summer succotash with bacon and croutons

[Er, croutons not pictured.] Here’s the thing: If you told me you were serving succotash with or for dinner, I’d inwardly groan. People, I’ve had all sorts of succotash — a summery stew of corn and lima beans, often with tomatoes, yet still so bland that no added butter or cream saves it for me, and when adding butter and cream don’t save something for me, you know something is terribly wrong — and can’t think of one that I wanted to run home and make for myself. It might be because it’s usually in the off-season, when the above come frozen and no, it’s just not the same. It might also be because I once had a roommate that would open cans of succotash, not drain it, heat it in the microwave and eat it straight and guys, it’s been many, many years and still, my stomach turns. Don’t ever live with me. I’m a jerk.

Recipe

raspberry brown sugar gratin

[Note: This recipe got fresh photos in 2018. It’s still as ugly as it is delicious.]

This is the ugliest, best thing I have ever made with three ingredients and the happy ending to three weeks of obsessing. And here you probably just thought it looked like an accident, didn’t you?

Recipe

scalloped tomatoes with croutons

The Food Network had the audacity (I am joking, a little) to air an episode of Barefoot Contessa in which she makes a “scalloped” dish with bread cubes, garlic, basil, Parmesan and the brightest most summer-bursting-forth, musta-tasted-like-the-heavens-above, thanks-for-rubbing-it-in-guys tomatoes over the winter, when there was absolutely nothing I could do to bring this dish into my kitchen. It wasn’t fair. It felt outright mean. For people as berserk about summer tomatoes as I am — people who avoid them in the off seasons, when they’re tomatoes in name only — being reminded of that which is as impossibly far off as the notion that there are days in the summer that are so hot, we actually long for the kind of weather that requires Gore-Tex and hot cocoa. It’s basically crazy talk.

Recipe

peach blueberry cobbler

I am having the worst luck with peaches this summer. Without fail, every week I am lured in by the most fragrant peaches I’ve ever sniffed at the market, and without fail, the day after they come home with me, they’re mush. Sweet, peachy mush. To eat one requires hovering over a sink, and then a mop and a shirt change anyway and no, sadly, I am not speaking of the baby’s messes. These are not bad problems to have; “Woe is me! My peaches are too juicy!” doesn’t exactly make a room nod in sympathy but the week I made the mistake of letting the peaches go a whole 48 hours uneaten the only thing left to with the misshapen lot was to bake them.

Recipe

thai-style chicken legs

I didn’t mean to bury the lede on you all, but that mango slaw was a side dish. I know! What has the smitten kitchen come to? I made, like, a meal, with a side dish and a main course, all while someone yanked on my flip-flops. I barely know what came over me. I do know that my timing was terrible, because I made this last Tuesday. “Wow, Deb, that’s great! Fascinating. Really.” No, Tuesday. In New York City. It was 102 degrees, the hottest day since August 2001 and I decided, at once, that I had to make a very specific dinner that would require me to turn the oven up very high for a sizable amount of time. I think that sleep deprivation has scrambled what’s left of my brain because I’d like to think I wasn’t this dimwitted 10 months ago. (Don’t tell me otherwise.)

Recipe

mango slaw with cashews and mint

The inspiration for this slaw is a mango salad I order way too often from a local Thai place in hopes to offset the inevitable damage from the pad Thai I order with it. It has strips of mango, slivers of red pepper, red onion and mint, large toasted cashews and a spicy dressing with a lot of lime in it. It’s always a surprise; sometimes the mango is underripe and sour (which I understand to be more traditional) and sometimes it’s sweet and almost overripe. The best part is that the salad tastes good no matter how the mango arrived that day.

Recipe

porch swing

I know, I know, “Deb, what’s up with putting up a summery cocktail recipe a day after a blissfully long holiday weekend?” Ah, but I think you’re coming at this all wrong; this drink is, in actuality, three days early for next weekend.

Recipe

sour cherry pie with almond crumble

If there can be no clearer indication that this will be the Summer of Pie at the Smitten Kitchen — as if a 6-week onslaught of galette after pie smackdowns after savory tart built on a platform of tartlets crusted bettys and free-form pretties did not already lead us to that conclusion — my pastry blender broke this week after putting in five very good years. First, one side of it became unglued from the handle and because I am both stubborn and cheap, I’d just hold it in with my thumb while I cut butter into flour. But then the other side came unglued and I ran out of thumbs. So RIP little pastry blender, and Amazon, hurry and bring that new one along, okay?*

Recipe

mango banana sauce

We’ve covered applesauce, we’ve covered pears, carrots, peaches and even spinach which means I’m overdue to get to an early fruit sauce, one so good I might be burying the lede to have made you wait this long.

Tips

not all salts are created equally

[Updated in 2021] Have you ever used kosher salt in a recipe and found the end result to be like a salt lick and you couldn’t imagine how on earth a recipe tester could have not noticed how horribly, horribly oversalted the dish would end up? Let me guess: You weren’t using Diamond Kosher Salt, a favorite of chefs, test kitchens, and the Smitten Kitchen. I know: Now we tell you!

Does this mean you should change brands? Absolutely not. There is no need to hunt down Diamond brand if it’s not available or is preposterously expensive where you are. But if you’d like to know how to adjust for this in recipes where one is measuring salt by the spoonful, you’ve come to the right place.

First, here’s the basic math on salt weights:

1 teaspoon table salt = 6 grams
1 teaspoon Diamond kosher salt = 2.8 grams
1 teaspoon Morton kosher salt = 4.8 grams
1 teaspoon David kosher salt = 6 grams (i.e. the same as table salt)

Or, in plain language:

1 teaspoon table salt has the same saltiness as 2⅛ teaspoons of Diamond.
1 teaspoon Morton kosher salt has the same saltiness as 1¾ teaspoons of Diamond.
1 teaspoon David kosher salt has the same saltiness as 2⅛ teaspoons of Diamond.

“But aack, this stresses me out because how am I supposed to know what a recipe tester used?” Here’s my advice: Pretend they used Diamond salt and if using any other brand, start with half. We can always increase the amount of salt later (and hey, “season to taste” is the gold standard for a reason) but scrubbing it out is not an option.