Tag: table

Posted on

Tried and true family recipes that always end up on the Easter table

Tried and true family recipes that always end up on the Easter table

Easter is full of family traditions centered around food.

From egg hunts and spiral cut ham to sweet lemon-filled desserts, every Easter table is sure to include some tried and true favorite foods.

Whether you’re searching for a nostalgic recipe like ambrosia salad to whip up fresh for the family or in need of a festive new addition to your usual menu, “Good Morning America” tapped some top food creators who shared passed-down dishes and family recipes that always pop up on their tables.

PHOTO: Dan McCarthy proudly serves his classic Quiche Lorraine ahead of Easter brunch.

Dan McCarthy proudly serves his classic Quiche Lorraine ahead of Easter brunch.

Lori McCarthy

Air Fryer Hard-Boiled Eggs

Yumna Jawad, creator of Feel Good Foodie, has a creative and fast hack that’s easier than standing over a boiling pot of water.

Check out the full instructions here.

Deviled Easter Egg Chicks

PHOTO: Deviled Easter egg chicks.

Deviled Easter egg chicks.

Natasha’s Kitchen

Food blogger Natasha Kravchuk of Natasha’s Kitchen shared this recipe for a creative twist on an Easter classic, deviled eggs.

Ingredients

12 large eggs, hard boiled and peeled

1/3 cup mayonnaise

1 1/2 teaspoons dijon mustard, or add to taste

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/8 teaspoon salt, or to taste

1 small carrot, peeled and sliced into rings

6 black olives

Directions

Peel 12 hard-boiled eggs. With a sharp knife, slice off a very thin layer from the base of the egg – this will give it a flat surface to stand on a platter. Cut off a generous top third of the egg. Squeeze around the egg base gently to loosen the yolk and it should pop right out. Keep the lids paired with their bases.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine 12 cooked yolks and mash well with a fork. Add 1/3 cup mayonnaise, 1 1/2 teaspoons dijon (or add to taste), 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder and 1/8 teaspoon salt, or season to taste. Mash everything together until smooth. Transfer mixture to ziploc or pastry bag and pipe generously into egg bases. Place top 1/3 back over the base and press down slightly to adhere.

For the eyes, poke through an olive with a plastic straw several times then gently squeeze down the straw and the little circles of olives will pop right out. For the beaks, thinly slice a few rings of carrot and cut each ring into sixths. Insert 2 olive spots for eyes and 2 carrot wedges for the beak. Set chicks on a platter and garnish with fresh parsley or dill to give them that “free range” feel.

Recipe reprinted with permission courtesy of Natasha’s Kitchen.

Dad’s Quiche Lorraine

PHOTO: Dan McCarthy prepares his Quiche Lorraine, a traditional brunch for Easter morning.

Dan McCarthy prepares his Quiche Lorraine, a traditional brunch for Easter morning.

Lori McCarthy

In Dan McCarthy’s house, this French classic has become a holiday brunch staple. He shared his full recipe here and I made my best attempt to recreate it on my own.

Easter Ham and Cheese Omelet Casserole

PHOTO: A slice of baked ham and cheese omelet for Easter brunch.

A slice of baked ham and cheese omelet for Easter brunch.

The Seasoned Mom

If your family opts for a big brunch instead of dinner, this hearty dish from Blair Lonergan, aka The Seasoned Mom, combines Easter ham with eggs to feed a crowd with ease.

Ingredients

8 large eggs (or use 4 whole eggs and 6 egg whites)

1 cup whole or 2{d2b09b03d44633acb673e8080360919f91e60962656af8ade0305d5d8b7e4889} milk

1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt (such as Lawry’s brand)

8 ounces diced cooked ham (or substitute with cooked bacon or sausage)

1 cup grated cheddar cheese

3 tablespoons very finely diced sweet onion

Optional garnish: chopped fresh chives or parsley

Directions

Beat eggs, milk, and seasoned salt together in a large bowl.

Stir in ham, cheese, and onion.

Pour egg mixture into a greased 8-inch square baking dish.

Bake at 350 F for 40-45 minutes, or until the eggs are set and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cut into squares and garnish with fresh herbs, if desired.

Recipe reprinted with permission courtesy of The Seasoned Mom.

