Bread enthusiast. Vegetable lover. Omnivore. If the kitchen is your happy place, you're in good company. Let's hang.
{New!} An Incredibly Delicious Appetizer + Pasta with Cherry Tomato Sauce & More Recipes to Make Right Now
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Ricotta: A Love Story. Friends, where to begin? I spent much of my life thinking I disliked ricotta, thanks no doubt to my introduction to it: dining hall lasagna and stuffed shells, whose fillings left me considering it nothing more than a grainy, watery, flavorless paste. Ina Garten and her recipe for homemade ricotta showed me the light, revealing how creamy and fluffy the good stuff can be. And Missy Robbins showed me that whipping ricotta — blending it in a food processor until smooth — can transform it into an entirely different product altogether: a pipable purée, light and smooth, not unlike a creamy, savory frosting. In recent weeks, Laura Vitale, with her recipe for whipped ricotta with honey and pistachios, has made me more smitten with the cheese than I ever imagined. The recipe comes from her latest book, At My Italian Table, and when I first made it, I spooned it onto a platter, then set it on the table while I went out back to grill some bread. When I returned, I found my son sitting in front of it with a spoon. When the bread arrived, the whole family went to town, and before long, it was gone. In the recipe's intro, Laura writes: "If you don't feel like making dinner, whip up a batch of this instead and sit on your back porch with some mortadella, charred bread, a bowl of ruffled potato chips, and an ice-cold glass of wine or an Aperol spritz." Last night, I did nearly that, pairing the ricotta with Laura's herby roasted tomatoes (see below) and a few olive oil-and-sea salt-topped pizzas. We opened a few tins of sardines and called dinner done. It was a dream, and the whole ensemble made me excited for the warmer months ahead, for arranging vegetables on platters, assembling giant salads, turning the oven off and the grill on, opening tins of fish and jars of olives... and, well, with a platter of creamy cheese by our sides, the possibilities feel endless!
PS: Here are those herby roasted tomatoes also from At My Italian Table:
PPS: Last month I spent some time at the Food52 headquarters and had a blast. I made a breakfast pizza from Pizza Night with Amanda Hesser, who I’ve long admired and who is as funny and personable as I’ve always imagined. Watch the video here and get the recipe here.
Grilled Pizza: A TutorialIn Friday's pizza newsletter, I wrote about grilled pizza. Find the video tutorial for both charcoal and gas grilling here:
More Recipes to Make Right NowIf you've ever wanted to make a sourdough starter from scratch, now is the time! Warm temperatures dramatically increase your chances for success. Here's my tutorial: How to Build a Sourdough Starter from Scratch.
If you love a raw kale salad, you will love this Swiss Chard Salad with Lemon, Parmesan and Bread Crumbs Pasta with Cherry Tomato Sauce (A family favorite... making this tonight!) Raw Summer Squash Salad (For the first, tender squash of the season.) Jessie Sheehan's One-Bowl Lemon-Blueberry Loaf Vegetarian Tortilla Casserole Thank YouThank you to all who have ordered Pizza Night.
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Hi. I'm Ali.
Bread enthusiast. Vegetable lover. Omnivore. If the kitchen is your happy place, you're in good company. Let's hang.
Friends, hello! Somehow summer is over, the kids are back to school, the hockey carpool has resumed, and, well, I find myself asking: how?! This summer in particular felt like a blink. Alas. Today, I have three things to share with you: First, corn on the cob: at some point in the middle of the summer, I stopped making it. Three of my children have braces, and as I noticed them night after night struggling to strip the kernels from the ears on their plates, sending corn flying everywhere,...
Hello Friends, A couple of weeks ago, I returned home to find Caroline Chambers' new book, What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking, at my door. Its arrival could not have been more timely: we had just returned from England, and in addition to feeling jet lagged or perhaps because of the jet lag, well, I didn't really feel like cooking. As I flipped through, I noticed the chapter organization — "15-ish Minutes," "30 Minutes," "45 Minutes," etc. — and immediately felt inspired. Surely I...
Friends, hello! Yesterday my copy of Jenny Rosenstrach's new book, The Weekday Vegetarians Get Simple, arrived, and about 30 minutes later the above-pictured tart, the book's cover photo, emerged from my oven. It was one of the fastest dinners I've ever assembled in a very long time and a reminder that a handful of good ingredients — good puff pastry, excellent tomatoes, deliciously creamy blue cheese — go a long way. Three years ago, Jenny wrote The Weekday Vegetarians, in which she shared a...