the Opiate of the Freelancing Class: Free wireless. But after a few weeks, the loud and generally awful music (greatly compensated for by playing Hallelujah often, however, they’d play the John Cale version and that’s the wrong one and yes, I have digressed this far) and the fact that even at 9 a.m., the bathrooms smelled like a barn. An overcrowded one.

Enter my newly-purchased wireless card, and suddenly I have freedom to work at wonderful coffee shops with from Joe to 9th Street to Grumpy to you-name-it, I’ve been to them all. Fair Trade and Clover-made and Sumatra blended coffees, my habit is spiraling blissfully out of control.

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sour cherry compote

Posted: Aug 26th, 2008, 9:19am MST by deb

Growing up, we had a sour cherry tree in the backyard. And I hated it. I hated it because it was cruel in a way that kids think they’re intimately familiar with–shiny, perfect-looking thing dangled inches from your face that when you reach for, is totally disappointing, crushing even (because when you’re a kid, it’s all very dramatic).

Sour doesn’t even aptly describe what these cherries taste like; they’re more along the lines of “caustic” and “acerbic,” especially if you’re a kid. I never understood how something that looked like the very embodiment of cherry perfection–round, bright red marbles hanging from a tree–could taste so awful, but they did.

I don’t think it was until I had moved to New York that I came across sour cherries in a format I wholly approved of: a sour cherry crumble bar. Unfortunately, it was very “unapproved” way–in a take-away box from some uppity coffee shop in my apartment refrigerator, and it belonged to my roommate. So I only had A Taste. (Don’t ever live with me, people. I cannot be trusted.) Just a little evening off the side, and then a little more leveling so it looked better, and then pushed it so far back in the fridge I believe the roommate found it months later and didn’t recognize it.

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marinated eggplant with capers and mint

Posted: Aug 24th, 2008, 12:17pm MST by deb

Hoo hoo hoo. Hee hee. Remember when I was all “and I’ll tell you what to serve this crisp rosemary flatbread tomorrow!”? Well, the beach got in the way. And after that, some Chinese food. And a movie (do not watch! the first was so much better). Oh, and then a nap that lasted until 10 this morning…

Wait, are you still listening? Of course not. You’re at the beach, too. The weather has been so fantastic lately and the summer is almost over, making it even hard for me to motivate to cook anything. And yet, I am looking at the long list of recipes I haven’t gotten to writing up yet, and I realize that I’ve been cooking more than ever. How does that compute?

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crisp rosemary flatbread

Posted: Aug 22nd, 2008, 9:38am MST by deb

It took me until I was on some interminable wait on the phone last week with hold music so awful, they had to have done it on purpose, to finally get to flipping through the July 2008 Gourmet magazine. And if there were ever a spread that could lift you from your “love lifts us up where we belong” drudgery, it would be that gorgeous herb-focused spread near the back of the issue. (Like I said, it was a long hold time.)

I immediately had to make it. All of it. And I can see I am not the only one. But to start, let’s talk about this recipe, something I think everyone in the entire world should have in their repertoire: Flatbread.

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dimply plum cake

Posted: Aug 21st, 2008, 6:54am MST by deb

All of a sudden, the summer is as awesome as any summer could possibly be–the days are no longer oppressively hot, swinging from a temperate high-seventies to mid-eighties and the humidity has dropped–and just like that, it is also almost over. Noooo!

I’m not handling this very well. I don’t want summer to be almost over. I don’t care that I love fall; I love even more not having to wear jackets and toe-covering shoes and socks. I hate socks most of all. Everyone knows that fall is abundantly short-lived and all of a sudden you’re catapulted into the longest, winter ever, and …

I’m not ready.

And yet, there’s something happening in our kitchen that subverts my insistence that summer must not end. I made a tiny braise (it was vegetables but still, a braise), I’ve started missing that butternut and chickpea salad we made almost weekly last winter and now this too: I put cinnamon in a coffee cake.

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kefta and zucchini kebabs

Posted: Aug 19th, 2008, 6:36am MST by deb

One of my favorite things about cooking is being surprised. As much fun as it is chasing some childhood recipe or flavor ideal I caught a whiff of at some restaurant, somewhere, nothing matches the surprise of finding a recipe that you’re not entirely sure will be your thing, trying it anyway and then spending the rest of the night going “this is good,” “wow, this is so good,” and “wow, I had no idea it would be this good.”

Well, that part is kind of boring to anyone but the person experiencing the delicious surprise but still, this recipe is one of those. I have to admit that my fearful-of-combining-sweet-and-savory husband has poisoned me a little, and when I see warm spices like cinnamon and allspice in a savory recipe, I’m doubtful I will like it. Not that it won’t work, per se, just that it won’t work for me. Even though a good part of the world adds these spices to their savory dishes and surely they can’t all be wrong.

But these meatball skewers are awesome. Awe-some. And then some. I expect that some astute readers might have noticed that I rarely feature meat recipes; I’m not enthralled enough with it that I am easily impressed into trying new recipes. But when I am, well, hot damn. I didn’t think I could even like a meat anything this much, nonetheless a meatball. They’re spicy and juicy and delicious charred at the edges, and the minty yogurt sauce is the perfect contrast for the kefta as well as the zucchini skewers and I want more right now.