Ambrosia Salad

PHOTO: A bowl of ambrosia salad made with yogurt and homemade whipped cream.

A bowl of ambrosia salad made with yogurt and homemade whipped cream.

Tastes Better from Scratch/Lauren Allen

Tastes Better from Scratch blogger and recipe developer Lauren Allen shared this throwback recipe that still holds up thanks to its light and refreshing taste that works in accompaniment with any Easter ham or lamb dish.

“I particularly love Ambrosia Salad around Easter time because the soft pastel colors remind me of the season,” she wrote alongside the recipe. “Many recipes for ambrosia salad use cool whip, but if you’ve followed my blog at all, you know I would never use cool whip when I could substitute fresh whipped cream. The taste is so much better!”

Ingredients

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1/4 cup powdered sugar

1/2 cup plain or vanilla Greek yogurt

1 cup shredded sweetened coconut

11-ounce can mandarin oranges, drained

8-ounce can pineapple tidbits, drained

1 cup maraschino cherries, drained

1 1/2 cups mini fruit-flavored marshmallows

Other optional fruit salad add-ins: chopped pecans, sliced bananas, chopped apples

Directions

Add whipping cream to a large bowl or stand mixer and beat with electric beaters for 1-2 minutes. Slowly add powdered sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form. Fold in yogurt.

Drain canned fruits very well, then add remaining ingredients to a large serving bowl.

Fold in whipped cream mixture. Chill for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Recipe reprinted with permission courtesy of Tastes Better from Scratch.

Harissa Roasted Leg of Lamb

PHOTO: Harissa roasted bone-in leg of lamb.

Harissa roasted bone-in leg of lamb.

Feasting at Home/Sylvia Fountaine

Personal chef and former restaurant owner Sylvia Fountaine — creator of Feasting at Home — shared this showstopping centerpiece for Easter dinner.

With only three minutes of hands-on time, this succulent and savory main dish is a star for a holiday meal like Easter. The bone-in leg of lamb yields a flavorful crust with juicy and tender meat thanks to low and slow-roasting in the oven.

Ingredients

5 1/2 to 6 1/2-pound leg of lamb, bone-in.

8-10 fat garlic cloves

2 shallots, quartered

3-4 tablespoons harissa paste

2 tablespoons preserved lemons (or 1 tablespoon lemon zest)

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons cumin

1 teaspoon caraway seeds, optional

1 teaspoon pepper

2 tablespoons fresh thyme (or 1 tablespoon dried)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 cup thick whole milk yogurt, plain

Directions

Prep the lamb: Trim the fat off the leg if you prefer a leaner version — or leave some on for extra flavor. Score all sides of leg 1/2 inch deep, 1 1/2 to 2 inches apart (crosshatch if you like), sprinkle generously with salt and bring to room temperature for at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Make the marinade: Place garlic, shallot, harissa paste, preserved lemon, salt, cumin, pepper, caraway seeds, thyme and olive oil in a food processor and pulse until uniformly chopped. Add the yogurt, pulse a few times (don’t blend or it will get runny). Taste for heat, adding more harissa paste to taste.

Assemble: Place the lamb over a rack in a roasting pan. Lift the bone end of the leg straight up and brush the underside of the leg with the harissa yogurt, getting into the slits and cuts as best you can. Lay it down over the rack, brush the remaining marinade over the top, getting into slits and lathering it up generously. Nestle in any roasting veggies you like (toss with olive oil and season with salt and pepper first.) You could brush any remaining marinade on the veggies if you like.

Bake at 350 F, plan on 20 minutes per pound for rare to medium-rare, so plan on roughly 2 hours. Place lamb on the lower third of the oven, loosely covered with a foil “tent” for one hour.

Remove foil and check temp. Because every oven is different, keep an eye on the roast after the first hour, checking every 20 minutes or so for over-browning. You can always re-tent with foil if it’s getting too dark. A little color is good here, but you don’t want it to burn. (If you leave the fat on, you can always carefully brown using the broiler at the end to help crisp up that fat.)

Once the roast reaches 125 F to 130 F at the thickest end, pull it out, tent it again and let it rest 15 to 20 minutes before cutting into it, allowing the juices to remain in the meat, which will help keep the meat tender.

