deb – Page 2 – FoodWatcher

chicken rice with buttered onions

Over the last few years, and particularly during those long months of 2020, we got really into variations on “chicken rice” — chicken and rice cooked together in an aromatic broth that together is the most cozy, comforting thing. The rice is crazy flavorful, drinking up any seasonings and/or vegetables you add to the pan. The chicken is tender and juicy. The dish keeps well even if I’m making it many hours earlier than dinner and the leftovers are phenomenal. It’s relatively inexpensive and I’ve almost always got at least the rice and various pantry items around to make it work. It should run for president.

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simple eggplant parmesan

Last year I told you that despite it being the opposite of eggplant season, I crave eggplant parmesan incessantly each winter. I mean, who doesn’t want an aromatic, cheese-stretchy, cozy casserole of ziti-like flavors, but without the heaviness of the pasta sometimes, right? What this post omitted was my recipe, which was kind of rude. The truth is that I wasn’t completely comfortable sharing it recipe because it’s not a True eggplant parmesan, or so I believed. It’s not breaded, it’s not fried, and there’s definitely no ricotta. Even title of the recipe as it was saved on my computer was self-conscious: (Not Really) Eggplant Parmesan.

So what changed? Going to Italy this summer! We ordered eggplant parmesan (parmigiana di melanzane) almost every time we saw it on the menu and do you know what would come out? A dish that looked like this — no breading, no crumbs, no ricotta. It made more sense when I read about the history of the dish from Emiko Davies which I’ll simply link to rather than poorly summarize (it’s fascinating!) but it also gave me the nudge to finally spring the recipe from my kitchen to yours.

corn cacio e pepe

As the year is not 2017, when the cacio e pepe frenzy (outside of Rome, where it’s never not on the menu) seemed to have peak frenzy and when I put a cross between potatoes Anna and cacio e pepe on the cover of my second cookbook, I’d only choose the dog days of summer 2023 to talk about cacio e pepe once again for a single reason: A worthy update. The only thing I love more than the combination of salty, funky pecorino cheese and copious amounts of black pepper kicking up sparks of heat on a tangle of linguine is the way I make it in the summer: adding sweet, crunchy corn. It is, full stop, the perfect complement to the punchy cheese sauce; they’re made for each other.

raspberry streusel muffins

Once upon a time, I spent approximately a whole summer making blueberry muffins, gripped with an obsession (that would be worrisome anywhere but this page) to make what I hoped would be the last blueberry muffin recipe we’d ever need. You’d think after all that that the path to these raspberry muffins would be simpler, but it took five raspberry seasons to get here.

A very logical question you’re about to ask is: Why not just swap the blueberries in your blueberry muffins with raspberries? And the answer is that while it works; they’re not bad at all, they’re just not the raspberry muffin I dreamed of. These are and they’re utterly perfect: hefty, moist, lemony, not too sweet, and absolutely tie-dyed with a constellation of raspberries inside. I think they might be the best muffin I have ever made. Here’s what I’ve learned along the way:

buffalo chicken cobb salad

Earlier this summer, I made what I thought was just a dinner salad that turned out to be my new favorite dinner salad of all time and it was literally all I could talk about for the next few weeks. Incessantly. Insufferably. I didn’t even wait to ask if you’re into buffalo wings (of course you are), cobb salads (you could be, I can just tell) or looking for a dinner idea. It’s just not who I am.

Perhaps even less surprising was realizing I have very strong opinions about how to adapt the idea buffalo wings to things that are not buffalo wings, which means I’m about to break down my favorite parts of all this:

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flaky chocolate cake

I know we’re in the midst of the nth heatwave of the summer and the idea of eating anything but a bowl of cold cherries or, worse, something that requires you turn your oven on sounds about as unappealing as that curiously empty subway car [that definitely has no a/c or worse] but trust me when I say that someone in your friend group, family, or life has a birthday coming up and they’re hoping that you make them this.

