What’s Cooking This Weekend? — Weekend of January 26-27, 2013

Happy weekend everyone! What are your plans for your kitchen and your table this weekend? Diving into a good book, tea in hand? A Sunday supper with friends? I’m hitting the kitchen hard, with some serious recipe development for a new project we’re excited to tell you about next week. I’m looking forward to throwing some vegetables in the oven, and exploring some new ingredients. What about you? What’s cooking this weekend? More



Chicken Marsala, Shaved Fennel Salad, Homemade Kale Chips & Steel-Cut Oats with Apples and Cheddar — New Recipes from The Kitchn

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this chicken marsala all week long — I know exactly what’s on the menu this weekend! There was also that shaved fennel salad with juicy roasted tomatoes and pistachios, steel-cut oats with soft apples and cheddar, and a great guide to making healthy kale chips at home. And if you’re looking for a quick side dish, you’ve got to try pan-searing your favorite vegetables with a pinch of red pepper and a squeeze of lemon. It makes them irresistible. More



A Luxury Item for Small Kitchens: A Stainless Steel Wall-Mounted Dish Rack

If you like the no-fuss functionality of restaurant equipment, you’ll probably love this stainless steel wall-mounted dish rack from French design company Tsé & Tsé. It’s advertised as a dish drainer (all the shelves have holes in them) to be hung over the sink, but I honestly think it’d work better as a dishware cabinet in a small kitchen, don’t you? You could even get a couple and hang them side by side for a wall of open cabinetry. More



To Bake Better Homemade Bread & Rolls: Use a Thermometer! — Tips from The Kitchn

2013_01_18-Justen-Stephen-Wedding-2254.jpgHave you ever cut into a loaf of freshly baked bread and found a spot of gooey dough, right in the center? I have! I’ve also roasted rolls into dry, crumbly nuggets — never a good thing. The key, I’ve found, to baking really great bread and rolls is using my trusty kitchen thermometer to tell me precisely when the bread is ready. Read on for tips on using your thermometer to get just the right texture in your homemade bread and rolls. More



intensely chocolate sables

intensely chocolate sable

Although I would hardly say that having a kid has made me wiser — there have been just too many incidents like the one this morning, when not a single of the following clues piqued my concern: 3 year-old going into bathroom to bring his step-stool into another room; the sound of a cabinet opening, a fridge opening followed by a banging sound on the counter, until it was too late and a once-clean child in a once-clean kitchen was making “skwambled” eggs — I can’t help but have come to a few salient conclusions about children/life itself over the last few years that I find infinitely applicable. One, there are few things wrong that a good night’s sleep cannot fix. Two, sometimes you really just need to scream and yell and have a great big noisy fuss for a few minutes and get it all out — pounding your tiny, dimpled fists on the carpet is optional, but this is no time to hold back feeling all the feelings, you know? — so that you can resume being sweet and awesome for the remaining minutes of the day. Finally, there’s not a single person in this universe who does not need a cookie at 4 p.m. each day, like clockwork. Nobody. Not even you. Even in the month of Resolutions.

the balthazar chocolate sable, my obsession
grated chocolate

One of my great cookie loves, and the most ideal 4 p.m. mini-escapist treat, is the chocolate sable from Balthazar Bakery. I don’t get it often, because that would be dangerous. I usually indulge when I’ve mentally committed to walking either there or back or both (exercise!) or I’m having the kind of day that only a walk to SoHo would improve (justification!). If you’ve ever been to Balthazar, you’ve probably looked right past it to ogle the pain au chocolate or burnished plum tarts because it looks plain and dull, hardly competitive with its surroundings, and I think you’ve missed out because alone in its 1/4-inch thick fluted round is the intensity of all the chocolate in Paris. Okay, I exaggerate but still, that’s no excuse to miss it. It’s bittersweet, crisp and sandy; it absolutely aches with chocolate impact and it makes me very happy.

sift the dry ingredients (cocoa is lumpy!)

… Read the rest of intensely chocolate sables on smittenkitchen.com


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