Grandma’s Carrot Cake Cupcakes

PHOTO: A homemade carrot cake cupcake.

A homemade carrot cake cupcake.

Jackie Rothong

Chef, food stylist and recipe developer Jackie Rothong shared her grandma’s recipe for delicious carrot cake cupcakes with “GMA.”

“My grandma Mary’s favorite dessert on Easter was always carrot cake, which inherently became our whole family’s favorite cake,” Rothong said. “I started making them into cupcakes when I was in high school — the perfect portion for one — although she would always sneak two.”

“Grating the carrots was always my least fave part. This Easter, I decided to try a new method, let’s call them ‘blender carrot cupcakes.’ A smooth carrot cake does exist and it will be your new favorite holiday dessert,” she added.

Ingredients

4 large eggs

2 cups granulated sugar 

2 teaspoons vanilla extract 

4 cups carrots, peeled, chopped into 1-inch pieces 

2 cups all purpose flour 

1 teaspoon baking powder 

1 teaspoon baking soda 

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 

1 cup neutral oil 

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature

8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 pound powdered sugar 

1/4 teaspoon salt 

Directions

For the frosting, combine butter and cream cheese until smooth. Add the vanilla and powdered sugar. If using a stand mixer, use the paddle attachment until fluffy and light.

Prepare a set of muffin tins with parchment or cupcake liners.

Using a blender combine eggs and sugar and blend until creamy.

Add vanilla and carrots and blend until smooth. Add the measured dry ingredients and scrape down the sides of the blender. Blend until incorporated.

Stream in the neutral oil slowly while blender is on low. Once fully combined and smooth.

Fill the lined pan with batter about 3/4 full.

Bake in a 350 F oven for 18 minutes and let cool before frosting.

Use an offset spatula to cover the cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

Serve and enjoy!

Check out even more festive Easter dessert recipes here.

Posted on

How CookUnity Brings The Best Chefs In The World To Your Kitchen Table

How CookUnity Brings The Best Chefs In The World To Your Kitchen Table

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many restaurants across the country encountered a situation that they never imagined. But thanks to the CookUnity, chefs were able to turn to a new platform to get their recipes and food onto kitchen tables across the country. And for many of them, they have found a new source of revenue that allows them to reach more people than they ever thought possible. I sat down with Mateo Marietti, CEO & Founder of CookUnity, to learn more about what inspired him to launch CookUnity, how they attracted chefs to the platform, and why they decided to rebrand recently.

Dave Knox: What is the founding story of CookUnity?

Mateo Marietti: The idea to build CookUnity started not necessarily connected to the mechanics of how we do it today, but the longer term and the bigger vision of building a platform that in our view does not exist today. A platform that does exist in other categories like music or videos, but does not exist for food where all consumers can find the best creators, the best chefs, the makers of the food that we all admire and appreciate and enjoy in a way that has much more accessibility.

Restaurants are an amazing way to do that, but are very restrictive to your neighborhood. And for the creator, for the chef, they can only cook for 100 – 200 people a day. So we’re thinking, “What will it look like a more modern experience where all the chefs have a much more robust infrastructure where they can just focus on what they love to do, which is cooking amazing food, building teams that are proud of that food, and the relationship with their fans?” And that was idea behind CookUnity. Food is one of the most exciting cultural experiences that we have as humans. It’s also very important for nutrition. And because of that, we believe that the future food is highly personalized and very experiential. That was the original inspiration for CookUnity. And it also how we viewed our opportunity to differentiate vs other meal delivery services on the market

Knox: How have the chefs become partners for what you’re doing, and how are you enabling their own entrepreneurial journeys through CookUnity?

Marietti: Our intention is to build a more horizontal model that provides everything chefs desire. Cooking is a unique craftsmanship that requires creativity and artisanal production. However, many chefs do not enjoy or know how to manage other aspects of running a restaurant, such as accounting, permitting, or dealing with construction. Our goal is to create a rich ecosystem that provides everything chefs need to become successful entrepreneurs. For those already on their entrepreneurial journey, we will help accelerate their growth.

We started with one facility in New York City where young chefs have the opportunity to bring their teams and cook their dishes on a larger scale while we provide everything they need. However, in the past year and a half, we have built six additional kitchens around the country. New York chefs are expanding to different cities, and chefs from cities like L.A., Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, and Seattle are expanding to New York and vice versa. Our ecosystem allows any talented and passionate chef to become an entrepreneur and have access to everything they need to succeed.

