What’s the main inspiration behind your new cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers?
Deb Perelman: With this cookbook, I was thinking a lot about the energy that drove me to create [my blog] Smitten Kitchen in the first place, and I’ve been blogging forever. I started it in 2006, and a lot of it was just this idea of [wanting] forever recipes. I didn’t want, like, a quicky, one-off recipe; I wanted the last blueberry muffins you’d ever make or the last pound cake you’d ever make. I think that’s what we’re all looking for; we’re just looking for the one that’s going to make us not have to think about selection next time we want to bake. What would be my ultimate chicken Parmesan? What would be my ultimate chocolate peanut butter cup cookie? Writing [the book] over an unprecedented pandemic probably had some effect on it, too, where we were just home so much and cooking around the clock. I really found myself thinking a lot more about which of these recipes are things my kids might want to make one day and which of these things are workhorses that are working for us week to week and which are just feeling too fussy. I felt like I was cutting a lot of extraneous steps and energy out of recipes, which is probably good for everyone.
Speaking of your blog, Smitten Kitchen, you were one of the pioneers of the food blogging world. Why do you think that has been an enduring channel for baking and food lovers?
I never considered myself, at the time, a beginner, but now, I realize, relative