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This is the lightweight, semi-collapsed disc of cognac-kissed dark chocolate I nominate to be your backpocket, arsenal-worthy decadent cake for small but fancy times. It’s been in my rotation for well over a decade — I’ve shared riffs on it in these cupcakes and in the tiny but intense chocolate cake in this book — because while I could never get into those dense, nap-inducing bittersweet chocolate cakes of the early aughts, a few adjustments led me to this dream. Here’s what sets it apart:

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summer pea salad with unexpected dressing

A little catch-up: Two days ago, our kids boarded a bus to sleepaway camp while dozens of parents waved like (I’d like to think adorable but also value self-awareness) lunatics as it pulled away. I learned a few years ago when my son wen…

A little catch-up: Two days ago, our kids boarded a bus to sleepaway camp while dozens of parents waved like (I’d like to think adorable but also value self-awareness) lunatics as it pulled away. I learned a few years ago when my son went to camp for the first time that I become unmoored — who am I if nobody demands things and interrupts my thoughts all day?! — without the presence of my adorable but exhausting offspring. Last summer, I ran out of cooking steam while waiting for my daughter to request anything but noodles for dinner. This summer, despite the fact that she’s a baby who was just born (don’t tell me otherwise), my daughter also wanted to go to camp, mostly because she wants to be wherever her brother is and I’m not crying, you are. Fortunately, from the photos I refresh, refresh on the camp app all day — in lieu of doing anything more productive or even hedonistic with my time — show them to be having a blast and how could they not be when the first night ended with whipped cream pies in the faces of the counselors on the losing team and nobody challenges their palates beyond pizza, chicken nuggets, and waffles?

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This is still a cooking blog, I promise. But if the structure of my cooking life for the last 13.75 years has been shaped to the needs of people who need to be fed multiple times a day, what is left? The reality is that when my kids are away for one night or three, we just go out. We live in New York City; why on earth would we be washing dishes if we could be getting queso fundito and the Caeser-y tomatillo salad at Yellow Rose, as we did Sunday night, or meeting friends at Win Son, as we will later this week, or sweeping sourdough through the garlic-chile butter puddle left behind by the prawns a la plancha while drinking vermouth at Cervo’s, as I’m sure we will weekly?

sliced egg sandwich

When things are quiet around here, one of two things are usually happening: I’m busy with a side project or traveling far from the physical Smitten Kitchen. Or, I’m really obsessed with eating something that I don’t expect to interest anyone but me. This month we have two for two. For the three weeks before I was briefly in San Francisco and Napa last week, I was absolutely fixated on this sandwich. Fixated! I craved it everyday. Sometimes it was breakfast; sometimes it was lunch. I could walk by a bagel shop wafting with warm everything seeds, by a cloud of bodega bacon egg and cheese sandwiches, and still beeline home to put a cold boiled egg on a roll with arugula. I know I make no sense. I decided to keep this weirdo thing myself but then I returned from California and yes, I had a suitcase full of Model Bakery english muffins and a stash of Dandelion Chocolate hot chocolate mix, and I still just needed this. I have finally accepted that the only way to move on, at least for long enough that I could tackle the rest of the amazing things I have on our cooking agenda for the summer, was to exorcise it, whether anyone cares to join in my strange little preoccupation or not.

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easy strawberry lemonade

I would like to make clear from the outset that I do not think we, this site, or even the internet necessarily needs a new recipe for lemonade. I’ve covered lemonade that’s picnic pink (with any berry you like), with watermelon, wi…

I would like to make clear from the outset that I do not think we, this site, or even the internet necessarily needs a new recipe for lemonade. I’ve covered lemonade that’s picnic pink (with any berry you like), with watermelon, with cucumber, with maple syrup and bourbon, and even lime and mint. But the thing I ran into when my kids left me, once again, with a basket of overpriced strawberries on their last legs — fruit they’d asked me to buy but then mysteriously lost interest in eating when it was presented to them at breakfast — and I decided to instead turn strawberries into strawberry-ade, so to speak, was that every lemonade recipe I’ve already published contains steps I lacked inclination to do.

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smashed chicken meatball sliders

There was a moment a dozen or so years ago when sliders were all the rage on restaurant menus. Precious little burgers (the traditional slider) and more clever ones like meatballs and fritters would teeter with tweezer-applied toppings on tiny buns and unless you unhinge your mandible to engulf (slide?) your wobbly prey whole, it was a bit of a mess too. So why am I channeling the year 2009? Sliders have been having a renaissance in my kitchen this spring because I finally realized their size is perfect for smaller eaters and makes for far more appetizing leftovers than, say, a cold burger with several bites removed, sogged into a day-old bun.

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