Knox: How does the process work when a consumer purchases a meal? Is the chef overseeing a team just like in their own restaurant?

Marietti: We want to be true to the spirit of the original insight and the original idea. We want to empower the best chefs. We want to massively increase their access and their scale. So that means that we’ll never attempt to change their preferred process or the way they do things. At the center of that is food, and I will say very adjacent to that, building their teams. These are real businesses; these are real teams. You go to restaurant you love and you go often there, there’s a lot of work and thought and passion behind that. They don’t just hire random cooks, they hire cooks that they love, that they know about cuisine, and they train them. They make a great culture out of that, and that’s very important. So probably a great visualization exercise is imagine a large kitchen divided in smaller kitchens. For example, our New York kitchen is more than 60, 000 square feet and there are 45 chef teams working there. So it’s like they’re all neighbors to each other. Each one of them has their own individual kitchen, but they share resources. We provide ingredients there and we can consolidate all the different recipes. So in New York we have 45 chefs on the platform at the moment. The number is always growing as we onboard more subscribers to the platform. And those 45 chef teams are offering collectively more than 400 different recipes on any given week. So it’s like a giant neighborhood of amazing restaurants but delivered to your door.

Knox: Related to that, you have some really big names in the culinary world on your roster. How’d that happen? Did you approach them? Did they approach you? What was the relationship there?

Marietti: We like to be very realistic with how it happened and honor that because it was a special moment for everyone that was during the pandemic. Imagine CookUnity first quarter, 2020. We were in our second year. We just raised our first round of funding at the end of 2019, so it was pretty significant for us, but still relatively low capital. We had one kitchen in New York, just getting started. And we were approaching some of the best chefs in the city and telling them about this model. They were reacting favorably like, “Oh, that’s very interesting. I thought about that for X, Y, and Z, and it could be good for my brand and exposure and this and that.” But when the pandemic hit, the main effect that we saw in our business wasn’t on the customer side as we were a very small company and we didn’t have a lot of advertising dollars at play back then. But the big impact was on those conversations with some of the best chefs in the city, the chefs that customers love and that we admire, that they went from, “Oh, maybe let’s consider this next year,” to, “I’m ready to try it now.”

And then we had ten of the most renowned chefs in the city join the platform and they did well, and customers love getting their meals delivered, not only to the city but the suburbs, or other cities in the region. Chefs were being more open and they had more time to try new things. And even more importantly, CookUnity resonated with them because most chefs that I met in my career have expressed a version of, “I would love to cook for more people but I don’t know how.” It’s really hard to do that through the restaurant. The restaurant is not designed for that. It’s designed for eating out, from the delightful in-person experience. So that resonated with chefs on top of what is a really meaningful and in some cases unprecedented income source being on CookUnity. We have more than 20{d2b09b03d44633acb673e8080360919f91e60962656af8ade0305d5d8b7e4889} of our chefs in the platform that make more than a $1,000,000 in profit per year today. And restaurants are not always easy. Margins are not always easy to get, and get consistently. So it’s great that they can compliment the restaurants with us.

Knox: That sort of earning potential is amazing in any industry. How does that compare to what a chef would earn on their own?

Marietti: A restaurant that does fairly well feeds around 200 people per day. We have chefs in the platform that are feeding thousands per day and in different regions. So that already is a difference there. Let’s say a restaurant that does well may do $3 – $5 million in revenue per year and margins can be anywhere between slightly negative to 5 – 10{d2b09b03d44633acb673e8080360919f91e60962656af8ade0305d5d8b7e4889}. There’s obviously a different level of complexity. You have front of the house, back of the house, it’s a full business you need to run. We try to help with everything that is not cooking and the relationship with our team. So we help with technology, with logistics, with marketing, with packaging and things like that. The good news is that these things are not exclusive. The use case of the restaurant is a use case that has existed for centuries and most people not only agree that it will exist for more centuries, but we will do our very best to be a friend and an ally of the restaurant industry. I think society needs restaurants. We need a place to stop in the middle of the day to go disconnect, connect, recharge, enjoy. We have many values, but our core brand value is connection. And we think that food is one of the best way to connect people and to connect different parts of our industry and we just want to be an ally. We think that CookUnity and the specific use case of people cooking less at home, that is a problem that CookUnity is trying to solve today. We are more of a replacement for groceries and a perfect complement to running a restaurant.

