This dish is mildly spiced and the cream makes it rich and mellow. And it’s very tomato-y. I shouldn’t compare it to my chole because they are very different dishes. Mine is heavier on spices and has little tomato, but a big difference is the amchur powder I use makes it a tart dish. So just a very different flavor and feel. That’s OK, because I wasn’t expecting it to be anything like my chole. I think I did miss the acid, though, and I’ve begun to wonder that will be a theme with this book (thinking of the spinach sauce with capellini reported above).
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To me it was just the cream, which is why I think she referenced dal makhani. (If I was nitpicking, the garam masala should not have gone in till the end, but I’m somewhat surprised she called for individual cumin and coriander, so that gets a pass.)
The rest is a standard North Indian tomato-onion-ginger-garlic curry base, which is going to be as fine for chickpeas as it is for chicken.
That said, as Mel alluded, there are many types of chhole / channa preps beyond the basic, and different types of chickpeas used too. (Probably also as many channa recipes as households that eat channa, and multiples within each one to boot, not dissimilar to dal – though not as prolific.)
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The garam masala going in at the beginning bothered me as well. I added it, but then added more at the end.
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SOY-GLAZED TOFU WITH CRISPED RICE - p. 129
I chose this recipe because, hey, it’s vegan. But I gotta say, I was impressed with it upon reading through it. So tweak it I did. My main gripe was the way the author prepares the tofu. She pan-fries it, unseasoned, and dredged in corn starch. I’ve been working with tofu for a long, long time, and I know that isn’t going to give a very tasty or appealing result. She also doesn’t reduce the glaze with the tofu in the pan, she just pours the glaze on the unseasoned tofu after it’s plated. In the past, I would have probably deep-fried the tofu, then put it into the glaze (letting the glaze reduce while also soaking the fried tofu). That would be good. But I recently upgraded my Breville Smart Oven to an air-frying model, so I wanted to air-fry the tofu. For air-frying, I like to start by seasoning the tofu. Since the recipe doesn’t call for any seasoning on the tofu, I went my own way, and seasoned it with some salt, onion powder, and garlic powder. I let the slabs of tofu sit with the seasoning on them for a while, to allow the salt to penetrate the tofu. Then I dusted the tofu with cornstarch, sprayed it with Avocado oil, and air-fried it at 400F for 25 minutes. This gave me tofu that was well-seasoned and had a crisp exterior. Because of that, I could just reduce the glaze separately and pour it over, as the recipe instructs, and it was fine. But as written, this would not be fine.
As for the glaze itself, it’s just garlic and ginger, sautéed, then you add in rice vinegar, black vinegar, and soy sauce, and let it thicken. There is a lot of soy sauce… I reduced it a bit, but found the glaze very salty (although my tofu was salted, so there is that to consider). The tofu is accompanied by the crisped rice… you just take cooked rice and spread it in a heated, oiled pan, and let it cook until it crisps up, then flip it and crisp the other side. And there is also a slaw, which is just julienned vegetables dressed in sesame oil, rice vinegar, salt, and pepper. My CSA started up this week, so my vegetable choices are going to be driven by what’s in the box. I decided to make a salad out of some CSA lettuce and daikon radish. I dressed it using the ingredients called for in the slaw, but not the proportions. I just tossed the salad with a small bit of sesame oil, seasoned with salt & pepper, then tossed in a little splash of vinegar. Mine was a lightly dressed salad.
Overall, this dinner was fine. Nothing to write home about. The tofu was good as I cooked it. The crisped rice was, to my mind, a waste of time. If you are really into tahdig, you might find it worthwhile, but I’m not and this wasn’t. I’d be just as happy with plain rice.
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BAKED ORZO AND ARTICHOKES - p. 155
Made this exactly as written, except with simple substitutions to make it gluten-free and vegan. So I used Banza chickpea “rice” for the orzo. It is shaped like orzo, and cooks like orzo, and is nothing like rice, so I have no idea why they just don’t market this stuff as orzo. And I used vegan mozzarella shreds (Good Planet brand) and vegan parm (Violife) in place of the dairy cheeses. My artichokes were Cynara brand, which come in sealed tubs rather than cans. I had one tub of quarters at 10.2 oz, and one tub of hearts at 12.7 oz, and I used those in place of two 14.5-oz cans called for. I’m pretty sure I had just as many artichokes, but even if not, it was plenty.
So you start this recipe by sautéing scallion whites, onion, and garlic in a butter/olive oil mix. When those are soft, you add the artichokes, lemon zest, salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes. Continue cooking for a few minutes, then add lemon juice, scrape the pot, then add your orzo, scallion greens, mint, parsley, chives, mozzarella, and some parmesan. You then put more parm over the top, and transfer to the oven to bake, first covered, then uncovered, for a total of 40 minutes. The top of the orzo is supposed to be crisp, and the bottom cooked through and tender. Which is exactly what happened.
We liked this very much, and I would happily make it again. Served with the green salad from 65 and the sweet potato fries from p. 107.
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THE BIG GREEN LITTLE GEM SALAD - p. 65
My CSA started up and lettuce was in the first box. This recipe calls for little gem lettuce, four heads totaling 8-10 oz, but I used a single head of CSA lettuce, which weighed in a 9.5 oz. So I was right on the mark for the quantity of lettuce. The recipe has three parts, the greens, the “rubble,” as the author calls it, and the dressing. For the rubble, she says the quantities given make twice as much as you need, so I made roughly a half recipe, hoping to avoid having any leftover. I did use a whole sun-dried tomato, because who is going to just use half? Plus, I like sun-dried tomato. The other ingredients were sunflower seeds garlic, parmesan, salt, and pepper. She has you mincing the rubble by hand, but I made use of the mini food processor attachment on my stick blender, and that worked great.
