Each month I’m highlighting a different non-Ina cookbook – these can be old favorites, classics I need to try, or new books I’m excited about. I’ll make at least one recipe from each chapter of the book to get an overall flavor of each. For the month of June, the book is Deb Perelman’s The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. I hope you’ll cook along with me! The book is available for purchase here.
Leek Fritters with Garlic and Lemon
Admittedly I’m not typically a fan of dishes that require repetitive cooking (think pancakes, browning meat in batches, etc.) but fritters and latkes are the exceptions – they are just too delicious to resist, and you can make them ahead of time!
Deb’s version is absolutely packed with one of my favorite alliums: leek – there are two pounds in these babies. The chopped leeks are boiled and then wrung out using a clean towel or cheese cloth (I’ve started using reusable mesh nylon bags for tasks like these and it’s made my life so much easier).
The leeks are combined with an egg, scallions, flour, salt, black pepper, and cayenne and formed into 2.5-inch disks and cooked until golden brown on both sides.
A little stint in a warm oven ensures that they are cooked through and stay warm while cooking the rest.
And if the fritters alone weren’t good enough, they are topped with a dreamy sour cream infused with lemon and garlic Deb says these are great with a fried egg on top, so you know that’s in my future!
Book: The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, page 129
Rating: 5/5
How Easy Is That: Easy
Store-Bought Is Fine: sour cream
Pricey Ingredients: —
Recipe on JewishFoodExperience.com
Roasted Tomatoes and Cipollini Onions with White Beans
You can’t go wrong with a dish like this! Large cherry tomatoes and cipollini onions are roasted in the oven, concentrating the flavor of the tomatoes and slightly charring the sweet, tender onions. Roasting is the key to making off-season tomatoes shine! The pan of roasted goodies and the juices that pool around them are then spread over toasted ciabatta bread that’s been rubbed with garlic clove and sprinkled with white beans. Julienned basil is the perfect finishing touch. The white beans and garlic-rubbed toast take this from a delicious side dish into main dish territory, but these would also be delicious little appetizers for any meal.
Book: The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, page 141
Rating: 4/5
How Easy Is That: Easy
Store-Bought Is Fine: ciabatta
Pricey Ingredients: —
Recipe is not online.
Corn Risotto–Stuffed Poblanos
With corn season right around the corner, make sure you earmark this recipe for the late-summer dinner table! Sure, there are several steps to this recipe, but the results are so tasty!
Blistered and peeled poblano peppers are packed with a creamy, decadent risotto flavored with onions, garlic, corn kernels (obviously better with fresh, but I used frozen), and Monterrey jack cheese. The stuffed peppers are packed snuggly in a baked dish, sprinkled with crumbled queso fresco, and baked.
Once out of the oven, they’re drizzled with thinned-out sour cream and sprinkled with cilantro. The dish hits all the right notes!
Pepper skins never really bother me for stuffed peppers so next time I may just skip the blistering and removal which Deb says is just fine. And it will save some time making this dish!
Book: The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, page 134
Rating: 5/5
How Easy Is That: Easy
Store-Bought Is Fine: sour cream
Pricey Ingredients: —
Recipe is not online.
Mushroom Bourguignon
Beef bourguignon is one of my all-time favorite comfort foods so this vegetarian version was either going to be a new favorite or fall short of the impossible bar I’ve set for this dish.
I’m happy to report that it pole-vaulted over that bar and instantly earned a place in the regular rotation! As a bonus, this is much quicker than the beef version – perfect for a weeknight dinner.
You can use cremini or portobello mushrooms which are cooked with pearl onions until, as Deb perfectly describes, you hear the “delightful ‘squeak-squeak’” as you stir. To those, you add a lot of the usual bourguignon suspects – yellow onion, carrots, thyme, and garlic — before covering in red wine, veggie stock, and tomato paste and simmering until everything is tender.
Reduced and thickened with a butter/flour mash, the savory, flavor-packed mushroom-packed sauce is served over egg noodles and topped with chives and a dollop of sour cream.
There aren’t exact salt measurements for this dish but all these amazing ingredients should add up to one flavorful dish – if yours is lacking, keep adding that salt. Like most dishes, mine was good, not great until I hit that magic amount of salt where this dish doesn’t taste salty, but all the flavors really pop!
Book: The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, page 151
Rating: 5/5
How Easy Is That: Easy
Store-Bought Is Fine: egg noodles
Pricey Ingredients: —
Recipe on SmittenKitchen.com
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