Knox: And so right now CookUnity is about to go through a rebrand of the business. What inspired that change, and what are you hoping to accomplish coming out of that?

Marietti: The rebranding process started as an internal exercise for CookUnity. Over the last two years, we have experienced significant growth, expanding our team from 40-50 members to over 200, and increasing our chef partners from 20-something to 100-plus. As a result, there were many key people within our internal ecosystem who understood what CookUnity was about but may not have had the opportunity to engage with the founding members and participate in conversations and dinners together. Scaling and expanding to different geographies made it difficult to replicate the same playbook for building culture and onboarding chefs as we did in the beginning.

Therefore, the rebranding process began as a way to fully express our vision and uniqueness in all touchpoints and relationships. We did an end-to-end redesign and review of all touchpoints to ensure we were communicating our vision, mission, purpose, positioning, brand, and values effectively. While our foundational definitions remained the same, we made minor adjustments to how we express and communicate them to internal stakeholders and the world outside.

Our goal is to tell our story to millions of people, especially busy individuals who are competing for attention. We want to resonate with them, touch their nerves, and deliver an interesting, crisp message. Our dream is to become the primary or one of the main platforms for food. We are now finalizing this exercise, ensuring that we tell our story in a way that reflects our vision and resonates with our audience.

Knox: So beyond the rebrand, what else do you have in store for 2023?

Marietti: In 2021 and part of 2022, our focus was on expanding geographically. We went from serving the Northeast to nationwide coverage, which allowed existing chefs to expand their reach and new chefs to join our platform. This expansion also allowed customers who move to continue being part of the CookUnity family and enabled new customers to join us and explore our food solutions. Our subscription model has been working well, and we will continue to expand to other cities in the US and abroad. However, our main priority for the next year is to start expanding into new types of sellers and food products.

Currently, we’ve been working on building CookUnity 1.0, which is a meal subscription service of proper meals. We offer hundreds of options with a growing assortment, providing high-quality meals at a reasonable price. Our meals are restaurant quality, but delivered to your doorstep, prepared by real chefs. By choosing CookUnity, you’ll be supporting these creators that you admire. We plan to start launching other types of food products, including sauces, family-sized portions, breakfast, desserts, and cooking classes, and all sorts of physical and digital culinary experiences. We will use the same kitchen infrastructure and technology that we have already built to expand our offerings. Our goal is to provide our customers with a diverse range of food products and experiences that cater to their unique tastes and preferences.

Posted on

Bringing Black Culture to the Table

Bringing Black Culture to the Table

Marcus McFarland is familiar with and shares the historical past of the Black professionals who preceded him as agents with NC State Cooperative Extension. He’s pursuing their guide as the initially Black man to provide as a family and client science (FCS) agent in Union County, training children and older people about healthful cooking and behavior, food items basic safety and food items preservation. McFarland delivers his personalized and cultural connections to foods and health and fitness to the table.

A Charlotte, North Carolina, indigenous, McFarland grew up in the vicinity of Union County, found just southeast of Charlotte.

“I’m from a southern Black loved ones,” McFarland suggests. “A lot of what I bear in mind and imagine about when it comes to foods is the recollections of family members dinners, and I nevertheless have an appreciation for the meals.”

One of his beloved dishes that his grandmother and mother would make is homemade yeast rolls, but his loved ones also ate a lot of fruit and veggies.

“Everybody thinks in the South, it is nothing at all but biscuits and all the things fried,” points out McFarland. “But actually, I come from a household of smaller, sustainable sustenance farmers and sharecroppers. Most of the time what was economical was escalating fruits and vegetables.”

Joining NC State Extension

McFarland has often loved aiding other people and his community, and he volunteered normally for businesses like Habitat for Humanity. He was also fascinated in science and considered he preferred to go into well being treatment to mix his passions, but he immediately uncovered a really like for nutrition and dietetics at Appalachian State College.

Marcus McFarland mashing bananas
Marcus McFarland teaching a course.

