Deb Perelman is one of the original food bloggers and creator of the popular Smitten Kitchen website. Now she’s trying something completely different — releasing an audio companion to her newest cookbook — and it’s a delightful listening experience.
Anybody who enjoys cooking will be inspired to get into the kitchen while listening to Smitten Kitchen Keepers: A Kitchen Counter Conversation. This four-hour audio program features 44 of Perelman’s favorite recipes from the Keepers cookbook, accompanied by her reflections, notes and additional tips about each one. The audiobook includes a downloadable PDF with ingredients and instructions, or listeners can follow along in the actual cookbook.
This really does have the feeling of sitting across from Perelman while she riffs on each recipe, sharing stories about what inspired it or how she has tweaked, simplified and perfected it over the years. Her delivery is relaxed and conversational, and she makes even complex dishes sound doable. While driving and listening to her talk about her French onion soup, I was tempted to swing into the nearest grocery store for a bag of onions and some day-old bread, just so my kitchen would smell as heavenly as she was making it sound.
The breakfast section includes a scrumptious sounding concoction Perelman calls blueberry pancake cobbler. In salads, she waxes poetic on raw snow peas with pecorino and walnuts. And I’ll sum up the sweets chapter in four delicious words: Family style creme brulee.
I realize the idea of an audio recipe collection sounds a little weird. But Perelman’s enthusiasm will inspire listeners of all skill levels to get into the kitchen and get cooking.