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tell me more, tell me more

Posted: Aug 17th, 2008, 5:24pm MST by deb

Be glad you’re not in the room with me these days, because I’ve been singing, or “wailing” as Alex likes to call it, “getting to knooooooow yoooooou” for days. Except that’s the only line I know, and as usual, it has not stopped me from restarting the tune every 20 seconds or so. Oh, and I don’t even know what “pitch” is or how to approximate attaining it. Really, I’m a delight.

Nevertheless, as painful as it might be to hear about in person, I really do want to get to know you better and I’ve finally buckled down and begged Alex (see how I did that there?) to put together a questionnaire-type thing that will help me towards that goal. Despite the fact that you’ve given this site such a fun and enthusiastic comment section, I suspect that only about 5 to 10 percent of you have ever chimed in, which is totally fine but means that the rest of you are something of a mystery to me.

For example, do you like pie after a movie or are you completely tired of me overusing this True Romance reference? Do you like your pancakes with butter and jam or maple syrup? How many days a week do you eat PB&J for lunch? Is four too many? Do you think that I could shatter wine glasses with my high notes?

Okay, fine, I don’t really get into any of those questions, mostly I just want to know a little bit more about who you are, where you’re from and how you feel about cooking, and the answers are just for me, me me–not some marketing research group or an ad network–and to satisfy my curiousity, so I hope you’ll consider taking a few minutes to answer 15 easy questions. In fact, I’ll even leave it open for a whole week, so you know, you’ll have no excuse not to regale me with your answers.

[The Smitten Kitchen Getting to Knooow Yooou Poll]

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slow-roasted tomatoes

Posted: Aug 14th, 2008, 11:49am MST by deb

I am sometimes certain that I wait all year for tomato season, you know, the way a more normal person might be excited for the Giants to get back to the field or eagerly anticipate whatever sleek and minimal trinket Apple has coming out this fall. But for me, it’s just tomatoes. I eat them on eggs, in sandwiches, cooked and raw in every possible format from paste to pasta to chili and seriously, don’t even try to bring me a cream cheese-schmeared bagel without a thin slice of tomato on it. Alex did once and let’s just say, it didn’t go over well. Poor Alex.

I love tomatoes so much that I even occasionally take part in the blasphemy that is “sun-dried tomatoes,” most of which are about as dried out in the sun as I am this week–unfortunately not the case for either of us. But lets talk about what sun-dried tomatoes aspired to be before their dreams were co-opted by food packagers and evil-minded chemists: tomatoes roasted slowly at a low temperature.

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chocolate peanut butter cake

Posted: Aug 11th, 2008, 8:50pm MST by deb

Alex’s birthday was this past weekend and in case you are new here, let me give you a loose outline of a Standard Dessert Alex Politely Requests: Chocolate. Chocolate with chocolate. Chocolate with caramel. Chocolate with toffee. Chocolate with coffee. Chocolate with hazelnut cream. Chocolate with Oreos. Chocolate cheesecake with brownie chunks. Chocolate icebox cake. Chocolate with raspberries. Chocolate with white chocolate. Chocolate with dulce de leche. Chocolate with banana cake.

What, can you sense a theme or something?

This year we added one more to the chocolate cake pile: Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake. Well, actually, the technical title of the cake is Sour Cream-Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting and Chocolate Peanut Butter Glaze, though it is actually a Sour Cream-Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Peanut Butter Frosting and Chocolate Peanut Butter Glaze, but all you really need to know is that if you know a chocolate-and-peanut-butter lover, you must make this cake.

Because did I mention the chocolate cake? With the chocolate-peanut butter ganache (I bet you didn’t even know such a thing existed, I sure didn’t and my life may never be the same again. I wish I could quit it.) And the cream cheese peanut butter frosting and filling? Actually, let us pause on that last part. If you’re anything like me, the thought of cream cheese and peanut butter intentionally mixed probably gives you a bit of pause. I don’t know cheese + sweetened peanuts? That can’t be right, I thought. Well, I was wrong. They are perfect together, with the tangy/saltiness of the cream cheese helping the peanut butter hit all the right notes.

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how to poach an egg, smitten kitchen-style

Posted: Aug 8th, 2008, 3:04pm MST by deb

I am tortured by two opposing forces in my life: the fact that I love poached eggs–on anything and everything, from asparagus to slow-roasted slices of tomato, crisped cups of Canadian bacon, black bread, I could keep going… — and the fact that I’m terrible at making them.

And this is why it is so ridiculous amusing that I am giving you–or at least the eleven of you that said you were afraid of poaching eggs–a poached egg tutorial today. And by “today” I mean two days because it took me two tries to even get one worth photographing (though in my defense, holding the camera in your right hand while lowering an egg into a pot with your left does have a certain inevitability of disaster).

Obviously, this makes me sort of expert, so let’s get started!

How to Poach an Egg

There are about as many methods to poaching eggs as there are eggs on this earth, from plastic wrap (sorry, ew) to poaching cups to cupcake liners seriously, I’ve lost track but I am sure that people will be eager to share their own in the comments. This is simply the one that works for me. When I’m not holding a camera in my other hand.

First, heat a pot with a few inches of water in it.

Put a splash of vinegar in the water. This helps tighten up the egg. I know there are strong pro- and anti-vinegar in egg-poaching waters out there, but like I said: this is just what works for me!

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