Soon after graduation, McFarland joined the AmeriCorps’ FoodCorps plan, in which he experienced the chance to educate children in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg college program about nutritious having, developing their personal foods and how to cook dinner. Although in that system, 1 of the leaders, Elizabeth Driscoll, stated an open up placement as an FCS agent in Union County.

“I don’t forget her telling us, ‘This is a excellent chance to keep on that enthusiasm for teaching our group about nourishment, health and wellness,” states McFarland.

Right after two years in FoodCorps, he started as an FCS agent, a purpose he has held given that 2018.

“I educate a simplistic search at nutrition,” McFarland claims. “It’s just ingesting far more fruits and veggies, thinking about what and how significantly you place into your overall body, and emphasizing it’s not about getting absent points you delight in.”

Generating a Difference 

As the to start with Black male agent in the county, McFarland is familiar with the impression he can have.

“I want to make confident that I am that representation for Black folks, so that they see, ‘Wow, there is this Black man who appears like me, who talks like me, who shares pretty equivalent cultural distinctions as me.’”

“I believe cultural link and nutrition can exist at the exact time.”

For McFarland and lots of other families, food items has generally been at the forefront of their society. However some of his childhood meals are not viewed as the healthiest possibilities, McFarland doesn’t sense he has to prevent ingesting them. Alternatively, he has realized how to make some of them more healthy or to balance the fewer wholesome foods with healthier ones, these types of as taking in a lot more fruits and greens with his grandmother’s yeast rolls.

“I assume cultural link and nourishment can exist at the similar time,” McFarland states. “When they exist at the similar time, you are in a position to preserve and honor your lifestyle. I feel like in a good deal of communities of color, they may perhaps see what they are having as not nutritious or nutritious, but which is not the situation a ton of moments.

“We can make improved, more healthy impacts on ourselves even though even now getting to get pleasure from the meals that we have relished for a long time.”

Celebrating Black Historical past

McFarland also teaches other people about those who have appear ahead of him. He revealed Celebrating Black Record in Extension in honor of Black Background Thirty day period, a write-up highlighting the contributions of African Individuals in agriculture, relatives and client sciences, and 4-H in North Carolina.

“I needed to know a lot more about the history powering our Black Extension agents, alongside with their contributions and the problems they might have faced in regards to what it was like doing the job in the course of segregation.”

Though doing the job with NC State Extension seems various now, there is a great deal of get the job done continue to to be finished with equal representation, and McFarland hopes to carry on growing nutrition equality between underserved communities.

“One day, with any luck ,, there will be a lot more Black adult men in diet and family members and consumer sciences who are equipped to educate about health and effect their specific populations so we all can have a chance to raise our top quality of daily life.”

Posted on

Veggie side dishes to brighten up your Thanksgiving table from Smitten Kitchen : NPR

Veggie side dishes to brighten up your Thanksgiving table from Smitten Kitchen : NPR

Deb Perelman in her small “smitten” kitchen in New York City’s East Village. “I make it work!” she says. “I like that there’s a lot of light coming in.”

Melissa Block/NPR


hide caption

toggle caption

Melissa Block/NPR

Deb Perelman in her small “smitten” kitchen in New York City’s East Village. “I make it work!” she says. “I like that there’s a lot of light coming in.”

Melissa Block/NPR

NEW YORK, N.Y. — When Deb Perelman started her blog “Smitten,” back in 2003, it was really just a lark: a platform where she could mouth off and vent her twentysomething angst.

“I was living in New York, and I was newly single and going on a lot of bad dates,” she recalls. “And I just liked to tell stories.”

But a month in, she started dating one of her blog readers, Alex Perelman. They got married two years later.

“So I couldn’t write about dating anymore,” she says with a chuckle. “That would have been very awkward for all of us involved.”

From that random beginning, Deb Perelman’s food fame was born.

In 2006, as she experimented more and more in the kitchen, the “Smitten” blog evolved into “Smitten Kitchen,” a blog (which evolved into a website) all about food. To Perelman’s shock, it took off.

“It’s just so crazy,” she says. “I’m really lucky.”

That success led to two best-selling cookbooks (The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook and Smitten Kitchen Every Day), and Perelman has just published her third: Smitten Kitchen Keepers. As she writes in the introduction, these are 100 time-tested, obsessively-tweaked, fuss-free “recipes I hope you’ll keep around for good.”

