My third cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers, is out today, and thank goodness it was incredibly hard to keep it from you for so long.
It feels downright unfair that I figured out how to make the best molasses cookie — thick, tender, but also one bowl, no hand mixer required, the kind that will make your whole home smell like vacation — and you’ll find just about that today . My favorite pot roast is in there; sometimes I add rice just before it’s ready for a real one-pot meal that feels perfect for this cold week. There’s a warm hoagie that’s practically a vegetarian cheesesteak. The most perfect chocolate chip cookie I can think of is here (it has salted walnut brittle inside). A deep bowl, real doorstop of a broccoli cheddar quiche serving a crowd and an egg salad just for us. The easiest three-layered chocolate party cake ever, filled with a salty milk chocolate buttercream and designed to fit in the bottom of a tote bag so you can take it anywhere. Actually, the craziest thing I’ve suggested to you about cabbage (salt, vinegar, and charring) might lead to the craziest thing you do with cabbage (eat it out of the pan, standing up). There are challah buns with cream cheese and jam that make me think of my dad, and there’s a pound cake that I hope is worth the cover price alone.
They’re all keepers to me — the kind of recipes you make and instantly know you want them to be part of your repertoire forever. For 17 years on this site I’ve been paying close attention to what’s happening when we’re in the kitchen and trying to apply everything I’ve learned about making shopping easier, cooking more practical and enjoyable, and the results reliable makes more delicious . Because if you hate making the recipe—if the process was stubborn and you’ve soiled every bowl in your kitchen—it hardly matters if the result was otherworldly, you’ll avoid it. And I want these to be recipes that you love to make most of all.
And then there’s the Green Angel Hair with Garlic Butter, the swirly green tangled lidded dish that came out like a whim of a party snack. A few New Year’s Eves ago, I went out to advocate for the return of whole roasted garlic heads, except instead of roasting the garlic with a drizzle of olive oil, I used a knob of butter (“Oops!”). ), toasted and finely mashed for almost an hour, and we spread it on pieces of bread, and did you know I also made a cheese soufflé that night? And beef Wellington? (The theme was old-school decadence.) None of these dishes quite nailed it like the roasted garlic butter.
But what if you want weekday garlic butter confit in your life? And your life doesn’t have crostini and sparkling cocktails on a Tuesday, much as that needs to be corrected? Well then you should take this garlic butter and toss it with a bag of spinach until the garlic butter is bright green and toss it with black pepper spaghetti and spicy pecorino cheese to not just be one of the best things I have ever made for dinner, but also the recipe I expect you least look at: make once, memorize forever.
The Smitten Kitchen Keepers Book Tour: It starts tonight. I’ll be signing books at Fish’s Eddy in Manhattan from 5-7pm and hope to see you there. (There will be cookies! And fizzy drinks!) Any other event – Atlanta on Thursday! Union Square Greenmarket this Saturday! Toronto next week! and so much more! – is listed on the Events page, with more added every week. So keep your eyes peeled for upcoming announcements of events in New Jersey and Vancouver. Hope to see you on tour! I hope we can finally hang out.
Note: The Smitten Kitchen Keepers cookbook images—the cover, the first collage of book recipes, and the top photo in this post—were designed by Barrett Washburne. (Photographed by me, Deb Perelman, as are all photos on the website and in my books.)