For some time, as newsletter technology has vastly improved, I’ve been dreaming of creating a better email, one that is a true weekly digest of all the delicious new and worth revisiting cookery on Smitten Kitchen and at last, that day is here! The new newsletter will include not just new recipes, but seasonal picks and weekly archive highlights, carefully tailored to what we all want to be cooking right now. They’re pretty fugly little has changed in the last decade. Something new and wonderful is coming! For the last 9 years, we’ve had a pretty barebones newsletter system on Smitten Kitchen new recipes/posts arrive in your inbox the morning after they’re published.
A decade ago, I watched Michael Chiarello on TV emulate this two-step process for oven fries by briefly simmering his potato batons in water before roasting them at a high temperature and I’ve made mine this way since because they’re spectacular, spectacular enough that I get to have french fries in my life as often as necessary without being so calorically indebted and grease-splattered that I’m only allowed to consume water and bone broth for my non-fries meals. When cooked twice, the first at a lower temperature to gently warm and tenderize the potato, and the second at a higher temperature to seal and crisp the edges, you get the french fries I dream about. The reason - as described in one of my favorite french fry essays of all time, that by Jeffrey Steingarten as collected in The Man Who Ate Everything - is that potatoes have a very high ‘thermal inertia ’ it takes a long time for heat to penetrate the center. If you only fry them once, either the outsides get tough or the insides taste undercooked. The secret to great french fries is to cook them twice. Which is too bad, because it takes about 10 seconds to learn. I directed you to the 2006 post where it was buried but promised a refresh and then I had a baby and now a 5 month and 10 day turnaround is the norm. although: I would have done that anyway).
This came up again when we made Fake Shack Burgers earlier this year and you may have seen a glimpse of the 11 fries I hadn’t eaten while taking photos (because: pregnant. But in the very first month of this site I learned a technique for oven fries that made them exceptional. Were what came out of the oven secondary, unspecial, clearly a compromise coming from a vague notion of healthfulness, I’d probably own a deep-fryer by now. Thus, I’m the last person I’d expect to be showering praise upon oven fries - that is, french fries that are baked instead of cooked as their name demands, but you’d be surprised rarely even someone as pedantic as me rarely actually feels like heating up a cauldron of oil just to have what they want the most. And so help you if you serve them with homemade mayo - so help you, because I love you and you will never get rid of me now. Golden, crisp, glistening, glittering with a dusting of fine salt, heaped in a pile, I would eat a mile of baby field greens to have a single plate of the fries we used to get at a restaurant I was convinced used to use horse fat to fry them because I’m a monster and they were otherworldly. My love of french fries knows no bounds they are, along with artichokes and bourbon, my desert island foods. Have a salad for lunch the day before and the day after, eat the steel-cut oats for breakfast, make hearty soups a regular part of your dinner rotation, but FTLOG, if you really want that chocolate cake, please, have that chocolate cake and then enjoy every last buttercreamed crumb of it.įor me, said indulgences most often come in potato format. I have no patience for baked doughnuts or sugar substitutes, and you can probably already guess that I cannot abide anything but cream in my hot coffee. and screams “CHOCOLATE!” or “CAAAAAKE!” and it’s just not working - you should indulge it. I am staunchly of the belief that if you really really crave something - I mean, if you’ve tried very hard to move on or distract that part of your brain/belly that rather rudely interrupts into your thoughts most days at 4 p.m.