For the dressing, she has you making it in a large salad bowl, then adding the greens to the dressing. I looked at the quantity of dressing, and that and my experience with previous recipes told me this author tends to overdress her salads. So I made the dressing, which is simply white wine vinegar, mustard, olive, salt, and pepper, in a small bowl, and added it to the leaves instead of the other way around. As suspected, the amount of dressing was waaaaaay more than I needed. I used maybe a third of it, maybe less than that. Note that in the picture the salad looks either very lightly dressed, or not dressed at all. Anyway, I placed the dressed leaves on a platter, sprinkling generously with rubble between each layer. Still didn’t use all the rubble either.
The salad was fine. It’s a pretty minimal salad, with a bog-standard vinaigrette, and really not the kind of thing I would normally look at a recipe for. And I won’t look at this recipe again.
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SPICED SWEET POTATO OVEN FRIES - P. 107
I guess I should preface this with the caveat that I don’t really like sweet potatoes. I DO have ways of preparing them that I like. I live in the south, there is no avoiding sweet potatoes, so I have come up with a pretty good repertoire of ways to make them that I find tolerable or even delicious. Sweet potato fries is not one of them. Both in flavor and in texture, sweet potatoes are just wrong for a fry. But, since I’m always willing to be proven wrong, I gave this recipe a try. I used the spicing as written: salt, garlic powder, cumin, coriander, cayenne, and cardamom or cinnamon (I chose cardamom). I tossed the sweet potatoes with the seasonings first, then the oil (opposite of the directions, but I find this works better), then instead of baking in the oven, I air-fried them in my Breville for 20 minutes at 400F. I like a crisp fry, and sweet potato fries never are crisp enough, even when you deep fry, which has been my method up to now. So I though maybe, just maybe, air-frying might work (the recipe itself prepares you for a limp result). No, the fries were cooked through, even charred in places, and tender, but not particularly crisp.
The seasoning on these is good. If you like sweet potatoes, and sweet potato fries, you might like these. But the seasoning was not enough for these fries to win me over. They are served with a dip of yogurt, white wine vinegar, and harissa. I used lemon juice instead of the vinegar. The harissa is supposed to be artfully swirled into the yogurt, which I find absurd. The dip, with the harissa fully stirred in, is good, and I’d happily use it to dip real fries, or charred broccoli.
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I’m now remembering that I made these sweet potato fries too. I thought the seasoning was okay, but had a hard time getting them crispy enough even though the sheet pan was definitely not crowded. I had to sub sriracha for the harissa and that worked well - I might make the yogurt dip for regular fries.
Short of deep frying, I’m not sure it’s possible. I have tried and failed many times.
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I’ve always deep-fried them, and they still aren’t particularly crisp, at least not compared to regular potatoes.
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PORTOBELLO HOAGIE (p. 141)
I like mushrooms. I like cheese. I like bread. I figured this would be a winner.
You thinly slice portobello mushroom caps and saute them in a very hot skillet with olive oil. After letting them cook undisturbed for a few minutes until they start to brown you stir in chopped garlic, salt, and black pepper. You finish by adding worcestershire and soy sauces and cook until most of the liquid is gone. You transfer them to a bowl and then add butter and sliced onion to the same pan. The recipe says they will be caramelized in 12-14 minutes but I call shenanigans on that. Anyway when they finally are you add marsala wine or sherry vinegar to deglaze and cook until it is gone. To make the sandwiches you split hoagie rolls, add mushrooms and onions, top with slices of Swiss cheese, wrap the whole thing in foil, and bake until the cheese is melted–8-10 minutes.
I decided to toast the rolls before assembling the sandwich. I also didn’t have as much Swiss cheese as I would have liked–only 2 slices. Once everything was heated and melty, I ate it and. . . it was a mushroom and cheese sandwich on toasted bread. The whole wasn’t any better as the sum of its parts. That isn’t to say that it was bad but it isn’t something that I would be craving as a sandwich for lunch or dinner.
I like the idea of adding worcestershire and/or soy to mushrooms to have as a side or topping for steak or a burger but I wouldn’t go out of my way to make this recipe again. Not terrible but not worth repeating.
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So are these recipes just really lackluster? Did any of you make blog recipes before trying the cookbook?
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I’ve been making her blog recipes for years. I also own her 1st cookbook. I borrowed the 2nd from the library but wasn’t interested in buying it.
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The only time I’ve cooked anything of hers was when Smitten Kitchen Every Day was COTM back in 2018. From my notes, it looked like I made one recipe and didn’t like it. Her blog and books have never appealed to me, but I’m always willing to give a COTM a try. Fortunately my library had the book.
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I’ve really liked several of her blog recipes (stromboli, plush confetti cupcakes chocolate babka, skillet ravioli with spinach*) but I’ve found I needed to tweak to my preferences, and there are often ways to streamline vs the way she wrote them. Like @NJChicaa I have borrowed her earlier cookbooks from the library but didn’t find enough to justify the purchase. I jumped to buy this cookbook more as a way of supporting her and feel less guilty about mooching free online recipes.
(*all of which are not gluten-free so I won’t be making again now that I’ve had to go GF. However, she does have some other dishes that happen to be GF or are easily adapted.)
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You might get away with making these with a 1:1 replacement flour. 
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Somehow I missed this news about having to go GF. I hope it doesn’t end up being too difficult to transition to that. So sorry.
I like many SK recipes - tons of them. But I look at EYB fairly often, and the reviews haven’t made me want to cook from this book.
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Yep, cupcakes are definitely a case where a flour blend like the KA measure-for-measure will work admirably.
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Time to nominate books for May!
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Thanks… I’ve been cautious about using M4M in baking sweets since the few recipes I’ve tried so far have been less than impressive. (cornbread was fine, though!)
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