When I first cracked open my copy of America’s Test Kitchen’s newish cookbook How to Roast Everything, my instinct was to flip past seemingly-basic recipes like weeknight roast chicken, roasted thick-cut pork chops, baked sweet potatoes, and this, a gussied-up twist on roasted broccoli, but that would have been a mistake. Sure, I know my way around the kitchen, but with cooking (and many things in life), it’s often small lessons and tweaks to technique that make the biggest impact.
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Dinner
Chicken Soup With Toasted Garlic, Mushrooms, and Celery
Like pretty much everyone in food media*, I am obsessed with Alison Roman’s newish cookbook, Dining In. Part of the hype, I suspect, comes from her pedigree: Prior to writing her book, she was an editor at Bon Appétit and then Buzzfeed, dreaming up exciting, not-too-fussy recipes like slow-roasted salmon with crispy greens, and rhubarb almond cake. She’s also written for super-under-the-radar publications like The New York Times and Cherry Bombe, penned an excellent, zine-like, mini-cookbook about lemons for Short Stack Editions, and worked in the kitchens at Momofuku Milk Bar. (I’m missing a couple biographical details here, but you get the gist.) Dining In may be her first cookbook, but she has ample experience to back it up.
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Pomegranate-Molasses-Glazed Carrots With Crispy Chickpeas and Feta
This is not the sort of recipe you make on a harried Tuesday night, when you’re stretched in a million different directions, and efficiency is the core operative. There are no promises of it being ready in under 30 minutes, or of dirtying only one pan*. Instead, this is the type of recipe you break out when you have a moment to breathe, to at-least-partially concentrate on the task at hand, and to get a little lost in the process. Yes, it requires more attentiveness than the set-it-and-forget-it-ness of most recipes today. And, yes, you will need to be puttering about or near the kitchen for most of this time, but that’s time you can spend catching up on a great podcast, making other components of your meal (if you choose to eat this as a side, rather than the main event), or doing a bit of meal prep to help you along in your week.
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Indian-Spiced Cranberry (aka Borlotti) Beans
I still vividly remember my first trip to one of NYC’s winter greenmarkets: While walking to Tompkin’s Square Park, a dreamy blanket of snow began to cover the streets, so despite the mile-long trek through the cold, I was in good spirits. On top of that, Andrew and I had moved to Manhattan about a month prior, so even something as ordinary as running an errand still felt novel and exciting. All of which is to say that I was feeling quite optimistic. Intellectually, I knew that seasonal eating in the Northeast was a whole different game than doing so in San Francisco, but it didn’t quite hit me until I walked through those greenmarket stalls. Despite the farmers’ efforts to attractively display their harvest, the situation looked quite bleak: bins of onions, potatoes, and apples dominated, with a sad, scraggly head of cabbage here and there. I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this. A bit dismayed, but still determined, I filled my bag with as many apples and onions as I could comfortably carry, plus a cider doughnut, for the chilly walk home.
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Roasted Shrimp With Romesco Sauce
As clutter-haters and city-dwellers, Andrew and I do our best to not accumulate many possessions. Two notable exceptions: my cookbook collection, which is currently overflowing into a file cabinet, under the bed, and pretty much everywhere else I can stash them, and Andrew’s massive box of cords, cables, and other electronic doodads (I thought I was pretty clever when I coined the term, “corder” as in cord hoarder).
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Spicy Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Turnips, and Onion With Bacon
Try as I do to resist my urges, I tend to be a bit of a backseat driver when Andrew is cooking. While a desire (or really, an impulse) to tweak and refine are useful qualities to have when testing or developing recipes, it’s hard, verging on impossible to shut off, and is perhaps less of an endearing quality when directed towards one’s significant other. (Sorry, Andrew!) Still, every once in a while, when he hasn’t banished me from our kitchen, our minds and palates come together to create something quite wonderful, like this spicy brussels sprouts, turnip, bacon, and onion situation.
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Sweet Potato Shepherd’s Pie
Power to those of you that feel otherwise, but I’m not a big reality TV fan*. So, when the publicist for Marissa Hermer’s An American Girl in London reached out offering to send a copy of her book for review, I was a bit skeptical. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with Bravo’s Ladies of London, Hermer is one of the stars.) Still, some things from the pitch captured my attention: the book focuses on British fare through an American’s eye (some recipes are lightened up a bit), and in addition to being a reality TV star, Hermer is the owner of three London restaurants. So, I said yes, flipped through its pages, and tried out a recipe or two.
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Lentils With Caramelized Onions, Mushrooms, and Yogurt
It used to get to me when someone would describe the recipes I share here as simple or easy, like somehow that was a critique on my culinary skills and creativity, or it was a subtle, passive-aggressive jab at my worth as a cook and recipe developer. I’d wonder if years of working in online media had served as blinders, limiting my focus to the Pinterest-friendly realm of one-pan, slow-cooker, and weeknight-friendly meals. Or, maybe I was *gasp*, in 2014 terms, “basic.” But then something funny happened: I realized that sharing doable, realistic recipes was my goal all along. That by keeping things (for the most part) beginner-cook-friendly, I was creating content that could reach, and hopefully inspire, a wider swath of readers to go to the grocery store (or better yet, farmers market), fill their bags with delicious things, and get in the kitchen.
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North African Sundried Tomato Soup With Couscous and Olives
When the frosty wind nips at your nose and you wake up to dark skies, it can be easy to get down on autumn. (But wait, can’t we have one more month of long, mild nights and bushels of heirloom tomatoes?) Mostly though, I look at this time of year with a lot of love. I’m more than ready to be done with hot, humid, sticky days, where a walk outside practically mandates clutching (and gulping down) an Olsen-twins-sized iced tea for its internal cooling properties. Equally exciting are the endless mountains of squash, apples, pears, beets, and other goodies flooding the markets right now. But if I had to pick one thing I like most about fall, it’d have to be the return to soup season. My love for this coziest-of-cozy foods knows no bounds, and recently I had a particularly-good excuse to try out a handful of recipes: at 29, I had my wisdom teeth taken out.
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Turmeric Braised Chicken Thighs With Beets and Leeks
Phoebe Lapine’s The Wellness Project is not your average cookbook. In fact, it’s not really a cookbook at all. There are no glossy photographs and only 22 recipes within it’s 384 pages. And yet, it is one of my favorite collections of recipes from 2017; a title that I’ve found myself recommending to others often and wholeheartedly. Written by the blogger behind Feed Me Phoebe, this memoir follows Lapine through a year of experimenting with lifestyle changes, devoting a month each to topics like green beauty, gut health, fitness, stress, and hormonal regulation, all along reporting on what works for her and what doesn’t. Healthy recipes are (not-surprisingly) interwoven throughout its pages, and the ones included are of the appealing and easy-to-make sort, like this one-pan turmeric chicken and beet situation.
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