“Smitten Kitchen Keepers” is Deb Perelman’s third cookbook: 100 recipes that, she writes, “I hope you’ll keep around for good.”

Deb Perelman


hide caption

toggle caption

Deb Perelman

With Thanksgiving just ahead, NPR asked Perelman to suggest ideas for veggie-centric side dishes that can feed a crowd and that are budget-conscious, since food prices are high. (You’ll find recipes for the two dishes she came up with at the bottom of this page.)

We meet on a brisk, sunny morning at the Union Square greenmarket in Manhattan. Perelman is on the hunt for inspiration in the farm stands.

“Did I make a grocery list?” she asks, rhetorically. “No. I’m going on vibes.”

Those vibes prompt her to zero in on baskets of cranberry beans with beautiful, speckled pods — magenta and a pale, creamy green.

She adds a bag of arugula (“should be really nice and spicy”) and some heavy, squat kabocha squash (“it’s a dark orange and it really roasts up nicely.”)

And then, more inspiration! She spies a mound of purple cauliflower and picks out a petite one.

“This one is so cute!” she exclaims. “Small and, like, low-commitment.”

Deb Perelman shops for seasonal veggies at the Union Square greenmarket in Manhattan.

Melissa Block/NPR


hide caption

toggle caption

Melissa Block/NPR

Back at the East Village apartment that Perelman shares with her husband and their two children, 13-year-old Jacob and 7-year-old Anna, she gets to work in their small, well-organized kitchen. There’s minimal counter space; no fancy appliances.

Despite her best-selling cookbooks and her wildly popular website, with its scads of fanatic Deb Perelman disciples, the kitchen is not much of an upgrade from the tiny, humble kitchen she had when she started blogging about food in 2006.

“It’s real life here!” she says, as she labors to extract a sheet pan from a low shelf. “Everything’s a little crowded in the Smitten Kitchen. Gotta move one thing to move another.”

Before turning on the stove, she opens the oven door – a lesson learned from hard experience.

“I always check for toys in the oven, because it’s happened,” she says. “It’s definitely happened before with kids, where they’ve put a rubber ball in, or whatever. Like, literally the worst thing you could possibly smell.”

Today: No toys. All clear.

Vegetables ready for roasting: chopped cauliflower and wedges of kabocha squash. At Thanksgiving, Perelman says, “a recognizable vegetable is like an oasis on a plate.”

Melissa Block/NPR


hide caption

toggle caption

Melissa Block/NPR

One of the dishes Perelman has decided to make is braised winter squash wedges, a recipe from her new cookbook. She calls it a “fork and knife” vegetable dish, perfect for the Thanksgiving table.

“When you’re doing Thanksgiving,” she says, “so many things are like stuffings and gratins and shredded with cream and cheese. Sometimes a recognizable vegetable is like an oasis on a plate.”

Perelman arranges the kabocha squash, sliced into wedges, on a hot sheet pan sizzling with butter and olive oil. When the squash has a dark, crispy glaze, it’ll get a bath of broth and cider vinegar, and be scattered with garlic and herbs. Perelman likes her roasted vegetables with a bit of char.

“Do not skimp,” she advises. “Get the color you want.”

Later, when she takes the squash wedges from the oven, they’ve turned a fiery, deep orange.

“I love the way it looks like flames, almost,” she says.

She layers the wedges on top of tangy plain yogurt, scattered with arugula.

The finished plating of the warm cauliflower and cranberry bean salad and the braised winter squash.

Melissa Block/NPR


hide caption

toggle caption

Melissa Block/NPR

Along with the braised kabocha squash, Perelman has decided to improvise a warm salad with that “cute” purple cauliflower. It gets chopped and roasted, then tossed in a Dijon vinaigrette with the boiled cranberry beans and some emerald green arugula.

Both dishes are a vibrant visual treat.

“I mean we eat with our eyes,” Perelman says. “Why shouldn’t our food look beautiful?”

Ideally, Perelman says, cooking should make you feel triumphant — like you want to do a victory lap.

“You know when you cook something and it’s really good, and you’re like, ‘I did that! I did that!’ ” she says. “I think you should feel that way about cooking.”

