Why Haven’t I Made That?: One Year Later

December 12, 2023 by akc

It’s officially been a year since I started Why Haven’t I Made That?, which was a project to make one Smitten Kitchen recipe every week. I tried to focus mostly on recipes that were new to me, but I didn’t want to set a bunch of rules and then feel like someone else was in charge of my kitchen. So how did it go?

In reality, I didn’t cook a Smitten Kitchen recipe every week. But I still managed to make 65 of Deb’s dishes as part of this project. In the early summer I was working ahead for a while to try and make sure I had posts to put up while I was out of town for almost half of June, so there was a stretch of weeks where I was making a point of doing two a week.

They weren’t all new-to-me recipes, in part because I wanted to share some of our favorites. And in part because there were some weeks where I just didn’t feel like making something new (or at least, I didn’t feel like it on the day we did meal planning and groceries).

For the most part I haven’t repeated anything yet, but there are several recipes from this project that I know I’ll make again:

Slow-Simmered Lentils with Kale and Goat Cheese: A great veggie option that can take any kind of soft cheese. I think ricotta would work well, and Deb also has a similar dish with burrata on the blog.
Baby Wedge Salad with Avocado and Pickled Onions: We really liked this, and leftovers held up surprisingly well.
Ginger Garlic Chicken Noodle Soup: I enjoyed this a lot.
Buffalo Chicken Cobb Salad: This is a great entree salad option, and the buffalo sauce is perfect.
Chicken with Rice, Chorizo, and Tomatoes: The chicken and rice dishes are great, but this felt special with the chorizo. Made me think of paella.
Green Angel Hair with Garlic Butter: This was delicious, the roasted garlic really makes it.
Spaghetti Pangrattato with a Crispy Egg: This seems to be my go-to single-serving pasta now.
Toasted Ricotta Gnocchi with Pistachio Pesto: This was incredible and not that hard to make.
Corn, Bacon, and Parmesan Pasta: A very tasty summer pasta.
Essential Raised Waffles: I think this will become our Christmas Day breakfast tradition.
Marbled Banana Bread: I think about this all the time and need to make it again.
Crispy Chili Garlic Butter Shrimp: We like shrimp and this gives a similar vibe to gambas al ajillo, which is one of my favorite tapas dishes.

I’m sure there are others I’ll end up making again, but these are the ones that jump out at me when I review the list. Interestingly enough, I still haven’t made the Pizza Beans or the I Want Chocolate Cake Cake, the two things that were on my mind when I dreamed up this project. I might have to throw a dinner party to rectify that.

I feel like I should wrap this post up by sharing some learnings, but I didn’t really go into this project with learning as a focus. It was interesting to notice that there are some very similar dishes on the blog and in the cookbooks, though. So if you hear about something in one of Deb’s cookbooks, poke around on the blog a bit. You might be able to turn up something similar.

I suppose the main thing I’ve learned is that if I want to cook out of a particular source, I need to make a point of doing it, not just see what happens. While I don’t see myself doing another yearlong project, I can see where I might pick a cookbook and make something from it every week for a month. And I will definitely continue sharing things here.

Carrot Cake with Maple(less) Cream Cheese Frosting

December 6, 2023December 3, 2023 by akc

I made a half-batch of these Carrot Cake cupcakes from the Smitten Kitchen blog recently and they were a delight. Perfectly moist and not too sweet.

I grated the carrots by hand on a box grater, which doesn’t take too much time. The only change I made to the recipe was to use more walnuts than called for, because I chose not to add the raisins. This was a great idea as there was a nice amount of walnut in each cupcake.

When I was checking for ingredients, I thought I had enough cream cheese to make the cream cheese frosting in the recipe, but I was short by quite a bit. I looked back at the recipe for the Spiced Applesauce Cake and realized I had enough cream cheese for that frosting, so that’s what I used. In terms of flavoring the frosting, I just put in some extra vanilla. Carrot cake doesn’t need anything else.

