Friends! Hello. Happy Friday. For anyone in Florida, South Carolina, or the surrounding environs, I hope you’re safe and well and have what you need. For the rest of us, well. You know this is my favorite time of year—just the other day I noticed that we’ve moved into the time where it seems like perpetual golden hour. I never get tired of it! My weekend feels like the kickoff for fun things in October: I’m looking forward to an easy-productive Saturday, which everybody knows is the best kind of Saturday, and then a little day trip to Sonoma for a wine-club pickup. I’m eagerly looking forward to it. (You think we don’t have fall colors here, but the vines turn red and gold!) Whatever you’re up to, I hope there’s something to look forward to. I think you’re doing great.
Dumb Kitchen Things I Love
I turned 42 last month, and lest you think I’m not leaning hard enough into looming middle age, I asked my family for not one but two spatulas. Special ones. And you know what? I love them. And they’ve got me thinking about all the other silly little kitchen things I own that make my life easier—not the All-Clad pots and pans I’ve been slowly collecting, not the Instant Pot I really do use quite a lot, but the $25-and-under workhorses that are a little embarrassing to mention but do their jobs awfully well. Consider this “things I bought that I love, dumb kitchen edition.” Maybe you’ll love them too.
Flexible fish spatula
One of the ~special spatulas was this flexible fish spatula that Smitten Kitchen Deb has been singing the praises of for years. I’m here to tell you that she was correct! I can’t confirm or deny its effectiveness for fish, but I can say it’s thin enough to get under anything, it has plenty of surface area but also a graceful angled front edge, and it’s a pro at picking up and flipping whatever I have so far thrown at it. I’m sold.
Offset spatula
Another birthday spatula, another Deb-oriented purchase. I knew I would use this little friend for spreading things like frosting, or the fig jam in the challah below; I did not expect that it would do its job materially better than, say, the back of a spoon. I gasped audibly the first time I used it! It covers so much ground so gracefully. I’m in love.
Funnel
Probably all of you already have at least one funnel in your kitchen. I did not, for decades, and instead thought on a regular basis, “hmm, I bet a funnel would be really useful right now.” And let me tell you: I WAS RIGHT. I finally bought one for $2 at the hardware store, and I cannot express to you how many messes I am currently avoiding! Just glorious. If you don’t have a funnel, you need a funnel.
Silicone bowl cover
I have this Charles Viancin one that looks like a poppy, but any old round one will do—it’s made plastic wrap all but obsolete in my kitchen, and half the time doesn’t make it back into the drawer before I’m pulling it out again. My only complaint is that I don’t own more of them in other sizes. Highly recommend.
Multi-cherry pitter
I bought this cherry pitter years ago to help deal with the small, delicious cherry plums that come off my backyard plum trees every June; it can do four at once, and collects the juice and pits in a reservoir below. A luxury! I have also used it on actual cherries and it’s extra-glorious, since they’re so much less juicy than the plums. A unitasker for sure, but such a solid purchase.
This is also a reminder to get your knives sharpened if you haven’t done it lately. I just had my chef’s knife and my favorite ancient paring knife done, and it’s made my cooking life so much safer and more pleasant. If there’s a Sur La Table near you, they’ll do it for $5 per knife!
What To Bake: Fig, Olive Oil, and Sea Salt Challah
I’m going to tell you the truth and let you know that I made an outrageous unholy I Love Lucy-style mess of this recipe, the Fig, Olive Oil, and Sea Salt Challah that appears in The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook (#57!)but is also on the site. The dough is sticky to begin with, and then there’s a whole jar of fig jam involved, and my ropes got holes in them and let the jam leak out, and I started my braid backwards and my poor spatial brain couldn’t parse the how-to photos. Dough and jam everywhere! I got it braided and into the oven by the skin of my teeth and was prepared mid-bake to swear off the whole thing forever…and then I tasted the finished loaf and knew there would be no swearing off of anything. This challah is transcendent—tender on the inside, with a glossy, crusty outside that caramelizes where the figs spilled out a bit (a little silver lining!), and pockets of sweetness and salt throughout. I am, indeed, smitten.
I used crunchy, big-crystalled Maldon salt in the dough and for sprinkling. I also opted not to make my own fig filling and used a jar of Bonne Maman fig preserves instead, which didn’t look as pretty as Deb’s photos—it’s too light in color for the swirls to show up well—but tasted marvelous. I hereby give you permission to do the same.
I should also note that the comments on this recipe are full of nothing but glowing praise, which says to me that the harrowing execution may be a me problem. I guess we’ll find out, because I’m psyching myself up for another shot at it! Here’s what I’ll do differently next time:
Part of the answer, of course, is flour. I’ll use it with abandon when I’m rolling my dough out, and I might also add a bit more to the dough itself—I suspect mine was stickier than it should have been or needed to be, compounding all my other problems.
Don’t try to rotate the dough during rolling! With stiffer doughs, I typically take a few passes with the rolling pin, then lift and turn the dough a quarter-turn, then roll, then another quarter-turn, and so on. This was a mistake with this sticky, floppy dough. Next time I would flour well, plop it down once, pick an axis, and go with it.
Maybe most importantly, let it rest. The second half of my dough was much easier to work with than the first, since it had had an extra few minutes for the gluten to relax. Next time, after the first rise and before rolling, I’ll halve the dough, press the air out, and let both halves sit for ten minutes. A relaxed dough will roll out thinner; be easier to roll back up into a rope, which will then be easier to stretch; and create more of those pretty striations in the finished loaf.
The good news is that, even if you do none of these things, and scoop it into the oven as a precarious pile of dough and figs and salt and egg wash, as I did? It’s going to be so good, and disappear so fast. Promise.
Blockbuster Review: Sixteen Candles (1984)
Deep breath: It breaks my heart how many things I object to about this movie, which I loved very much in my teens and 20s. It is, in fact, wildly racist, wildly sexist, and verrrrry hazy on issues of consent, deep in its very bones! Which is so unfortunate, because parts of it are still extremely funny. Sigh. Moving on.
All-Clad?!? Calphalon or Starve.