Braised Winter Squash Wedges

This is my favorite way to cook winter squash. It takes a cue from fondant, or melting, potatoes, a technique in which thick slices of potato are roasted on both sides before they finish cooking braised in a puddle of broth. From the oven, they’re crisp and somewhat glazed outside, creamy inside, and booming with more flavor than it seems possible to lock inside a potato. Clearly, I’m a fan — but I had no idea that when I applied this technique to big wedges of winter squash I’d never want to cook it another way again.

I add to the pan everything I like with winter squash — thyme, garlic, and cider vinegar, which gets sweet/tangy when cooked and really helps cut through the sweetness of squash — and then I put the whole thing on a plate of tart yogurt and peppery baby arugula. Any slightly syrupy broth left in the pan is poured over everything, and it’s all so good together, you might wonder why you’d ever consider squash a side dish again. This is centerpiece squash, and it wants you to know it.

Serves 4

2¼ to 2½ pounds (1 to 1.15 kilograms) winter squash (about ½ kabocha or red kuri squash)

2 tablespoons (30 grams) unsalted butter

2 tablespoons (25 grams) olive oil, divided

Leaves from 6 sprigs fresh thyme

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

6 garlic cloves, smashed

1 cup (235 grams) vegetable broth

¼ cup (60 grams) apple-cider vinegar

1 cup (230 grams) plain Greek- style yogurt

2 cups (55 grams) baby arugula leaves

Note: If you can find it — you can often buy squash in halves or quarters from a farmers’ market, which is great, because it runs large — kabocha is my favorite here, followed by red kuri squash. Butternut and acorn squash work, too. The peel of winter squash is fully edible, so no need to trim it away.

Heat the oven to 425°F (220°C).

Cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds and pulp, then slice the halves into 1½-inch wedges. Add butter and 1 tablespoon of the oil to a 10- by- 5-inch baking sheet, and place in the oven until the butter melts, about 2 minutes. Remove the tray from the oven, and roll the butter around so that it evenly coats the pan. Arrange the squash wedges in one layer, and sprinkle with thyme, ½ teaspoon salt, and lots of freshly ground black pepper. Roast for 15 minutes, or until deeply browned underneath. Flip the slices, and season the second side on top with another ½ teaspoon salt and more pepper. Scatter the garlic cloves in the pan, and return the pan to the oven to roast for another 12 to 15 minutes, until the wedges are browned on the second side. Don’t worry if the squash isn’t fully cooked yet. Carefully pour the broth and vinegar into the pan, and roast for another 10 to 15 minutes, until the squash is tender and the liquid is somewhat cooked off.

To serve the squash: Use the back of a spoon to swirl plain yogurt onto a serving platter into a thin layer. Toss the arugula with the remaining tablespoon olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper, and scatter over the yogurt. Arrange the squash wedges on top, scrape out every bit of pan juice that’s left, and pour it over the squash.

From Smitten Kitchen Keepers: New Classics for Your Forever Files by Deb Perelman. Copyright © 2022 by Deb Perelman. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Warm Cauliflower and Cranberry Bean Salad

(Note: This was a recipe Perelman improvised on the spot. She used fresh cranberry beans, but says you could use any type of canned beans, instead.)

1 small-medium head cauliflower, chopped into 1-inch chunks

1 cup freshly shelled cranberry beans (from about 8 to 12 ounces in pods)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar and/or white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon coarse (whole seed) Dijon mustard

Handful arugula, roughly chopped

Sharp cheese — like cheddar or pecorino — to finish (optional)

Heat oven to 450. Drizzle olive oil on a large baking sheet and add cauliflower to it. Season with salt and pepper and toss to coat. Roast for 30 minutes, turning over once for even color.

Meanwhile, cook your cranberry beans in simmering lightly-salted water for 20 to 25 minutes, until tender. Drain, rinsing with water to cool slightly.

Whisk together 3 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, white wine vinegar, or a combination thereof, with Dijon, until evenly combined. Season with salt and pepper.

Scrape cauliflower into a serving bowl and add cranberry beans on top. Pour dressing over to taste and toss lightly to combine. Stir in the arugula. Shave — you can use a peeler — sharp cheese on top, if you wish. Season with additional salt and pepper, as needed.