Author name: deb

pumpkin basque cheesecake

It’s been 17 months since I first questioned whether anyone even needed another recipe for a basque cheesecake — the burnished, custardy and uncluttered kind that hails from San Sebastián, Spain — and concluded that in fact, …

crunchy brown butter baked carrots

My strongest opinion on Thanksgiving sides is that whenever possible, they should come in a casserole dish (or its chic French cousin, a gratin). I don’t mean that your sides should be limited to things that swim in cream, cheese, butter…

baked potatoes with crispy broccoli and bacon

Unless you’re living your life better than me (probably!), I bet it’s probably been way too long since you last had a baked potato for dinner — or, as they’re more charmingly called across the pond, “jacket potato…

brown butter snickerdoodles

Friends, it’s snickerdoodle season. If you didn’t know that snickerdoodles had a season, let me paint a picture for you: you’re coming inside on a blustery and colder-than-you’d-expected October day so you hadn’t …

spinach and ricotta gnudi

Although spinach gnudi — soft, pillowy cheese dumplings fried in browned butter and sage — are traditionally more of a spring or summer food, I’m here to make the argument we should eat them right now, in prime soup-and-sweat…

opera cake

Welcome to the cake that has terrified me the most. You see, I have two favorite cakes. The first is my Strawberry Summer Stack Cake, the layered strawberry, cream, and butter cake version of the Strawberry Summer Cake in Smitten Kitchen Keepe…

cabbage and halloumi skewers

Every September, I step up onto my soapbox to report for my self-appointed duty — one part desperate, one part cantankerous — to remind us that summer isn’t over yet. I beg us to put away the decorative gourds and pumpkin spi…

double chocolate zucchini bread

Oh you wanted a chocolate zucchini bread recipe? Don’t you know this is a food blog? I’m contractually obligated to tell a meandering and infuriatingly irrelevant story in each headnote, keeping you from the recipe as long as possi…

grilled chicken salad with cilantro-lime dressing

What did we get up to while our kids’ time away overlapped for two weeks this summer? Did we go on vacation? Did we party every night? The truth is honestly embarrassing, so middle-aged coded, Deb of the early Smitten Kitchen years would…

chipwich ice cream cake

High on the list of cooking things that I’ve got far more opinions on than anyone has ever asked of me (and may have even, at times, prayed I’d stop yapping about), are homemade ice cream sandwiches. Why? Because it’s devasta…

focaccia with zucchini and potatoes

I didn’t mean to get so carried away making focaccia over the last few months, but don’t I always say that? As if I forget how easily I get consumed with a very specific idea for what a recipe should be and cannot let it go, even w…

burrata with crushed cherries and pistachios

Last summer, a friend came to a barbecue and said, “We had soccer and then a birthday party and I had no time to make anything but I brought this” and started unloading items from a grocery bag. There were no clean cooking utensils…

cucumber crunch salad with tofu

Is it too hot to cook? Does the thought of even turning on the microwave feel like it might tip you too close to the surface of the sun? We are long overdue to talk about my favorite heat wave meal, one I’ve been holding out on you for f…

slushy paper plane

A few years ago, Alex and I started batching cocktails and keeping them in the freezer. Batching may sound fancy and professional but at most we were participating in rudimentary math (“one ounce? nah, one cup!”) and advanced lazin…

one-pan ditalini and peas

Until recently, I was fairly ambivalent about one-pan pasta recipes. I appreciate them in a pinch [here’s a longtime favorite; and this is my total comfort food], but I sometimes find that when the pasta is cooked in a sauce the whole ti…

eggs florentine

It’s probably no surprise that if choosing between having brunch at a restaurant or making it at home, I’m squarely on team Brunch At Home, especially when we find a way to pull it off and still still sleep in. There’s nothin…

challah french toast

Everyone needs a recipe for classic, foolproof skillet french toast, even stubborn people like me who, despite making it at least once a month and more often when there’s leftover challah, are so easily bored by and restless with simple …

charred salt and vinegar cabbage

Do you have a big, neglected cabbage in your fridge awaiting the right inspiration? I had a feeling you did. The way I figure it, the sidewalks are currently covered in pink and white petal confetti, the ramps are here, and the asparagus is cl…

simplest brisket with braised onions

For the last several years, if we know each other offline and you ask me what brisket you should make for Passover or another Jewish holiday and you seem a little concerned over the work of it all — because something not discussed nearly…

ziti chickpeas with sausage and kale

We jokingly call these meaty, greeny, cheesy, beany, spicy baked chickpeas because, well, internet recipe naming conventions make us laugh but I really think of them as Pizza Beans 2.0. I introduced Pizza Beans 1.0 in my second cookbook, Smitt…

classic lemon curd tart

You might be asking yourself, Deb, why are you publishing a lemon tart recipe when the greatest lemon tart of all time already exists on your site? Okay, I’m embellishing a little, but I do really love the whole lemon tart and its sister…

potato leek soup

Eighteen years is long enough for a website to go without a potato leek soup recipe, don’t you think? I’ve always been a bit torn about it — it’s thick, pale, and can be a little sleepy. And yet if there is any time of …

invisible apple cake

A dozen years ago I shared my mother-in-law’s recipe for apple sharlotka (which family just calls “apple thing”), a lightly sweetened apple dessert that’s as much a thick crêpe as it is a cake. It’s got a short in…

chicken meatball and noodle soup

Making chicken noodle soup should be simple — in fact, we’ve got a new podcast episode out about just this. Choosing a chicken noodle soup to make should be simple too, thus I hadn’t intended to add a third chicken noodle sou…

halloumi and fall vegetable roast

I realize, after 18 years as a part of it, that the rules of the food internet in the week before the American cooking superbowl we call Thanksgiving dictate that everything should relate back to turkey, stuffing, or pie. But friends, we have …

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