Okay I know that even though everyone is back in school people who are actually returning to the office are eager to get back to work and Labor Day is just a blip in the rearview mirror summer isn’t really over yet — it’s warm the days are still relatively long and no I’m not getting rid of my sandals. But I can’t help it. As soon as the first day of September one of my favorite months rolls around my brain gets hard-wired into all things fall. I grab cardigans on the way out. I crave soup. I skip the peaches at the market so I can get to the new apples instead. And I turn the oven back on to make some deeply bubbly more filling meals.
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
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 smitten kitchen | 2021-12-29 17:00:30 |  33,564 Views |
Baked Brie with Balsamic Red Onions | Smitten Kitchen with Deb Perelman
I have mixed feelings about traditional baked pasta dishes. I mean if you showed up at my house with an aluminum baking dish of your grandma’s baked ziti I’d probably jump into your arms with relief because I don’t always feel like cooking. We’d devour it; everyone would go to bed happy and my son would probably wonder why his mom couldn’t just cook like that. But I would probably never mix a pound of cheese or a container of ricotta into a baking dish — it’s just too much too heavy. And so when I saw a baked orzo dish with eggplant and a little mozzarella from Yotam Ottolenghi (sadly not from his new cookbook coming out next month because I'm completely freaked out) I knew it was everything I'd ever hoped and dreamed of from baked pasta: balance (it has pillows of eggplant everywhere) comfort (it has decadent bits of cheese in every bite a delicious term I learned from this article ) and ease (it's the easiest mac and cheese I can make you don't even have to pre-cook the pasta).
And then I had to wait four months to make it because it wasn’t eggplant season yet. I won’t lie it was hard. In the meantime I made other variations of it one with halved cherry tomatoes (too wet) and one with asparagus (eh). This week it was finally mine and it was absolutely worth the wait. Because this is an Ottolenghi dish and Ottolenghi didn’t make it big by making things the regular way there are smaller elements that I would never have considered adding like fresh oregano which works so well here. There’s a little lemon zest which was a revelation against the tomatoes and oregano. And there’s a little mirepoix a base of carrots celery and onion which gives the whole dish a depth that makes you take notice. Together it feels very September very late summer while somehow softening the landing to get back to work. I hope you like it too.
Next week: Eee! I’m going to share a second recipe preview from the cookbook — what I consider to be the most September-y recipe in it so I can’t let you miss it just because the book doesn’t come out until late October. And I’m going to announce the dates and locations we have planned so far for The Smitten Out of the Kitchen Book Tour. I can’t wait and I hope you’re excited too.