When it was time to frost the cupcakes I did kind of a messy job, in part because I wasn’t sure I’d have enough and in part because the frosting started to warm up too much in my piping bag. And there were a couple of times when it got stuck somehow? I’m unclear on what was happening. I thought I would cover my tracks with sprinkles but I didn’t have any, so they were just messy. But they tasted great, and there was a good proportion of frosting. A little more would have been nice, but really just because that would have given me more confidence to really go for it in terms of giving them a nice swirl.

An orangey-brown cupcake sits on top of a purple cake liner and a white plate with red and black edging. It is topped with a creamy white cream cheese frosting that has been piped on with a star tip, but in no particular pattern. — A Carrot Cake Cupcake with Maple(less) Cream Cheese Frosting, from the Smitten Kichen blog.

Spicy Crushed Olives with Pistachios

December 1, 2023November 25, 2023 by akc

I’ve been waiting for an excuse to make the Spicy Crushed Olives with Pistachios from Smitten Kitchen Keepers, and I decided they’d be a great snack before dinner when we hosted Friendsgiving this year.

This is a super simple recipe to make, so I put it together a couple of hours before I told our guests they could arrive. Iit came together very fast, especially since my husband had already shelled and chopped the pistachios for me the day before.

Folks seemed to enjoy this, and it went well alongside the two cheeses I’d gotten (a mini wheel of Harbison, and a wedge of Brabander Reserve). The leftovers are holding up well in the fridge, and I think this would be easy to scale up or down as needed.

I used castelvetrano olives, and figured out that a half-pound of pitted olives was almost exactly two cups. I do think this would work pretty well with any unstuffed green olive, but the castelvetranos are nice because they’re large, so the stand up to the crushing and there’s lots of surface area for the pistachios to adhere to.

A pile of green olives sits on one side of a divided white dish. They're covered with lighter green and brown pieces of pistachio, with a few bright curls of orange rind. Some crackers and plain olives are seen in the background. — The Spicy Crushed Olives with Pistachios from *Smitten Kitchen Keepers*.

Multigrain Apple Crisps

November 20, 2023November 14, 2023 by akc

I’m not sure what it was about the Multigrain Apple Crisps that stuck out at me, but I made them recently and they’re delightful, and don’t feel at all like you’re missing out on anything.

I made a half batch using two huge apples. I’m not sure what type they were, they worked fine in the recipe but didn’t throw off any liquid in the oven. This season I’ve been getting Crimson Crisps at the farmer’s market, but I think these are another variety that I must have grabbed instead as they’re a lot bigger than Crimson Crisps and the color was slightly off.

For the topping I used whole wheat flour. I liked the technique of blitzing some of the oats and the slivered almonds in the food processor, it added a nice texture, and the whole wheat flour sort of deepened the flavor. You’ll definitely want to find some turbinado sugar for this. It adds to the texture, and I think you’d also end up with something far too sweet if you just subbed granulated sugar or brown sugar.

These were good on the first night, but I think they were actually better on the second night, after they’d spent 24 hours in the fridge. I warmed them back up in the microwave and the apples had broken down just a little bit more, which I liked.

This is a top-down shot of a round white ramekin rests on a grey marble counter. A spoon rests in the ramekin, holding a bite of apple crisp. The apples are golden and the crisp is a dark brown, flecked with oats. — The Multigrain Apple Crisp from the Smitten Kitchen blog.

Sweet Potato Salad with Warm Pepita Dressing

November 15, 2023November 12, 2023 by akc ♥ 1 Comment

Winter squash season means it’s also sweet potato season, and the Sweet Potato Salad with Warm Pepita Dressing is a great way to enjoy them.

The only change I made to this was to the spice I added to the pepitas. I used chili powder rather than crushed red pepper. I think crushed red pepper would work perfectly well here but since I have a big spice drawer I thought I might as well stay on theme. Also when you’re making the pepitas, don’t add salt if you used roasted salted pepitas. That’s what I had and the dressing is a tad salty.

This was a very easy vegetarian dinner that left me with enough leftovers for a few lunches. It’s more than the sum of its parts, and very customizable. It would also be great to take to work or to a party to share, because while it’s delicious warm it’ll also be good at room temperature. Plus if you serve it as the individual components, folks can customize to their heart’s content.

This is also a great combination of flavors for topping whole roasted sweet potatoes. Or you could throw this over some brown rice to stretch it a bit.